Interview with Cindy Coverdale by David L. Wilson of Electric Basement.com

Life is full of crossroads. Some will choose to go left, some go right and others, myself included, will attempt to straddle the median. Though I do love a deeply intellectual conversation on the issues of the day, history, philosophy and the like, I also enjoy a nice drunken dust up at the local pub with some loud Rock music as a soundtrack. Occasionally, there will come people, music or literature that serves these varied interests and today I read a book that was simply perfect, “FOOD THAT ROCKS: Favorite Recipes from the Hottest Kitchens in Music” by Margie Lapanja & Cindy Coverdale. “FOOD THAT ROCKS” combines an impressive selection of recipes from the personal files of Rock and Pop’s biggest names with biographical information, conversation and trivia across 300 pages to produce a work that should find appeal far beyond the average mulleted weekend warrior. Some of the recipes included could easily fit into any five star restaurant’s menu, in fact several do in fact come from professional restaurateurs. Other recipes, Ted Nugent’s “Bubble bean Piranha a la Colorado Moose” for instance, might not make it to such refined establishments but look to be equally as tasty. Broken down into chapters entitled, “Opening Act,” “Special Guest,” “Headliner,” “Encore” and “Jam Session,” “FOOD THAT ROCKS” allows artists as diverse as Patti LaBelle, Billy Corgan, Shania Twain, Brian May and Bob Weir to share some ideas on food and music that would never have found print sans this book. Each artist’s contribution is accompanied with a biography and short Q & A that leaves this collection as good a Rock and Roll read as it is a reference for what to make before a night out headbanging.  The paring of authors Margie Lapanja and Cindy Coverdale is what seems to make the book work as well as it does. Lapanja, an established author and professional Baker, brought the technical knowledge of food and publishing while Coverdale, wife of legendary Whitesnake vocalist David Coverdale, scored the backstage pass to the stars and finessed not only a recipe but a story from each contributing artist. The cooperation resulted in a brilliant collision of guitars and mixing spoons that I doubt has previously been attempted and if so certainly not this tastefully. Though I am not ready to give up my late nights of hot-wings, beer and ear shattering sounds at the club I will certainly be enjoying the finger lickin’ and finger snappin’ food from the Hard-Rock set that came courtesy of Margie Lapanja and Cindy Coverdale. Perfectly delicious! “FOOD THAT ROCKS” co-author Cindy Coverdale phoned recently to discuss all the food and fun that went into her first book. . . DAVID LEE I would guess that most often when someone authors a cookbook it is because they have a particular affinity for cooking, is that how it was with you? CINDY COVERDALE No, I actually used to cook quite a bit before I started writing this book but I haven’t cooked very much since!(laughs) Writing the book took quite a lot of time but the recipes are all from musicians anyway so they didn’t have to be mine. I wrote the book with my co-author, Margie Lapanja, who had written a couple of cookbooks and she actually had a dream that we wrote this book together. She dreamt the title of it and everything and we didn’t even know each other at the time! The day after her dream we ended up at the same party and she told me about the book and I thought, “What the heck, I have never done a book! Sure, why not?” and I had no idea what I was getting into and so we started it and it turned out to be a lot of fun. DL Did you have the opportunity to try out all of the recipes for yourself? CC No, we didn’t cook all of them because we wanted to retain the musician’s voice in the recipes. A lot of them are European so they would come through with the British measurement instead of the American equivalent so we had to prepare those just to get the correct measurements for America because this is where the book is coming out. We really wanted to keep the feel that it was that musician telling you how to make the recipe rather than Margie or I and some of them we had to cook because they came with no amounts of anything. “Add peppers, add onions. . .” You know, guy cooking, the way guys cook!(laughs) Those we had to prepare and come up with ingredient amounts because we wanted people to actually be able to cook them. Some we had questions on so we had to try those as well. DL The eating is the part I like most, was that good for you too? (laughs) CC We had a recipe road-testing party over the summer where we gave a bunch of our friends different receipts to try. Everybody cooked them and then we all feasted on them. Questions such as, cooking time or temperature were figured out this way. We got some really good recipes, it was a lot of fun! DL You don’t need to embarrass anyone by naming them but did you get any recipe suggestions where you just went, “Oh god, that is horrible?(laughs) CC No, not really! There was a funny one that is kind of disgusting. . . DL Let me guess, it came from Uncle Ted (Nugent)? CC It didn’t believe it or not!(laughs) In writing this there definitely were times that the publisher would say, “We think you should change or delete this line. . .” and we were very adamant in saying, “No, no, no, that is what makes it their recipe.” It makes for some very entertaining reading within the recipes themselves…  DL There is a terrible prejudice against musicians in general but Rock and Rollers especially in that people tend to discount their intelligence. . . CC I know and they couldn’t be more wrong! I have a tremendous respect for musicians. I find it incredible how they translate personal feelings and emotions into an expression we can all connect with and enjoy. I think they are very brave indeed.  DL Right and generally they are gifted in more than just one art. Did you find anybody that had been hiding their culinary gifts? CC Oh absolutely. There are some fabulous ones too. Frankie Banali from Quiet Riot gave a beautiful Linguine and Clam recipe that came from his family in Sicily. From Brian May there was a recipe for a Blackberry Puree that came from his Mom. Adrian Vandenberg is an amazing cook and he could easily have been a chef instead of a guitarist. I think that a lot of them find it a therapeutic way to wind down, especially the songwriters. It clears their mind, while still allowing them to create. DL I haven’t heard much form Adrian in a long while, does he play anymore? CC You know, he does a lot of writing . He is a great songwriter. He had an injury and it has made it hard for him to play guitar on stage. He actually got up and jammed with David this summer in Holland and that was great fun, the fans went crazy because he hasn’t been on stage for a while. He has a group of guys who all get together once a month and prepare these gourmet meals and they spend the whole day doing it. He loves to cook. I love when he and David are writing and he is at our house because then I don’t have to cook!(laughs) “Here is the kitchen Adrian. . .”  DL I know there are a few ex rockers out there who left the Biz to become Chefs, Janie Lane from Warrant for instance but has anyone from the book taken this up as their profession? CC You know we do have a group of guys in the book that are actual Chefs who own restaurants in the San Francisco area and they have a band called “The Back Burner Blues Band” and they had some amazing recipes. I mean, these are a little more complicated recipes maybe, they are not just somebody messing around in their kitchen and they are fabulous. Ted Nugent has all of his “Animals that I have killed” recipes.(laughs) He has his own cook books and Sarah McLachlan is in there and she had her own cookbook. Patty LaBelle is in there and she has her own cook book so there are quite a few who cook a little more seriously than just for their own fun. DL After you started asking people for their recipes did the word spread to others and then did you find you were getting a lot of people wanting to contribute? CC When Margie first approached me with it she had this list of twenty people who she thought that she could get in the book and I am thinking, “David, Adrian. Steve Vai. uh, who else?” and I maybe had five who I really knew could cook. It was really amazing because we sent packets out to every management company that we could find an address for and most of them that came back were word of mouth. You know, I would ask somebody that I knew like Tony Franklin and he would give a recipe and then he contacted Brian May who gave a recipe and it all kind of spread that way. We just figured that whoever was supposed to be in it would be in it and we just put it out to everyone and waited to see what came back. It was quite fun because we had a definite mishmash of people. We have an Opera singer and Shania Twain and then there is Ted Nugent!(laughs) We have the vegetarians and the non-vegetarians. . . DL There is something interesting. Some vegetarians are pretty militant about their vegetarianism so was it hard to get some people knowing that there would be meat recipes in the book? CC Yeah, I was kind of worried about that at first and had spoken to somebody at one of the management companies and they were a definite vegetarian and when I told them Ted Nugent was in the book they kind of recoiled. DL “Oh no it is the Anti-Christ!”(laughs) CC (Laughing) Yeah, but you know I wanted it to be a celebration and whomever wanted to be in it could be in it. I didn’t want to have any rules with this book. If people wanted to be in it they could be in it, pretty much, as long as there was a true connection to music. That was more important than their actual recipe. It actually made it charming because you can go from some recipes that you are going to read and laugh about, I think that Steve Lukather’s Cherry Cheesecake recipe had the best line in the whole book, and then there are others that are just fabulous recipes. There is a seared tuna over pasta recipe that looks fabulous that I haven’t cooked yet but I need to! DL Did you try to balance the book between what were meant as main dishes and what are deserts or appetizers? CC We set up the chapters like a concert, “Opening Acts, Special Guests, Headliners, Encores, and a Jam Session” and we had a lot of “Headliners” so we had to move some more specifically for the “Special Guests” section—like a Spanakopita recipe that really should be a headliner.. We had to go with the recipes we were given and we are a little heavy on the headliners. Everybody wants to be a headliner anyway, right? We created the “Jam Session” for the recipes that didn’t really fit in an existing category like Joe Perry’s Steak and Eggs.  DL I know that you fit in a lot more to the book than just the recipes, what else is there? CC There is a “Backstage with the Artist” section that addresses questions such as , “What kind of food do you like backstage?” and “What music do you play while you are preparing recipes?” It gives you a good insight into the person and a lot of them made comments about eating healthy, you know, “you are what you eat” and that was interesting. DL Before I got on the phone with you I pulled out an old Whitesnake contract rider from when I was a promoter and scanned down the list of things that David and the guys in the band wanted to eat. The soup that had to be a certain temperature and the homemade cookies and I know that they were very particular about things they ate. . . CC Yeah and now it is all healthy trail mix stuff and soy milk. It has changed a lot!(laughs)  DL Did the fact that you are Mrs. David Coverdale help or hinder you while putting this book together? CC I think that it definitely opened a lot of doors. I think it let the musicians have a little trust in me. The fact that I am living in their world and I know the importance of confidentiality and the importance of writing positively. I have had to read horrible and untrue things about my husband and it doesn’t feel good so I think that they probably felt a little more comfortable sharing information with me than maybe with someone who isn’t in that world. David, you know, he pretty much let me do this on my own. He did ask a couple of people but he let it be my project. I am sure the last name, Coverdale, helped though. DL Were there many people who you wanted to have in the book that just flat refused? CC Oh yes. We had our rejection letters. We had about five. Most of it was that we got a late start and after we had signed our contract with our publisher it was then sold to another publisher. During that time we were waiting for our advance and it started looking a little iffy so we held back and didn’t start right away. Then when we got our packages ready to go out it was March and that is when everybody is getting ready to go tour so a lot of people were on the road and that was the number one reason, people on the road. DL Do you travel with David when he tours? CC I usually go out for a couple of weeks at a time. . .to the fun places!(laughs) I went to Greece this summer and that was an incredible experience. Now with our son, he is pretty good out there for a week or two and then he is ready to be home with his toys and his friends. DL I ask because I wonder how you eat while you are touring and don’t have a fully stocked kitchen to whip up any given recipe? CC We do a lot of room service, David and I. We are pretty reclusive.(laughs) He has pretty much turned into a vegetarian and that has limited things quite a bit. David usually wants to try to find a nice Seafood or Sushi restaurant and I usually want Italian…  DL Are you a vegetarian? CC Kind of. I am not as good of a vegetarian as he is. He is more adamant about it where I will cave in and have something else. I was just at my brother’s house in Texas and we were eating some chili and I am thinking that it is vegetarian because that is what it would be if it was at our house and half way through it I realize that it is venison and I didn’t stop and gag and throw a fit, I ate it.(laughs) And it was delicious but a part of me just thought, “Oh that poor deer!” For me it is just more of not wanting to eat the animal. I grew up in Colorado and my Dad and all of my brothers hunted and we ate venison and that was really a staple in our diet, whatever they had killed. The Ted Nugent philosophy again!(laughs) But now that I don’t have to I find that I do it much less. I find I feel much better when I eat a vegetarian diet. It is not so much a conscious decision as it is just what sounds good, a salad as opposed to a steak. It is kind of a gradual process. Five years ago David and I never would have thought we would be vegetarians. In fact we used to give Adrian a hard time about it when he would be at our house. Steve Vai is also a vegetarian so there were a lot of people around us earlier that were not eating animals.There is one line in the book where someone says that they wont “eat anything with a head.”(laughs) DL Although Steve Vai, he doesn’t mind enslaving those bees and getting them to whore out their honey to him does he!(laughs) CC He does!(laughs) In fact, his whole section of the book is about honey. DL Yeah, he told me how it started, I guess he bought a new house and needed a hobby and there were beehives and now it is a business for him. CC Right, and it is great to get that little pot of Honey in the mail every Christmas from him.(laughs) DL Alright, so you have this book done and ready to sell but have you enjoyed making this one enough to try another book project. CC I don’t know. We’ll see. The whole project was fun but the hardest part for me was writing the intros on the musicians. I think that I felt such a responsibility to be sure that everything was correct and everything was positive that I drove myself crazy!(laughs) The easiest part was getting e-mails back and forth from them like, “OK, I have your recipe now but could you make sure that you send your picture. . .” and that kind of thing was much more fun for me than the actual writing so we will see. Maybe if it is not about having somebody else’s personality there, that part was challenging. DL Prior to meeting Margie had you aspired to write anything? CC No, I hadn’t. It was something completely new and in fact at the beginning I told her, “Margie, you can do this book without me.” And she said, “No, you were in the dream and we did it together. . .” and I said, “OK.”(laughs) I can see now why it was necessary for us both to write it. She is a much stronger writer and more colorful in her writing than I am. She doesn’t mind spending hours trying to find the perfect word for something and for me that was torturous. I would be like, “I don’t care, this word is fine!”(laughs) But all of what she added made it that much better. DL It was worth the pain then?(laughs) CC Yes, I would find that I would do a real rough draft blog and then kind of finesse it and then Margie would finesse it a little more. We were trying to keep the intros short because being a cook book, you know, we thought that people were going to be reading it while they are preparing the recipes so we didn’t want anything lengthy and it was very hard to keep it short because some of the people in the book have done so much. It was hard to just write a hundred words but I have had a few people who have said that they read it cover to cover so maybe we could have done it a little longer!(laughs) DL Perhaps a Volume 2? CC (Laughing) Oh, I don’t know. Not so sure about that. DL Was there a point where you said, “Oh my god, what have I gotten myself into?” CC Definitely! (Groans) “Why are we doing this?” Those were mostly partnership things that Margie and I had to work out together. How to split up the work load and who was going to do what and we are very, very different people so I would look at something one way and she would look at it another way and we would try to figure out how she could stay Margie and I could stay Cindy and that was definitely one of the big learning parts of writing the book. When we could do that it was fine, it was just when one or the other would try to get the other person to do it their way, that is when it didn’t work. We both had to learn to just let go and trust. DL Now you have probably experienced a bit of your husbands world of frustrations with collaboration?(laughs) CC Oh absolutely! He loved it! “Now you know!”(laughs) And then he had to deal with me being down in my office at my computer all the time and not just around the house ready to take him a sandwich when he wanted so he was on the other end. We talked a lot about the way that the tables had turned on us. Just today in fact, he is the one keeping Jasper busy while I am doing this interview and that is funny in itself!(laughs) DL Good for him! It is funny too because when I last spoke with him he was going through his own madness of running his own record label for his solo album, getting a shipment of guitars to sign and then send out and all that so it is cool to see that you both have taken hold of your own creations. CC Yes, it has been great and he has been very, very supportive and wonderful through it all. Allowing me the time to work on it and reading it over and over, you know, “Does this sound OK for this person?” I could get a musicians perspective on what I was writing. Something might have been offensive in his eyes that I wouldn’t have thought of and he would bring that to my attention so that helped a lot too. DL He also has that Englishman’s perspective on it? CC Yes And he is certainly not afraid to share his opinion on anything either!(laughs) DL Do you intend to take on a tour of your own for book signing? CC We will see what happens. It would be fun to have book signings with different contributors joining us, whoever lives near the city we are at, that is our hope anyway. You can find “Food That Rocks” at your local bookstore or through www.FOODTHATROCKS.com