WITH a wild toss of his flowing bubbly locks and a bass guitar strapped over his shoulder, Neil Murray gazed out over a sea of more than a quarter of a million faces and struck another classic rock god pose.
It was Rio de Janeiro, January 1985 - in the days when trousers were tight, hair was big and rockers Whitesnake were on the cusp of massive international super-stardom.
Nearly 350,000 paying fans - at the time a world record number for a concert - had turned up to see Edinburgh-born Murray and his Whitesnake bandmates, along with Rod Stewart, Iron Maiden, Ozzy Osbourne, Yes and headline act Queen. A staggering 200 million viewers in 60 countries tuned in to watch.
And with their sprayed-on skintight jeans, carefully unbuttoned shirts revealing jangling medallions and the distinct aroma of several cans of hairspray lingering in the air, Whitesnake's bandsmen were the epitome of Eighties' power rock legends.
Today Murray recalls the gig as one of the key moments in a 30-year career and allows himself a gentle smile at the slightly over-hirsute image that the band had so eagerly embraced.
"OK, yes, I did have the big hair," he admits, rather awkwardly. "Well, we all did - it was the mid-80s!
"Really, it wasn't too bad at first, but then it started to get really over the top, we went head over heels for the glam heavy rock look. The hair was getting bigger, there were stylists being brought in to tell us what to wear while we were on the road.
"And there was this hairspray, loads, everywhere."
These days the hair is substantially shorter and definitely greyer. Murray, now 56, and fresh from a trip "home" to Edinburgh to tidy up loose ends of his late mother's estate, remains one of rock music's biggest unsung legends.
Indeed, his professional credentials read like a musical hall of fame.
Apart from providing the throbbing bassline to some of Whitesnake's biggest power rock anthems, Murray has shared his talents with household names from Black Sabbath to Pavarotti, Queen's Brian May to Fleetwood Mac founder Peter Green, and performed alongside Eric Clapton, Sting, Robert Palmer, drumming icon Cozy Powell, Australian rocker Jimmy Barnes and even The Chieftains.
He's strutted at Buckingham Palace for the Queen's Jubilee celebrations, provided thumping rhythmic melodies for wildman Ozzy Osbourne at the historic first Live Aid concert and has notched up no fewer than ten million album sales.
Not bad for a musician that few people will have ever heard of, and whose early memories of public performance are of watching operas and classical recitals with his cultured parents at the Edinburgh Festival, and who still regards himself as a full-blooded Scot despite his soft south coast accent.
"I'm absolutely one of Edinburgh's own," he agrees. "People say to me, 'oh you can't be Scottish with that accent' and it really annoys me.
"I was born in the Simpson's, I remember going to see Benjamin Britten's opera Peter Grimes at the Festival - I was taken to all the festivals when I was young. Art, dance, opera . . . I was exposed to it all. And, of course, there was a slight tendency to rebel against that high art and try something a bit more down-to-earth."
While his brother, Andy, followed in their father's footsteps and went to Fettes alongside Tony Blair - eventually becoming a key player in the music industry himself, working at a business level with the likes of Pink Floyd's David Gilmour and The Corrs - Neil was sent instead to a progressive, vegetarian boarding school in Hertfordshire.
He had already swapped his piano lessons for the trombone and eventually the drums, when a school friend converted a guitar into a bass and Neil discovered the key to his musical future.
Soon he had figured out a way to plug the guitar into his record player, teaching himself to play by practising along to recordings of some of the best bassists in the world.
Eventually his typographic design studies at London College of Printing couldn't compete with the thrill of playing guitar - even though it was several years of practising in his bedroom before Neil finally emerged on to the public stage.
"I was obsessed with the bass guitar," he remembers. "I was playing on records in my bedroom for five years. Eventually, when I did get on stage, I suddenly realised there was a lot more to it all than I had realised, the nerves came out and the lack of experience. It's not just about playing the notes."
Still, while he's the first to admit he has neither the extrovert character nor inclination to be a frontman, he certainly learned to hold his own on the rock stage. There would be stints strutting alongside guitar maestro Gary Moore, rhythm king Cozy Powell and eventually former Deep Purple frontman David Coverdale in his newly formed rock outfit, Whitesnake.
So did life as a rock star meet all the cliches of wild women, trashed hotel rooms and lunging from country to country in a boozy blur?
"To be honest, touring was more about playing silly practical jokes on each than anything else," he admits.
"Tony Iommi, Black Sabbath's guitarist, has this doom and gloom, very dark image - and to be honest you don't want to get on the wrong side of him - but he's really very humorous, there's a lot of silliness and joking with him.
"In Whitesnake, well we were just a bunch of guys having a good time.
"There was some of the booze and womanising going on but if you look at the likes of Ozzy or Motley Crue, we were much, much tamer than that," he says. "I mean, not exactly choir boys but not doing anything very different from the vast majority of the population.
"It just maybe seems to be a bit more glamorous, but it's not really," he shrugs. "Besides, I'm a bass player and we tend to be more in the background. OK, I had my moments, but I'm not a wild extrovert."
No smashed up rooms, television sets thrown out of 20th-storey hotel windows? "It was more practical jokes, to be honest," he admits.
"Things like covering door handles with shaving foam. And once someone dressed up as a lion from the circus and we had a laugh at that."
A far cry from the thrusting, posturing and drink and drug-fuelled rock star image. As is the notion that all rock stars are worth millions and live a life of luxury.
Although Neil worked on the recording of Whitesnake's US-breakthrough album, 1987, he was out of the band by the time they reached superstar status - missing out on a potential earnings windfall.
Not that he's too bitter - by that time the hair had got even bigger, the trousers even tighter and the on-stage thrusting even more extreme for a lad from the outskirts of Edinburgh.
At least these days there is the comfort of financial security - during the past five years Neil has performed in the Queen tribute musical We Will Rock You, at London's Dominion Theatre, and occasionally appears with the Whitesnake tribute band, M3 Classic Whitesnake.
Soon he will head to Germany with fellow Scot, singer Dougie White from Motherwell, to record with studio-based band Empire - led by rock guitarist Rolf Munkes.
But despite a packed schedule, Neil makes the time for regular visits to his family back in Edinburgh.
His parents have both passed away in recent years but his sister Charlotte, who works as a graphic designer in the Capital always looks forward to welcoming her brother home.
The days of appearing before quarter of a million-plus fans at a sweltering Brazilian rock festival may be in the past; the highlight of playing at the Queen's Jubilee concert then trading Fettes tales about his brother with Tony Blair just a memory - but Neil remains as understated as ever.
"There were good times," he reflects. "It was nice to be part of it."
HEAVY METAL'S CELEBRATED SERPENT
WHITESNAKE was started in 1977 by David Coverdale, formerly of Deep Purple, and found fame in the 1980s.
The line up has changed over the years but has included such legends as Jon Lord, Ian Paice, Cozy Powell, Neil Murray, Bernie Marsden, Micky Moody, John Sykes, Adrian Vandenberg, Vivian Campbell, Tommy Aldridge and Steve Vai.
The band has been compared by critics to Deep Purple, not only because three former band members were once in Deep Purple, but also because of their sound and influences.
Current band members David Coverdale, Doug Aldrich, Reb Beach, Uriah Duffy, Tommy Aldridge, and Timothy Drury still tour to this day.
Edinburgh Evening News April 2007
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