Still Of The Night

“Still of the Night” is a song by the English band Whitesnake. It was released as the first single from their self titled 1987 album. It reached #16 in the U.K., #18 on the U.S. Mainstream Rock Tracks and #79 on the Billboard Hot 100 when it was released on 9 March 1987. In 2009, the track was named the 27th best hard rock song of all time by VH1. The song was written by lead singer David Coverdale and guitarist John Sykes and proved to be one of the band’s most popular songs. It combines the blues origins of the band with the more distorted, harder sound driving the song, making for a powerful hard rock song. Both the current Whitesnake lineup and John Sykes play the song as their live encore. The Song (also known as "In The Still of the Night") is a single released by Whitesnake, from their hugely successful self titled 1987 album. It reached #16 in the U.K. and #18 on the U.S. Mainstream Rock Tracks when it was released on March 9, 1987. In 2009 it was named the 27th best hard rock song of all time by VH1. The song was written by lead singer David Coverdale and guitarist John Sykes, and proved to be one of the band's most popular songs. It combines the blues origins of the band with the more distorted, harder sound driving the song, making for a powerful hard rock song. The current Whitesnake lineup and John Sykes both play the song as their live encore. The song has been cited as sounding similar to Led Zeppelin's "Black Dog", a possible source of inspiration for Coverdale and Sykes. A music video, featuring Coverdale's then future wife Tawny Kitaen, was shot for the song, and it was MTV's most requested video in its first week of release. A cover version of the song is featured in the video game Rock Revolution. In a 2009 interview with Metal Hammer, vocalist David Coverdale had this to say. When my mother died I was going through the stuff at her house and found some early demo cassettes. One of them was a song that Ritchie Blackmore and I had been working on which was the basic premise of what would become “Still of the Night”. It was totally unrecognizable, so Ritchie doesn’t have anything to worry about… neither do I! Ha ha ha! I took it as far as I could then I gave it to [John Sykes]y when we were in the south of France, and he put the big guitar hero stuff on there. John hated blues so I had to work within those parameters. I manipulated to be electric blues, but how he performed it was fabulous for his time and relatively unique because of the songs. There were a lot of people doing that widdly stuff but they didn’t have the quality of those songs. Meanwhile, in a 1999 interview with Melodic Rock, guitarist John Sykes had this to say, the first part of that song I wrote…was the middle section. All that was written on guitar in my mum’s kitchen. It wasn’t till months and months later that I came up with the other stuff and basically got the riffs and the chord for the verses.

Still Of The Night Lyrics Whitesnake [Verse 1] In the still of the night, I hear the wolf howl, honey Sniffing around your door In the still of the night, I feel my heart beating heavy Telling me I gotta have more In the shadow of night, I see the full moon rise Telling me what's in store My heart start aching, my body start-a shaking And I can't take no more No, no, no [Chorus] Now I just wanna get close to you And taste your love so sweet And I just wanna make love to you Feel your body heat In the still of the night In the still of the night Over here, baby [Verse 2] In the heat of the day, I hang my head down low And hide my face from the sun Through the light of the day until the evening time Waiting for the night to c-c-c-come Ooh, baby [Bridge] In the still of the night In the cool moonlight I feel my heart is aching In the still of the night [Breakdown] Ooh, baby Ooh, babe I can't keep away Closer and closer, need to be closer I can't keep away, can't keep away, can't keep away I can't keep away, no You gotta give me love Got to give me some lovin' everyday Can't keep away [Instrumental Break] Ooh baby, ooh woman Ahh [Guitar Solo] Get over here, babe [Verse 3] In the still of the night, I hear the wolf howl, honey Sniffing around your door In the still of the night, I feel my heart beating heavy Telling me I gotta have more Ooh! Mama [Chorus] Now I just wanna get close to you Taste your love so sweet And I just wanna make love to you Feel your body heat In the still of the night, ooh yeah [Outro] In the still of the night I will be sneaking 'round your door In the still of the night In the still of the night Ain't nothing gonna stop me now Still of the night, still of the night, still of the night Still of the night, still of the night, still of the night Still of the night, still of the night, still of the night Produced By Keith Olsen & Mike Stone Written By John Sykes & David Coverdale Recorded At Little Mountain, Vancouver, B.C., Phase One, Toronto, Compass Point Studios, Cherokee Recording Studios, Los Angeles, CA & One On One Recording Studios, North Hollywood, CA Engineered By Mike Stone & Keith Olsen Keyboards Don Airey Drums Aynsley Dunbar Bass Neil Murray Guitar, backing vocals John Sykes Vocals David Coverdale Release Date March 9, 1987