Uninspiring Whitesnake Strikes Few Sparks at Forum

Beware of Whitesnakes.

There were some disarming moments early in the massively popular hard-rock group’s concert Thursday night at the Forum that made you think these guys weren’t as hopelessly insignificant as their records suggest.

Before the night was over, however, you realized: Yes, they are.

Whitesnake is a band with some refreshing charm and occasional craft, but almost no sense of challenge or surprise. There is nothing in the group’s music or manner that’s provocative or inspiring--rock’s most powerful qualities.

Like the even more successful Bon Jovi, Whitesnake reaps the benefits of a smart merger of styles: the melodic seductiveness of mainstream rock acts such as Journey and REO Speedwagon plus a trace of the assault of heavy-metal pioneers such as Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple.

This works demographically because the combination enables the band, led by former Deep Purple singer David Coverdale, to attract both party-till-you-puke, headbanging males who swear allegiance to heavy metal and that vast legion of female teens who prefer a bit of tenderness in their high-energy music.

Thanks to this coalition of fans, Whitesnake’s latest album, “Whitesnake,” has sold more than 5 million copies. Still, there’s little reason to suspect that the band’s popularity runs any deeper than the slick, superficial nature of most of its music.

The key to the group’s appeal live is Coverdale, a lean Englishman with a vocal style that seems equally at home when Plant -ed in heavy-metal tradition (he yowls with the best of them) or sliding over to softer and more romantic territory.

Despite more than a decade in the frequently reckless ‘n’ raunchy world of heavy metal, Coverdale projects an air of semi-refinement and even sensitivity.

Sure, he often sounds like someone from a fraternity stag when he’s talking between songs about sex and good times, but the songs themselves seem surprisingly free of the macho excess and tasteless hedonism.

When he’s singing about getting high, he’s usually talking about music, and when he’s talking about romance, it’s sometimes in terms of a lasting relationship.

Some of the tenderness (notably “Crying in the Rain”) and rebellion (“Bad Boys”) were lost Thursday in images and musical arrangements as cliched as the flashing lights and rising smoke that greeted the quintet’s arrival on stage.

But there were times when Coverdale appeared to have a bit of a sensitive singer-songwriter trapped inside his hard-rock heart. Among those times at the Forum: “Here I Go Again,” the group’s Top 40 hit from last year, and the anthemic “Don’t Turn Away,” a vow of determination in reaching for your dreams.

In both songs, Coverdale stepped from the posing and cliches of the hard-rock genre to convey genuine feelings--as if the words actually meant something to him. Given the numbing artificiality of most hard-rock shows, it seemed almost revolutionary.

Alas, there were too few of those moments in the concert.

Most of the time, Whitesnake and Coverdale--flashing one of the best smiles in rock this side of David Bowie and twirling the microphone stand with the ease of a baton champ--simply lived up to the expectations surrounding lead singers in hard-rock bands. There was none of the wit of a David Lee Roth or the sassy swagger of Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler.

Indeed, Whitesnake seemed like this week’s generic hard-rock band--simply a bit more classy than most of the bands that will be playing for the same audience the other 51 weeks of the year. The whole thing seems so interchangeable that fans didn’t even seem to mind that the musicians with Coverdale aren’t the same ones who did the most work on the recent album.

The sense of just-another-night-out rather than a special occasion was reinforced by T-shirts worn by the fans. Though there were hundreds of T-shirts for Whitesnake and Great White (the opening act), there were hundreds of shirts sporting the names of such rivals as the Scorpions, Ratt, Def Leppard and, of course, Bon Jovi.

In the midst of it all, the T-shirt that seemed to best summarize the spirit of the evening was a homemade one that proclaimed simply, “Let’s Party.”

The audience was enthusiastic throughout, but not especially overwhelmed. When the houselights went on after a single encore segment, hundreds of fans simply headed for the doors rather than yelling for more.

In a way, it was understandable. They knew there’d be another band along soon. They may even already have tickets for Heart or David Lee Roth.

Meanwhile, Whitesnake continues to fill this week’s hard-rock needs in Southern California with shows tonight and Sunday at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre and Tuesday at San Diego Sports Arena.

LIVE ACTION: Neil Young will be at the Palace Wednesday and Thursday nights with his new band, the Blue Notes. . . . INXS will be at the Forum June 3, Pacific Amphitheatre June 4; tickets for both shows go on sale Monday. . . . Ziggy Marley will be at California Theatre in San Diego May 10, Hollywood Palladium May 11; tickets are already available for the California show and go on sale Sunday for the Palladium date. . . . The Beach Boys will be at Pacific Amphitheatre on May 21; tickets available Monday. . . . Carlos Santana will be at the Wiltern Theatre May 14. . . . J. D. Souther and Karla Bonoff team up May 4 at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano; Rosie Flores headlines April 29 at the Palomino, April 30 at McCabe’s. . . . Billy Bragg will be at UCLA’s Ackerman Ballroom April 29; Donovan is due May 4 at Bogart’s in Long Beach.