David Coverdale Reflects on Making ‘Whitesnake’
Rolling out today is a 30th anniversary of Whitesnake, the commercial behemoth that went eight-times platinum and launched hits such as “Is This Love,” “Here I Go Again” and “Still Of The Night.”
The set is coming out in several different configurations featuring unreleased studio, live and video material, as well as demos frontman David Coverdale and guitarist John Sykes created before recording.
Coverdale tells us the album’s massive success was a surprise but that he went in both wanting and needing to make something that made a grand statement:
“It was just going in to try to make a better album than the last one, and having a guitarist like John was really good…He just harnessed that incredible total rock god deity aspect — beautiful boy, blonde. You know; You’ve seen the pictures. Guy was gorgeous and he had the f***ing chops to back it up. He wasn’t just a pretty face…I was almost $3 million in debt from a lost two years off the road, and within a couple of months I was rather rich, wealthy. So it was like God patted me on the back and said, ‘There you go. There’s some validation for all the hard work you’ve done.'”
The Whitesnake reissue is the first under a new deal with Warner Music that will yield more archival releases as well as a new Whitesnake album, probably in 2018.
Whitesnake is also planning to release a new home video as well as a coffee table book chronicling The Purple Album cycle from 2015, both for Record Store Black Friday on November 24.
Gary Graff is an award-winning music journalist who not only covers music but has written books on Bob Seger, Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen.
