Legendary Whitesnake guitarist Bernie Marsden is featured in a new career spanning interview with Classic Rock. Following is an excerpt from the chat with Rob Hughes.

Q: You successfully auditioned for UFO in 1972, but you didn’t really get along with them – the country boy outsider among a group of Londoners. Did that discourage you at all?

Marsden: "I was naïve and green, and thought that joining a pro band and moving to London was going to be like the cover of a Beatles EP, with everyone jumping in the air and being happy. It turned out to be anything but. At the same time, without that break you and I wouldn’t be talking today. But it was pretty bad at the time. When you’re seriously considering packing it all in, after only ever wanting to do this, what are you going to do? The answer is to join another band."

Q: When you were in UFO it got physical at times, with fisticuffs on stage at a gig in London in 1973.

Marsden: "Looking back, it was unbelievable, really. You think: ‘Did that really all happen?’ Some nights it was even worse than that. I ended up travelling solo to gigs, I didn’t travel in the same car as the rest of the band."

Q: You first met David Coverdale at a studio in Munich, recording the Paice Ashton Lord album. Did you click straight away? 

Marsden: "There was an instant rapport between us. He was like a surrogate brother to me. Neither of us had any brothers or sisters, we were born in the same year, and even though we grew up two hundred miles apart we discovered we had the same influences; once I started talking about Howlin’ Wolf he was all ears. But he didn’t know how I played until he was putting Whitesnake together and I went to the audition. All he knew was that I’d been a session guy and had made all these records with different people. The Paice Ashton Lord album is very controlled and slick. There’s no great blowing in it, it’s all about the songs and arrangements. So when I started playing freely at rehearsal, David took me to one side and said: “Erm, can I have a word? I had no idea you played like that.” That’s how it began."

Read the complete interview here.

Marsden can be heard on UFO's The Dave Edmunds Rockfield Demos (1973). He launched Whitesnake with vocalist David Coverdale in 1978 and recorded the band's first five albums and a live album: Snakebite EP (1978), Trouble (1978), Lovehunter (1979), Ready & Willing (1980), Live In The Heart Of The City (1980), Come An' Get It (1981) and Saints & Sinners (1982).