Head the Ball

The Zoo Crew has got a real cooker spinning for all you Zoo Freaks right now, and if you have been riding along with the freeform album rock on THE ZOO you already know we like to dig past the hits and into the deep cuts that still kick. Bernie Marsden’s “Head the Ball” is one of those. It comes off his 1979 solo album And About Time Too, and it is pure instrumental fire, the kind of track that makes a biker lean a little harder into the wind and a long-haired listener turn the volume up until the windows rattle. No lyrics to get in the way, just Bernie’s guitar talking over a rhythm section that sounds like it was built for a long night on the road.

The record was cut while Bernie was still in the first great lineup of Whitesnake, the blues-rock version before the hairspray years. Martin Birch, the same man who was shaping the Snake albums around that time, produced it at Central Recorders in London. The cast list reads like a who’s who of British rock. On “Head the Ball” itself you get Jack Bruce on bass, Simon Phillips absolutely flying on the drums, and Don Airey coloring the whole thing with Yamaha CS-80 and Moog synthesizer. Bernie and Don share the writing credit. Fans who still own the original vinyl will tell you it is the perfect closer, full of energy and that loose studio feel you only get when everybody in the room already knows how to play. One longtime listener on the collector boards put it simply: if Simon Phillips has ever drummed harder on a studio date, they have not heard it. The whole album became a top ten seller in Japan and the number one import back into Britain before EMI and Parlophone picked it up for Europe. For a stretch there, Bernie and the Beatles were the only acts on that Parlophone roster, which still makes the old heads smile.

Bernie never treated the solo records like side projects he had to apologize for. In later interviews he talked about how the Whitesnake years gave him the room to write and to stretch, and And About Time Too was the proof. There is a gentle instrumental on the same album called “Song for Fran,” written for his wife, and then right beside it this charging piece that feels like the band just decided to open the throttle. He always said the blues sat underneath everything he did, even when the tempo got loud. That is the thread that runs from this track straight back to the kid who first heard the records that changed his life.

Bernard John Marsden was born on 7 May 1951 in Buckingham, an only child on a council estate. He failed his eleven-plus and went to the local secondary modern, but the guitar had already found him. His parents bought him a second-hand Spanish acoustic, and he saved paper-round money until he could trade up to an electric. He loved Hank Marvin in the Shadows when he was small, then Eric Clapton became the first player he truly adored because he was finally old enough to understand what he was hearing. George Harrison sat in that same picture, and Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac finished the job. Bernie used to follow Green’s gigs around the country and later laughed that he was furious when Fleetwood Mac hired Danny Kirwan, a guitarist the same age as him. How dare they, he said. He formed Skinny Cat at seventeen and built a strong local following, playing the pubs and clubs until the call came.

When he told his mother he was turning professional she asked the classic question: what about the drink and the drugs and the wild women? Bernie looked her straight in the eye and answered, that is what I want to do this for. He joined UFO in 1972 and moved to London thinking it would feel like the cover of a Beatles EP, everybody jumping in the air and happy. It was not. There were onstage fistfights and a sour exit after less than a year. From there he landed with Glenn Cornick’s Wild Turkey, then Cozy Powell’s Hammer. Cozy became a close friend and later stood as best man at Bernie’s wedding. Babe Ruth came next, two Capitol albums, and then Cozy recommended him to Jon Lord. That put him in Paice Ashton Lord with Ian Paice and Tony Ashton. The band only lasted one album and a handful of gigs, but the sessions in Munich were where he first met David Coverdale. Around the same time the sax player Howie Casey, who had been on the Wings records, put Bernie’s name forward for Paul McCartney’s band. The gig never happened. Whitesnake was already forming, and Bernie chose the Snake.

He and Coverdale and Micky Moody built the early Whitesnake sound on those first records, Snakebite through Saints & Sinners, and Bernie co-wrote the songs that still get played, including “Fool for Your Loving” and the original “Here I Go Again.” Years later B.B. King was quoted on German radio saying that Eric Clapton and the bloke from Whitesnake were the white players who actually felt the blues. Bernie did not even hear about it for a decade. When he finally got the transcript he set the record straight in interviews: King had not said they were the only ones who could play it, he had said they were the ones who felt it. Bernie called it a great honour and left it there. He stayed friends with Peter Green right up to the end, driving down to Canvey Island to talk blues and share biscuits, and he kept The Beast, his 1959 Les Paul, through every chapter.

Bernie left us in August 2023, peacefully, with Fran and their daughters beside him. He was still writing and recording until the last. The official site keeps the story going, the new releases, the books, the photos of that Les Paul. You can find him at Bernie Marsden’s official website, and the same stories and photos turn up on the official Facebook page, the Instagram account, and the X account. There is also a long-running Bernie Marsden Appreciation Club on Facebook where the fans still trade photos from the Hammersmith nights and talk about the records.

That is the man behind the guitar you are hearing. “Head the Ball” is Bernie in 1979, surrounded by Jack Bruce and Simon Phillips and Don Airey, still the kid from Buckingham who only ever wanted to play for a living. The Zoo Crew will leave it running a little longer for the Zoo Freaks. If you want more of this kind of freeform rock, the deep cuts and the stories that go with them, you already know where to find us at THE ZOO.