Part 3

Glenn Hughes said in a recent article that he would definitely work with you again. Would you ever consider doing a duets album with him along the lines of some of the classic Deep Purple songs on Stormbringer, Burn and Come Taste The Band?
Sadly unlikely. What's past is past. Good luck to him.

What about a similar kind of project with another blues-rock singer such as Paul Rodgers for example, singing each other's songs?
Oh, I love Paul. I don't know, it's time, just finding time. Basically the two things that would come to my attention right now if I had the time to do it would be to do an album like I did with Pagey, but with Jeff Beck, whom I've loved from the beginning, I adore Jeff. The other one would be to do a serious power blues trio, an album with Eddie Van Halen. But not taking significant time away from our respective careers in order to do this, just when there was a bit of time here and there. You're so restricted when you get contractually involved with the big corporate companies that half the time it's not worth the grief that you go through to try to do something like that. And I wouldn't be talking about doing a big glossy commercial record, I'm talking about nuts and bolts, blood, sweat, passion that kind of thing. Not sitting down and going, "we must have a single" but just a meeting of powerful musicians and see where it could go.

Mentioning Eddie Van Halen, was there any truth in the rumours about you being asked to join the band?
No, absolutely not. I've heard since the early 80s that they were going to ask me to join, three times I think and I've never heard anything more. The last time I saw Edward was in a hotel in London in '93. I had a cup of tea, he had a beer.

Can you confirm or deny whether you wrote and sang on the track "Retire Or Die" on the spoof album Skrappe Metal?
I've never heard of it.

Another rumour has it that you may have been involved in writing the Thunder track "Empty City", any truth in this?
No. I'm just a fan of the band.

Have you been involved in writing or appearing on any other recordings under an assumed name?
I wrote half of Bernie Marsden's first solo album under the name Bobby Dazzler and I still haven't seen a penny for it. But I haven't finished with Mr. Marsden yet. And I wrote some jingles for a friend for a soda drink in America and that's the only other thing I've done outside of what I do if memory serves.

You and Adrian Vandenberg once made a surprise appearance on stage with Thunder during the encore after one of their gigs. Have you made any other unscheduled guest appearances like this?
I jammed with Jon Bon Jovi years ago at the Forum in Los Angeles. Me and Bruce Willis actually. That's it I think, other than bar bands all over the world. Usually after cocktail hour.

It's been rumored that you and Jimmy Page collaborated on a song on your upcoming album. Is this true and is there any possibility of a future collaboration?
No there's no collaboration on the record. One of the reasons I didn't call in any favours or names is because the musicians were doing an incredible job as you will hear but also because I didn't want to distract from what it's supposed to be, a solo record. I would be there if Jimmy called me up and said, "I've got a song for you, I think it would be really good", I'd be honoured because I love Jimmy. And I think he'd be there for me. We spoke just before he started the Black Crowes tour and we talked for about an hour, it was great, we had a good chat. We both still enjoy listening to the record we did together. But no, we never discussed any kind of future stuff. I love him dearly, we're good friends and that's actually very cool for me because normally there's usually acrimony at the end of relationships.

 You once mentioned that 5 or 6 tracks, one of which being Saccharine, were left off the Coverdale/Page CD. Is there any chance of these ever seeing the light of day at some point?
I don't know. The only one I really like is a song called Saccharine.

Why did Coverdale/Page not tour sooner and more extensively than they eventually did? You once said that Page's manager was the real problem here, can you explain?
That was the only sadness about the project. It was the people around him. I'm very pleased to say he's now rid of. He's turned his life around and has been a lot more positive than I've ever heard him before. He sounded wonderful when I spoke to him recently. Positive and optimistic.

The late eighties and nineties have only seen three studio albums, all of which have taken a long time to write, record and mix. Why is this, given that early Whitesnake were releasing at the rate of an album a year. Also, is it right that a rock n roll album should take so long in the studio? Aren't the best rock /blues albums quick in and out jobs?
Well, my contract with my former manager was for two albums a year so that was just way too stressful. Most of the albums that have taken long have been related to illness and fatigue or producer problems. It hasn't been all studio work. But as I mentioned earlier, now I have a life. This album probably took seven, eight months altogether, including the mixing, the mixing was a month and a half. I had 22, 23 songs to record which is a lot of stuff, at a studio in Los Angeles. When I got tired I went home to recharge my batteries and see my family and when I felt ready to go back to work I went back to work. I didn't like being away so I took the album back home and finished making it there. All my vocals were recorded at home, which was great for me. You can actually have a studio in a computer program called ProTools. I did half the record with ProTools. So I'm loving all this new technology. You can teach an old dog new tricks! My old pattern would be to start and just relentlessly power through to the end and of course then would come fatigue which compromises your perspective. So the other thing is really, if it took that long it took that long. But I would never do another agreement to do two albums a year ever again, because a lot of those albums... good songs but the performances suffered. I always felt that the early Whitesnake albums were inferior to the live shows because we had more time to work on arrangements, performances and stuff like that. We got by because of professionalism. You still got pretty good bits and pieces but to me the songs were always better live and I'd like to have both but sometimes it takes a bit of time. I mean I spent a year writing the songs, five weeks pre-producing them up at Tahoe, three months with just guide vocals for the guys to give them a clue where they were. Denny's usually the quickest in and out, the drum tracks we usually get down in about ten days, two weeks, but it's all the other stuff.

How has your voice changed over the years and how do you react to criticism of your vocal abilities such as in the review of Restless Heart that appeared in Kerrang?
Well, I think the only review that I've never seen for Restless Heart, because my brother Mikey wouldn't show me, was the Kerrang one, which he said had absolutely nothing to do with the music and everything to do with disliking me. So I can't even comment on it. Overall, the reviews for Restless Heart were very positive. Also I haven't really heard that much criticism about my voice. Sitting here at the end of 30 years, I must be doing something right.

So how would you say your voice has changed over the years, or hasn't it?
I would hope it's better, but I'm actually acknowledging now that I want to explore all these levels from a whisper to a scream with this gift I've been given. Whereas before I'd sit down and start writing a song and go, "oh my God, I've gotta bring the band in", which actually became one of the identities of my work, like Love Ain't No Stranger, Here I Go Again, Now You're Gone, that kind of stuff, starting off quiet and then the band come in. So I was being responsible to the band, whereas now I want to be responsible to the song and see what happens. If it's coming out of me it's evidently something that's supposed to come out so I shouldn't be stopping it. I should let it flow and see where it goes.

 Over the years Whitesnake and David Coverdale have released very little additional material. Isn't it about time we got some definitive Whitesnake stuff on DVD or some such format?
Maybe one day. At the moment we are busily gathering as much visual material as possible to make our website an interesting place to visit.

Considering the lack of official live releases, how do you feel about bootleg tapes?
I don't really have any feelings about them. It saddens me that people pay so much for them. I'm definitely a control freak in the quality sense and as I said earlier I hate the scraping the barrel stuff. When certain bootleg companies started off and they would take maybe ten per cent of whatever they got and help fuel new bands, which I'm cool with, I think that's a good idea. Most of the record companies are not doing that. Artistic development is a thing of the past, sadly.

Do you have your own personal collection of live gig recordings?
I have some that people have sent to me. Ross Halfin always brings me a couple. Coverdale/Page was the most bootlegged tour in history from what I understand, even the rehearsals. Don't ask me how they get them, I don't know.

You've often said that your lyrics are a form of musical diary and people can get to know you fairly well just by listening to your songs. Going by the lyrics in the Restless Heart bonus track "Can't Stop Now" with your mother telling you to "Lie like a rug" and your father saying that "if you don't take it another man will", it almost sounds like your parents encouraged you to sleep with as many women as possible. Is that true or were you just joking?
Not necessarily, a lot of my songs are firmly tongue in cheek. That's the sad thing with a lot of people, especially elements of the media, where they look immediately for the Slide It In track as opposed to the more substance. But it's like a Saturday night song or the end of show songs, because I'm not always miserable, I'm not always nursing a broken heart, I do have a good time and they come out like that. And the other thing in terms of the sexism angle, you know Whitesnake more than most rock bands would get a very significant percentage of women in the audience and those were the ones I'd hear the voices because from where I am on stage is a pretty good spot. And so when I'd hear people singing Slide It In I would predominantly hear girls voices. But of course when the climate changed and AIDS reared its horrible head I always put a little health warning at the beginning of it, "don't be daft, don't be silly, put a snake skin on your willy". So I take it seriously but not all the time and these songs are not meant to be taken seriously, they're just supposed to be for fun, that's all. Simple, innocent fun.

Which of your former bandmates are you still in contact with?
Adrian, I'm hoping he and his family are coming over for Christmas. Pagey, Denny Carmassi and Tony Franklin, I speak to regularly. I missed talking to Slicky (Earl) last night. You know, it's interesting when you're actually working with people it's like an extended family and when you're not, you don't really have anything in common. Isn't that the strangest thing?

You don't have to name names if you prefer not to but are there any of them that you would cross the street to avoid?
No, I don't avoid anything. I don't avoid confrontation, people should know that.

Part 2

Part 4