Doogie White

Talks about his Career


I just want to dip into your past a little bit. Now I might be incorrect but I was a member of the Deep Purple Appreciation Society in the late 70s and I believe so were you.

Yes I was, I had the the wee badge with Ritchie's face on it. I had that, I was a member of that.

Yeah, I had the feeling that you were.

That and the Bruce Lee fanclub.

I wasn't in that one. Obviously back then in the 70s many of us joined these fanclubs because there was no internet, no social media, so to get closer to our rock and roll idols the fanzine was the way to do it. What was it about Deep Purple in particular that drew you into them?

The first popular album I ever had was "Come Taste The Band". My brother and I, we were just we were just kids, I think I was 15 and he was 13 or something. We used to sing together at church and when we heard Coverdale and Hughes together and "Come Taste The Band", it was like wow listen to those voices and so the next week my mate Kenny Johnson brought in "Burn" with the same voices but a different guitar player and I was like "Oh my God, that guitar player is unbelievable" and he went "Oh you like that, here's "Made in Japan" which is just behind you there and I was like "Oh my God, who's that singer?". When you're that young you're like a sponge, you're just gonna soak it all in and because music meant much more to us back then than it does now. It's very hit or miss because you would grow and you'd work your milk round or your paper round and get your paper money and then you would go and you would buy the album with your choice. That's how much it was and you'd play it to death and you knew everything about it.

What I liked as well was the way that the the albums were structured because that's the way the artist wanted you to hear it. From Stormbringer through to Soldier of Fortune you had to flip it over, you couldn't just skip through it and so I got so much more out of the music than I do these days where you can just go okay, well put on this album. No, I don't like that song, no I don't like that song and the choices are massive but I'm an old man now so you know my music will always go from The Monkeys and The Beatles and David Bowie to Deep Purple, AC/DC, Black Sabbath with and without whatever singer they had. I don't really listen to music very much anymore just because I've heard it all and I've heard the best.

I know what you mean because I would buy one album a month because that's all I could really afford and then I would devour that album so I could tell you what track three was on side two, who produced, who engineered it and where is recorded, and visualize all the photographs on the cover in my head whereas now I can buy a box set with 19 albums in and I can't remember what one I played and what happened.

I agree, my wee mate, I mentioned him earlier, Kenny Johnson, he lent his copy of "Stormbringer". I had a refills record player but the needle scratched the record and for years and years I had never heard "Stormbringer" or "Lady Double Dealer" which starts the second side in its entirety because when I bought the CD it was like oh my God I missed so much because it used to jump. Do you remember they used to jump?

Yeah, I do indeed. So obviously you were immersed in three of the finest vocalists of all time with Gillan, Coverdale and Hughes but who else was an influence on?

Lou Gramm, at the start of the 80s Michael McDonald, James Taylor, Billy Joel and these guys all had.... Neil Young is not the best singer in the world but he has something what makes these guys unique. I just stole from the best and put it in a blender and it came out like this. I'm just about to do a tour with a band it's an acoustic tour of Iron Maiden songs. They've asked me to do that and I was listening to it and I'm thinking my God I could do Bowie over this because it's got all that sort of jazzy piano and just guitar and drums. I'm thinking what voice can I find that works because.... I remember and I'll drop a couple of names here but Bruce and Ronnie and I sat at Graspop in Belgium and we're all sitting there and Ronnie just said to me "Once you're in this metal groove, you can never leave" because we're not Bowie, we're not Peter Gabriel, it just won't work". I know Bruce tried to do it with his first solo album that never got released. It was called "First Offense" and he was going off and experimenting and it never even got released because nobody gave a shit.

Now you had somewhere in the mid-80s La Paz and Midnight Blue, two of your early bands and then you send a demo tape off in the early 90s to Ritchie Blackmore's management and Candice finds this tape. I'm just trying to picture this because this is before the internet, Blackmore has jumped away from Deep Purple and you have again with your history been an ultra fan all those years ago. What was it did you think I could do that he might be looking for somebody like me?

I always knew I could do it because all these guys from Purple and Rainbow were the ones that I sort of, including Lou Gramm and a couple of other guys, but these were the guys that I learned my chops from because they were all very different. The only one that I could never master because he's so intense is Graham Bonnet, his vocals are utterly unique.

You know Ian Gillan is Elvis, David Coverdale is Paul Rogers, Glenn Hughes is Stevie Wonder, Joe Lynn Turner is Lou Gramm. I took all of those guys, put them in a pot, mixed it around, came out and that's what I did. I had no issue with me going and joining Rainbow, no arrogantly, but I knew every song that he ever wrote better than he did.

When you went for the audition and you got the job, were you still the fan, I mean obviously you weren't following around with copy of "In Rock" under your sleeve saying do you mind signing this when you went up to get a coffee.

No no, it was never that bad for me. Well, I never had any money and the thing about Ritchie was that you would go and see him and I would buy tickets for two nights, he'd play in Edinburgh for two nights and one night he would be absolutely rubbish and then the next day he'd be astonishing. And I was lucky enough to work with him when he was absolutely on fire. He was really on fire when we worked together. I don't know that he thinks he's got anything to prove because he is one of the greatest guitarplayers of all time but he was walking away from a band he created.

And he just went I'm gonna just go out and blast these people's heads off and I'd be surprised out of the, I don't know how many shows we did, but there was none that I would think were subpar in playing. His playing or indeed the band because he picked really good players, you know Greg Smith, Chuck Bürgi, Paul Morris and they could see and we could all read it and that all worked really well whereas with the last version of the band that he had that I saw they all looked in a fight.

"Temple of the King", Blackmore played that live in that tour beautifully and you sang it fantastically as well. Did the band have any input on the songs to choose or did he say we're going to do this?

Well, "Temple of the King" came round because Ritchie... he didn't invite me, he told me I had to come over to America at Christmas 1994. To be at his Christmas party and we were to go down to his bar in his house and play to his 40 invited guests and he said do you know "Temple of the King"? I said of course I do and that's where that came from and if you see it or listen to it, it's not quite complete because we never really did it. It was just a jam. I do it now in every solo show and I've got a good version worked out for it that pays tribute to all the former members of Rainbow who are no longer with us.

When you were with Rainbow you were obviously a young man...

Yeah, 34

It's interesting how it changes, I remember taking my wife's Sue to see Ian Gillen when he was out of Deep Purple and saying look at him Sue, he's nearly 50. They're still out there and he's nearly 80.

While we were working on the "Stranger in us All" album it was Ritchie's 50th birthday and you know he was going on "I'm an old man now" and you look back now and you think "Jesus, I'm 63 years old now". it's a long time ago but it doesn't kill the passion and it doesn't kill the groove and guys like Jeff Beck and Dave Gilmore and there's loads of great old by age guitarplayers. I mean Jeff's obviously gone now but these guys play great.

Ritchie's heart just not in the rock and roll anymore I mean when he plays the acoustic, he plays magically, when he plays the election he just sits and goes.... I know him you know, I mean we spent months and months together and we spent three years on the road and I'll look at him and I'll watch them in Birmingham and I just thought "You really don't want to be here, mate but you're making you know...." And it's sad that it's about the money because he was always about the music and all about trying to find the best band he picked the worst band he had. I mean Romero's great but when your 34 year old singer is kicking your ass on the stage you gotta be a wee bit worried you know.

Do you feel that towards the end of the "Stranger in us All" tour that, the not so much the fire was going out for him, but his eyes were somewhere else.

Well what he said to me, we did an American tour and it was monstrous really. It was my first American tour but it was monstrous you know because he'd been playing Long Island Arenas and New York Arenas and whatever. Here we were playing bars and we were in a couple of bars in Texas and yet playing and you could look just to the back of the bar and there was a guy on a bucking bronco and they were all cheering the bucking bronco but not watching the band.

It didn't bother me because that was my first time in America and I was still getting to sing these great songs and I was getting to sing with my favorite guitarplayer and we had a great band with John Miceli who had replaced Bürgi at that point, but that must have destroyed his soul. The last thing he said to me when they dropped me off at the airport was "I'm going to do Candy's album and then you and I will get together and we'll write the next Rainbow album" and I was inspired and thought this is what we'll do.

Ofcourse that never came to be because Blackmore's Night was something new and exciting for him and he found joy and excitement in it. We did one more show after that and it was just over it was over for him and it was over for me.

© Phil Aston, Now Spinning Magazine - May 28, 2023