May 7, 1951 – August 24, 2023
Best known for co-founding Whitesnake and as a writer of some of their classic songs, Bernie spent a lifetime walking in the shadow of the blues. Here, friends and bandmates recall one of the finest blues-rock guitarists of his generation.
Bernie Marsden, the much loved former Whitesnake guitarist and solo artist, has died at the age of 72. Responding on Twitter, David Coverdale referred to his “old friend” as “a genuinely funny and gifted man, whom I was honoured to know and share a stage with”.
Marsden’s publicist had broken the sad news on behalf of the guitarist’s family, revealing: “Bernie died peacefully on Thursday evening [August 24] with his wife, Fran, and daughters, Charlotte and Olivia, by his side.” It added: “Bernie never lost his passion for music, writing and recording new songs until the end.”
Marsden may have been best known as a member of Whitesnake, the band he co-founded with singer Coverdale and guitarist Micky Moody in 1978, but he spent a lifetime in rock’n’roll, playing with Wild Turkey, Cozy Powell’s Hammer, UFO, Babe Ruth, Paice Ashton & Lord, MGM, Alaska, Company Of Snakes, The Moody-Marsden Band and more.
Born into a working-class family in Buckinghamshire on May 7, 1951, Bernard John Marsden began playing music with a second-hand Spanish guitar. He saved his pocket money for an electric instrument, and started out in the local club scene in the late 1960s, inspired, like so many others, by the boom in blues music.
“I loved Hank Marvin in The Shadows as a kid,” he told Classic Rock in 2020. “But Eric Clapton was the first guitar player I really adored, because I was old enough to relate to it. George Harrison comes into this as well, and then it was Peter Green. I saw Fleetwood Mac on so many occasions.”
On one memorable occasion, Marsden helped the Fleetwood Mac roadies load in the gear and took a seat in the corner of the room.
“Somebody must have told Peter that I’d helped out, so he came over and said: ‘You look like you could do with a beer.’ Then he sat down and chatted,” Marsden recalled. “It was such a great moment.”
Having formed his first real group, Skinny Cat, at 17, Marsden’s first pro gig was as a successor for Mick Bolton in UFO in 1972, but lasted for just for some live gigs and a couple of demos. The arrangement wasn’t a great fit in musical or personality terms, and it all ended in on-stage fisticuffs at a gig in London when, responding to a slap in the face from Phil Mogg, Marsden whacked the singer between the shoulder blades with his guitar. Exit Bernie Marsden, enter Michael Schenker.
The following year Bernie resurfaced with former Jethro Tull bassist Glenn Cornick’s next band, Wild
