When it comes to ’80s music videos, few are as iconic as Whitesnake’s 1987 clip for “Here I Go Again.” And when it comes to dancing on the hoods of a pair of Jaguars (the car, not the animal), few had the moves down quite like actress and model Tawny Kitaen.
First released in 1982, “Here I Go Again” was a modest hit for the David Coverdale-fronted rock band. Five years later, aligned perfectly with the success of MTV and the oncoming wave of hair metal, the song and video were given a slick polish, with Coverdale’s hair as tall as the video’s romantic ambition, and it exploded into the mainstream. Kitaen was hired to play the chisel-jawed singer’s love interest (they eventually married in 1989, but divorced two years later), and the rest is history.
But like many things from the ’80s, the story behind the song and video is pretty fascinating. Former Bostonian Craig MacNeil, the DJ/VJ and promoter of the sorely missed Videodrome Discothèque dance parties, teamed up with men’s lifestyle publication MEL for a must-listen podcast that explores the real story behind the legendary video. The 48-minute podcast, which you can hear below, features in-depth interviews with Kitaen, director Marty Callner, and A&R executive John Kalodner, as well as commentary from Eddie Trunk, Katie Maloney, Matt Hardigree, and Nick Leftley.
“[It’s] a song that everyone knows, and the video is a reference that almost everyone will get,” MacNeil tells Vanyaland on why he decided to uncover the truths behind the “Here I Go Again” video. “It’s an evergreen, and its appeal transcends genre and listening preferences. There are very few songs that acheive this status, and yet often we don’t find out how they came to be. That, coupled with what I already knew about the story, which has so many twists and turns. It’s of interest to those who don’t even care about or like the band. The more I researched and the more I talked to Tawny, Marty, and John the more I discovered, and there were amazing anecdotes that I had to leave out due to time and narrative constraints — but there was so much drama it could have gone on for two hours.”
All of MacNeil’s interviews are original content — except for Coverdale. The frontman declined to take part, and so MacNeil culled through 200 or so Coverdale interviews to fill in the blanks.
“I tried at least a dozen times [to get Coverdale on record], but my queries were initially rebuffed, then ignored, then rebuffed again,” MacNeil says. “Initially I was concerned that I would be facing a big hole in the show, but as I learned more about the story and Coverdale’s relationships with the key players, his absence actually made complete sense.”
There he goes again.