Went through a PILE of old cassettes this evening. You know, one of those things you tell yourself you’re gonna do “someday“. But there is no such day as “someday”. There is Mon-day, Tues-day, Wednes-day, Thurs-day, Fri-day, Satur-day and Sun-day. But no “Some-day”. In other words, if you won’t do stuff right away, it’ll never be done. And this is one of those things.

Every interview and press conference I’ve ever been to, I’ve recorded. So you can imagine the ridiculous amount of material that I’ve got laying around here.
I was searching for the interview I did with Dimebag as it was a tribute show for him a few days ago (Dimebash) and I figured it would be good timing to find it. Nobody’s ever heard it. It would be the premiere – 20 years overdue… I did the interview back in 1991 when they were touring with Judas Priest on the Painkiller tour. And I have no idea where it is. Still haven’t found it.

Anyway, as I was looking for THAT, I found something ELSE. The WHITESNAKE press conference from Midtfyn Festival in Denmark 1994. 

I went there with a photographer, also a Whitesnake-fan. The press conference was to be held in a tent, as usual at these festivals, and the place was PACKED.

I had been one of the first people to get there so I had the front row seat. It filled up and you couldn’t fit in one more person by the time the band arrived. This was the great comeback of Whitesnake, as David had just been involved in the Coverdale Page project. Until then, nobody even knew if Whitesnake was dead and buried forever. And with the “Greatest Hits” coming out, the interest for the band was huge.

Before the band arrived, there was a lot of noise in the tent, people talking, laughing…
When David walked in, it was as if someone just pushed a button and for a few seconds, the place turned completely silent. I’ve never experienced anything like that before. When he passed me, I could even smell his cologne. It smelled good – definitely something that stuck in my mind.

My photographer was so nervous that the first photos she took turned out totally blurry. And me… I dropped my jaw and forgot to turn on the tape recorder. Jesus, and we were supposed to be professionals. Yeah, right. Luckily I remembered to turn it on in the last minute, just as the conference began. :-)

It’s not a “real” video – back in 1994 there wasn’t even internet as we know it. Very few people had a PC with a modem at home and it wasn’t a normal part of life for most people. There were no digital cameras either. So, I just put a few photos from the conference with the actual cassette-audio file together in this very humble video. 

I hope you like it. :)