When you’ve been singing along to a song for years and know every lyric by heart, it can be hard to imagine there was ever a time when the tune had different words. The fact is, though, lots of hit songs go through all kinds of changes before they make it to the top of the charts…and that was the case with Whitesnake’s classic 1987 number one, “Here I Go Again.”
Originally, the headbanging ode to heartbreak appeared on the 1982 Whitesnake album Saints & Sinners, but as singer David Coverdale told Ultimate Classic Rock, he was never satisfied with it.
“Saints & Sinners was what I called my contractual-obligation album,” he said. “I refused to finish that album until my manager at that time was more reasonable in our divorce proceedings. I’d never really had a full complement of musicians to finish that record.”
As it turned out, Coverdale would get the chance to record the song again. Whitesnake’s lineup had changed by 1987, with only Coverdale remaining. He wanted to re-record the song “Crying in the Rain” for Whitensake’s 1987 self-titled album, and label head David Geffen agreed…on one condition.
“It’s doing deals,” Coverdale explained. “Once they said, ‘Let’s do ‘Here I Go Again,’ I said, ‘I’ll do that if I can do ‘Crying in the Rain.’ That was the purpose of that.”
Taking “Here I Go Again” back to the studio gave Coverdale the chance to update the lyrics, changing the original “like a hobo I was born to walk alone,” with “like a drifter.” The singer was apparently concerned that the word “hobo” would be mistaken for “homo.” (Is a “hobo” really born to walk alone, David? Please explain.)
Otherwise, the lyrics are a sort of tribute to the power of starting over again after a relationship falls apart:
“No, I don’t know where I’m going / But, I sure know where I’ve been / Hanging on the promises / In songs of yesterday / An’ I’ve made up my mind, / I ain’t wasting no more time / Here I go again / Here I go again”
The single was released in the summer of 1987 and went on to peak at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 on Oct. 10 of that year, where it stayed for one week.
How Tawny Kitaen became ‘the Whitesnake woman’
Part of the reason why the song blew up was because of the sensational music video, of course, which was all over MTV for years. The clip, featuring actress/model Tawny Kitaen (who was Coverdale’s girlfriend at the time) dancing provocatively on top of two cars, helped define the “hot girls, wheels and guitars” era.
“Claudia Schiffer was supposed to be ‘the Whitesnake woman,’ when she was the Guess Jeans girl,” Coverdale told Heavy Consequence in 2019.
“But that fell apart near the actual shoot,” he continued. “And I was taking Tawny out for dinner, when (video director) Marty Callner called me, and said, ‘You have to stop by, we have problems.’ We went to his house on the way to dinner, he opened the door, his jaw hit the floor — as you know, Tawny was an absolute beauty — and he said, ‘That’s her! She’s the Whitesnake woman!’ And I said, ‘Marty, this is a friend of mine. She’s an actress.’ And she said, ‘No David, I’m happy to do it!’”
Clearly Callner made the right decision.
Related: How This ’80s Hard Rock Band’s Unlikely Cover of a ‘Minor’ R&B Hit Put Them on the Map
