John Sykes Once Confronted David Coverdale, Adrian Vanderberg Recalls

There were times when being in a rock band wasn’t the most smooth sailing journey one might take. Well, at least, being in Whitesnake didn’t mean that you would be there for good since David Coverdale had a habit of firing people and recruiting new rockers. So, while chatting with Classic Rock, Adrian Vandenberg recalled getting an offer from Geffen Records’ John Kalodner and how it led him to witness John Sykes’ confrontation with Coverdale.

So, at the time, the guitarist was with his eponymous band, Vandenberg, when Kalodner offered him to join Whitesnake. After saying he would think about it, the musician was invited into the studio to record some guitar parts for the band, which he readily accepted. However, to his surprise, he wasn’t the only guitarist in the studio that day.

“There was some sleight of hand,” Vandenberg said before recalling the label’s offer to him. “I got a call from John Kalodner, who was the big A&R guy at Geffen at the time, and he was working with Whitesnake and Aerosmith and Cher, and he said he’d like to speak to me about getting Vandenberg a new contract after we left Atlantic. When I went to L.A. and met him in his office, he said, ‘I haven’t been completely honest; I actually have two offers for you.’”

Vandenberg detailed the offers, explaining, “The first was that he’d help me build a totally new Vandenberg line-up with musicians from L.A., and the second was that he’d like me to join Whitesnake. I told him that David and I had already spoken a few times and I’d need a few days to think about it. And he said, ‘Okay, but while you’re here, could you come to the studio and play on a new version of ‘Here I Go Again.””

The guitarist accepted the offer and got into the studio rather quickly. However, John Sykes, who had been recently fired from the band, was waiting for David Coverdale to arrive. Vandenberg noted, “As a huge Whitesnake fan, I thought that’d be cool, so I went with David to Keith Olsen’s studio in L.A. to record the solo.”

The musician recalled, “While I was there, I heard all this screaming, and it turned out that John Sykes had shown up because he was angry with David for dismissing him from the band, and he had flown over to L.A. to confront him. Ironically, in 1982, I was asked to join Thin Lizzy, and I turned them down because I wanted to finish my art education, and then John Sykes was given the job.”

Thus, the complicated relationship between Coverdale and his Whitesnake bandmates has led to various controversies numerous times. This time, it was John Sykes, who David had called ‘selfish.’ Upon hearing that he was no longer with the band, he was pissed off. However, it seemed a bit ironic to Vandenberg that when he couldn’t join Thin Lizzy, it was Sykes who’d been recruited, and when John was fired from his band, it was himself who had filled in for him.