Part 2

On the two solo albums you did during 1977-78 (Whitesnake and Northwinds), you seemed to be going in an almost r'nb/soul direction and at times, in my opinion, sounded a bit like Joe Cocker. What do you think of these albums now? They are quite different from anything else you have released and some people feel they are among of your best work.
Oh I can feel a line of continuity through there. You know, all my songs are relatives, brothers, sisters, cousins. I can hear a very confused, "which direction should I take?" on the first solo record, after the swaddling clothes of Deep Purple. You've got to remember, I'd only been in the business three years, four years, so it was suddenly like "gulp". The management certainly wasn't prepared to back my horse, thought I was the new boy or whatever. I was given an extraordinarily modest budget which would now probably cost me the same in a day to work in the studio . So there were all these different ideas. Northwinds I felt was more a rock, soul, blues direction. I look upon Northwinds as the blueprint for the early Whitesnake. I haven't heard it for a while but I am very disappointed with my former manager who apparently has just re-released them and put studio demos on there which I haven't heard for years. They were never meant to be released. In fact, if memory serves, one of the songs I think I lifted and put into another song which is something I do. For example, Don't You Cry, on the new album was two different songs entirely, which I couldn't take further. So, I put them together and it worked.

Now that you are David Coverdale again and not Whitesnake, would you consider playing songs off the wonderful "Northwinds" album ? "Time and Again" and "Northwinds" are two of the greatest songs ever written.
I've always been David Coverdale!! But thank you. Well, you've got to remember that under David Coverdale I can basically play anything I want. With Whitesnake it would have been inappropriate for me to have played Deep Purple songs, although I did at the beginning because I didn't have enough Whitesnake songs. I think it was Lady Luck, Might Just Take Your Life and Mistreated. As soon as I had enough songs it was all Whitesnake. As David Coverdale I can play, Deep Purple, Whitesnake. There's no way I can tour Europe without playing Ain't No Love In The Heart Of The City without risk of lynching. But there are certain songs I can still feel in order to present them honestly. On the last tour I thought it would be fun to do twenty years of Whitesnake and a lot of the old songs got old really quickly. For me to do it I had to dig really deep to present them. It was a screaming indication to me that it was time to let the past go. The songs are there if you want them, they're all available, but, please encourage me to move on. You're going to find something on the new record that's going to remind you of the past. The new album is my salute to my past, an acknowledgment of now and a little taste of where I'm going.

You recorded your first full-length album with Whitesnake, "Trouble", at a studio at 9 Denmark Street in London, another popular pilgrimage spot for fans. Could you tell us about any events or memories you have from that recording?
There was a hairdressers called Eric's and it said, "Eric's. Mind Your Head", and you had to bend down really low to get to the studio which was in the basement and I thought, what a thing for a hairdresser to have, "Mind Your Head". Central Recorders was a sweatbox, a total sweatbox. The actual studio was tiny with the control room upstairs. You had to climb up some really rickety stairs. But it was a good rock'n'roll studio. I remember when Jon Lord came in to join Whitesnake. We replaced the session guy we'd already recorded with him. He brought in that remarkable set-up of his. You know a lot of people don't credit this but a huge part of the Deep Purple sound was Jon Lord's left hand. The rumble of that low end. He started to play and the whole room started to shake and I said, "That's my boy!!!" It was great. It was really hot. No air conditioning, but, it made you work. There was no hanging around because if memory serves, there wasn't even a lounge. You had to go across the street to the pub for that.

What is the story behind the bracelet you wore on your right hand for about twenty years? Where is it now and why aren't you wearing it any more?
The turquoise? Well, the turquoise I bought on my first American tour with Deep Purple. It's Navajo and very old. I still have it but for some reason it didn't feel right to wear it anymore. I don't know why, but I follow my intuition. I bought it in a pawn shop somewhere in Texas, which was always a cool place to look for the old stuff. And that piece was extraordinary, I think it's between three and four hundred years old. I didn't realize until later that it's supposed to be a gift. The stone is the heart and all the other symbols round it mean something. It was very, very special to me and still is. It still has the sweat of all those shows. I've never had it to a silversmith to clean or anything, so there's an awful lot of history. Yes, it's very precious to me.

 Similarly, is there a story behind the medallion you wear around your neck?
Yes, when I got the job with Deep Purple my Mam got me a Saint Christopher (stands and takes Saint Christopher medal from pocket) who is the patron saint of traveling. To keep me safe, She had it blessed in a church in Dublin. It's another extraordinarily precious thing to me. When I sing power stuff my throat expands and I've had to have so many chains to hold it on. Sometimes I'd see it fly off my throat and don't tell me how but I caught it twice, with the spotlight in my face, I caught it in my hand. It became such a talisman to me, that's one of the reasons I stopped wearing it. If I had lost it I don't know how it would have affected me, maybe never getting on an aeroplane again, so I just look after it now, it's with me all the time and it's a kind of direct line to God, courtesy of me Mam. Who cares for you more than your Mam? Other than my wife.

Which Whitesnake album, aside from the new solo album, do you listen to most regularly?
The new one. I tell you, all out of all of them, the new one. I've done about 1000 interviews in the last three weeks and every one has been positive, I've never known it like this. I don't know what it's going to be like in the British media, but everywhere I've been they've been incredibly respectful and totally supportive of this change. A lot of people are thrilled that I'm still wailing, they thought with all the quotes that I want to sing, that I was going to come out with some kind of Barry Manilow record, which isn't the case. It's being described as the epitome of David Coverdale, that I've actually got all the elements in. It's very diverse but it seems to work.

Considering that Whitesnake were such a force on stage ...Why wasn't there another LIVE album after Live In The Heart Of The City, not even when the band was selling mega millions during the period of 1987 to 1990, or as a final goodbye on the Last Hurrah tour?
I've always thought live albums were cop-outs. Most live albums aren't live, parts of them are, but I've always felt it was because bands hadn't attended to writing songs enough. I do have live recordings from different periods, and one day, maybe I'll have time to listen to them. Now with me starting my own record company, who knows what's going to pop out?

During the years in Whitesnake you would, understandably, praise your current band members and latest album to the skies, only to change your views, quite radically in some cases, once you'd moved on to a new line-up and album. You sometimes came across as being inconsistent and consequently lost credibility among your hardcore fans. How would you comment on this?
Basically what you've got to look upon in relationships with musicians is the same as you would look upon relationships with friends. When you first meet everyone's on their best behaviour and then once they get comfortable, certain things or aspects of them that you didn't really know start to manifest, and sometimes it's uncomfortable. I've never been one to compromise what I want to do to accommodate someone else's ego, drug problem or whatever. I stand by everything I've done. I have a feeling, quite honestly, if my original members had stayed consistent and creative they very likely might have been with me for the entire journey. I don't get up in the morning and say, "off with their heads, I don't like 'em anymore!", it's not like that. There are two things you can do at the end of a relationship, whether it's private or professional. You can turn round and say "what did I do to contribute to getting the sack?", which people very rarely do, because it's much easier to turn round and say, "that bastard Coverdale!" Whitesnake was never meant to be a fixed identity, regardless of whatever anyone else tells you. Although, I never really thought it was going to be such a revolving door.

What really happened between you and Micky Moody?
Micky wanted to come back into the band. He said "I know I've messed up and it's not going to happen again", and basically it happened all over again. I wanted to make Moody a star, it's that simple. I thought he had the potential to be one of the greatest slide players in history. I worked with him on his solo for Lovehunter and it stayed the same. Forever. Yes, it's very good, but move on, spread out, be more inventive, creative. I need people to help me, and he just wasn't growing musically.

What have been the highest and the lowest points in your career so far?
Well I think the 90's. I worked non-stop for four years and I had no time to reflect, which is really important for me. I've got to find out if I am happy whatever it is I'm doing. My private life was public and I'm the most reluctant celebrity you can imagine. Yes, it was a really hard time. The most successful, professional time I've had so you can say high and low at the same time.

Would you like to go back and change any of it if you could?
No, I wouldn't change anything, even the lowest time. It was totally necessary to test me. I think what we're given from the word go are challenges and tests, to challenge you to see if you've got the moral fibre, the character, the strength to go on. It's a constant battle and you've really got to (laughing) gird your loins. Got to gird your loins. Nobody gave me a contract when I was born saying it's going to be a walk in the park because it isn't, never has been. I've had great times, particularly in the last couple of years with a lot of self-realizations. Most of my life I've had a career with my life bubbling around it but now I've got a life, and my career bubbles around it. So I can now actually let go and it feels great. I don't care how long it's taken me to get there, it's good that I've got there.

Although still a success, the Slip of the Tongue album didn't sell nearly as well as 1987. At the time did this hurt you personally or did you view it as simply a change in the musical climate?
No, I expected it. I don't think Geffen did the job, you know credit where credit's due, Geffen certainly didn't do the job. The shows we put on were really good, very glamorous It was kind of the apex of how far you can go in terms of the over-decorated Christmas tree and all that. The sadness for me is that there's some really good songs on there but they're so over-embellished that you can't really get any sentiment out of them and that completely defeats everything I do. With the new record you can hear every cigarette I've had. A lot of the vocal is dry, I've never had so little cosmetic on my voice. This is the most honest album I've ever made, I'm extraordinarily proud of it. The way I look at success is was it a good record and my basic parameter for what is a good record is songs. That's all I'm bothered about, trying to get the best out of my songs and songs that will connect with you.

Can you ever see yourself in a band situation again in the future?
If it was Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page, yes probably. Who knows? I can see me working with musicians as I'm not going to go out there with knee cymbals and a bass drum on my back. I hope! But, I've had enough of hiding behind the identity of a band. I've wanted to work under my own name since the end of Whitesnake in 1990 and certainly at the end of Coverdale/Page. The idea of going back to Whitesnake was at EMI's insistence. My contract reads "David Coverdale known as the artist Whitesnake". They had a big success with the Greatest Hits and they wanted another Whitesnake record, otherwise Restless Heart would have been more like Into The Light. The songs or the majority of the songs are not Whitesnake. I think it would have been appropriate, actually, that the last album should have been the Greatest Hits. I love the players I've got on Into The Light and we have an agreement, a handshake, that if things go well and they're available it'll be very likely that I'll go out with them because they're great. But the interesting thing is, I've stepped out of the insecurities of "I need a group" with a couple of guitarists to hide behind. Those days are gone.

You've often talked about singing with someone like Tina Turner. Are there any unfulfilled ambitions in this area?
Well I'm singing with a woman on here on the very last song, an 18 year old girl called Linda Rowberry. I spoke to Tina's gentleman the other day, actually, and I told him I have potential song for us. But Tina's retiring at the end of this tour. I've loved her since the first time I heard her and I think this is something she could really get her teeth into, but it obviously would be her decision because it wouldn't be a high profile thing. I wrote Is This Love for her. I wrote Lady for her from my very first solo record. Geffen made me keep the Is This Love song and of course I had a big wedding song hit with it. The song with Tina would be a duet but it's ten minutes long, it's a serious epic, an emotional epic which builds from a whisper to a scream. I don't know many people with her rock chops and the soul. My wife and I went to see her at the MGM Hotel in Vegas a couple of months ago, and she came out and was just extraordinary. There's a lot of pop to dig through but the moment she opens her mouth she's just great. I've always loved her. Anyway, her man said "send me the song" so, we'll see, who knows.

Part 4