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. Both the current Whitesnake lineup and John Sykes play the song as their live encore.
In 2009, in an interview with Metal Hammer, Coverdale commented on the origins of the song:
"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 Sykesy 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."
Lyrics
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
Now I just wanna get close to you
An' 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...
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
I'm waiting for the night to come
In the Still of the Night,
In the cool moonlight,
I feel my heart is aching
In the Still of the Night...
Tell me here baby
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...
Now I just wanna get close to you
An' taste your love so sweet
And I just wanna make love to you
Feel your body heat.
In the Still of the Night...
Still of the Night,
Still of the Night,
Still of the Night...