Whitesnake legend Bernie Marsden and band deliver a fantastic show in Chesterfield

The show was a warm-up ahead of a headline appearance at Cardiff’s Steelhouse Festival the following night.

The main focus of the night (and current tour) was Marsden and full band playing the classic Whitesnake 1980 album Ready An’ Willing in its entirety. It was a joy to hear this undisputed classic album in full for the first time ever.

Ready An’ Willing as an entire work has aged very well, all the tracks sounding every bit as good now as they would have done on its release nearly 40 years ago.

The band was on form, Marsden is an engaging front man and one of the best guitarists in the UK. The songs were brought to life and fleshed out by the incredible musicians on stage.

I was particularly impressed by lead singer Neville MacDonald (ex Skin and current Band of Dimes vocalist), what a voice! He is the right singer for these songs and I would say that he is better than Whitesnake vocalist David Coverdale. Second guitarist Jim Kirkpatrick (FM/Rhino’s Revenge) was outstanding.

There were wonderfully humorous moments when MacDonald dropped his microphone a couple of times and over-enthusiastic members of the audience yelled

their appreciation.

The fact that the venue is situated on Marsden Street was picked up by Bernie who said that he has always wanted to play a venue on a street named after him!

Standout songs of the night for me were Fool For Your Loving, Sweet Talker, title track Ready An’ Willing, She’s A Woman, Ain’t No Love In The Heart Of The

City, Shadow Of The Blues and set closer the seminal Here I Go Again.

I have said before how much I love seeing these legends and icons of music playing venues such as Real Time Live, these are not so much gigs, they are more like events. What a fantastic night.