Whitesnake's Dramatically Cool Return!

Whitesnake's Dramatically Cool Return!

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Harold DeMuir

David Coverdale’s having a pretty good time at the moment. The new Whitesnake LP, the succinctly-titled Whitesnake, is doing encouraging business, leading the veteran singer and his corporate keepers to believe that 1987 could be the year Whitesnake finally duplicates its European success in the picky U.S. market. Last year, however, was not so hot.

“Privately and professionally, 1986 was the darkest time in my life,” says Coverdale, who, as a survivor of Deep Purple’s stormy final three years, must know quite a bit about personal strife. He’s not exaggerating his woes, either: during the course of a few months, Coverdale lost his voice, his band, and almost his career.

The recently-released Whitesnake would have been out in March of 1986 had it not been for the illness (not drugrelated, Coverdale hastens to point out) which sidelined the vocalist for a year and put his singing career in serious jeopardy. “It was like a negative domino principle,” he recalls. “Every time I’d think ‘Well, it can’t get any worse than this,’ it did.

“I was born with a deviated septum,” Coverdale explains, “And 10 years ago my doctor in England said ‘One day it’ll give you trouble.’ And because getting it taken care of involved surgery, I conveniently forgot about it. I was singing real good up until December of '85, and then this thing came from nowhere and hit me with a vengeance. I ended up with a really bad sinus infection, talking like Peter Lorre.

“Singers are the biggest hypochondriacs in the world anyway, and I found myself at the mercy of doctors who said, ‘Oh, you’ve got a cold, take two weeks off.’ Fortunately I came across a specialist in L.A., and he saved me. Within 30 seconds of looking at me he said, ‘You’ve got the worst sinus infection with abcess that I’ve ever seen,’ and he advocated surgery immediately. And after the surgery, I had to wait another six months to see if I would be able to sing or perform again.”

To compound Coverdale’s problems, the rest of Whitesnake—longtime bassist Neil Murray, guitarist John Sykes and newly-recruited drummer Aynsley Dunbar—began to splinter after finishing most of the album’s instrumental tracks. Coverdale: “I sat down with the band and said, ‘Listen, I can’t afford to keep paying you, because there’s no guarantee I’m going to come out of this. My advice to you would be to look for a new band.’ And some of the insensitivity that was displayed at the time was shocking to me, considering my dilemma. When I got my voice back, I looked very darkly at the people who had been unsupportive.”

After finally recovering from surgery, Coverdale went through a period of extensive vocal training to get his professional tools back in fighting trim. “One of the people who was very supportive at that time was Nathan Lam, who is a cantor with a Jewish choir,” he says. “I reeducated my voice, and learned to correct a lot of the mistakes that I’d been making over the years.”

Nonetheless, when it came time to record vocals for the still-unfinished album, Coverdale lacked the confidence to wail. “I was very intimidated by the songs, because when I first attempted to sing them I discovered that I aian t have the physical power, never mind the tuning, to perform them. And I got more and more intimidated over the months that I was convalescing from surgery.”

Eventually, producer Keith Olsen (replacing Mike Stone, who oversaw the original sessions) hoodwinked him into singing in the studio. “He said ‘Let’s have a go at “Still Of The Night,” ’ and I said ‘You must be joking, it’s too big,’ ” Coverdale recalls. “Then he said, ‘Just have a couple of drinks and run through it a couple of times, and we’ll record it later.’ So I ran through it, and he had the tape rolling without me knowing about it, because he thought—-quite rightly—that I would be frightened if I’d seen the red light. Then he played the tape back and said, ‘David, not only is your voice back, it’s better than ever.’ ”

With Sykes (who co-wrote all of the new album’s songs), Murray and Dunbar out of the picture, Coverdale and Olsen recruited several guest players, including guitarist Adrian Vandenberg, keyboardists Don Airey and Bill Cuomo, and bassist Mark Andes and drummer Denny Carmassi (both of Heart), to help clean up the year-old instrumental tracks for release. Despite the desperate circumstances that surrounded its drawn-out recording process, Whitesnake is lean, melodic and effortlessly commercial, and perhaps Coverdale’s strongest Whitesnake effort to date. “I wanted a whole new thing with this album,” he says. ‘‘I wanted this album to have legs to walk straight off the disc and into the arenas. None of the songs are aimed at a particular market, they’re just fuckin’ songs. They have a sort of ’70s structure, but with an ’80s attitude and ’80s technology.

‘‘One of the reasons that this album breathes so much more than the others is because I’ve learned the importance of keeping the sound basic. If you keep layering more and more keyboards, like when you’re working with the orchestra of (Purple/Whitesnake alumnus) Jon Lord, there’s a temptation to just smother everything. And when you do that, you often suffocate the foundation of rock, which is drums, guitar and bass. On this record, the drums are the most exciting I’ve heard for 10 years.”

By the time you read this, Coverdale will likely have organized a road-worthy new Whitesnake lineup. As I write this, however, David is the band's sole member, and still weighing his options. He originally wanted to tour with the lineup featured in the “Still Of The Night” video (guitarists Adrian Vandenberg and Vivian Campbell, bassist Rudy Sarzo and drummer Tommy Aldridge), but it now appears that only Vandenberg will be available.

Coverdale says he’s dying to get back on the boards, but adds that he’s waiting to see if the public’s reaction to the new LP is enthusiastic enough to make roadwork financially feasible. “The indications are very positive at the moment, but I’ve got to be sure, because I simply don’t have the funds to go out and lose money on the road. Because of my illness, this album’s cost an absolute fortune, so we’re gonna have to sell several shitloads to break even. I’m very interested in getting out and performing again, but I never go to a party without being invited.

“I’m also very insecure about accepting responsibility for other people until I see that there’s an audience ready and willing to see the band. As I say, it’s been an extraordinarily expensive two years for me, with a lot going out and nothing coming in, and rock bands have to go work to pay the rent. I’ve got substantial shoulders, but I’m not gonna compromise somebody and have them worry about paying for their house while they’re away. Because once I get on the road, I’m gonna be out there for two years.

“This is an extraordinarily pivotal time for Whitesnake. Whitesnake is an extension of me, it’s a big part of my life, and it’s the name I choose to work under. But if this record doesn’t do as well as everyone seems to think it will, then I might have to seriously think about a change— either joining another band, or going out as David Coverdale, or something. I believe a hundred percent in Whitesnake, and now it’s up to the people to decide.”

A lot of new faces have burst upon the metal scene since Whitesnake’s previous LP, 1984’s Slide It In, but Coverdale doesn't seem particularly threatened by the competition. “A lot of hard rock bands,” he opines, “are like a Mexican hotel. They look good from the outside, but the foundations are seriously shaky. There's a big lack of identity in a lot of hard rock bands, and I can’t see many that have got the dynamics and the balls and the humanity of what I present.

“I’ve tried like hell over the years to do my best to share physical and emotional experiences that I’ve had. And according to the people I meet and the letters I get, my feelings and experiences are stuff that other people can share. I think Whitesnake is a very human concept, and it has a very human identity. I’ve never tried to stuff flash cars or flash estates down people’s throats, and I’ve never been involved in the fashion aspect of the music business.”

S-E-X, Coverdale readily admits, plays a big role in Whitesnake. But he refutes critics’ dismissals of him as a gardenvariety chauvinist. “It’s up to the attitude of who’s listening,” he says. “There’s an area in the press that call it sexist, but I say it’s sexy. I write a lot of sex songs, and if I write a negative song about a woman, it’s because it was a negative experience. A lot of them are tongue-incheek, but as an artist those songs are as legitimate to me as my more soulsearching songs. They’re all a part of me.”

In fact, Coverdale has an unusually high quotient of female fans. “I find that when I meet with women or see the reaction they have at concerts, they know the respect I have for them, he states. “Any person that can make me feel like a superman one moment, and the next moment reduce me to the level of dogshit on the sidewalk—if that isn’t inspiring, then I don’t know what is.

“And I’ll tell you, if I could find female musicians that I could look at as legitimate musicians, I’d work with them in a minute. I’ve always found women to be more faithful, more trusting and more supportive, and those are the three things that are most important in any relationship.”

In the nine years since Whitesnake’s formation, several of rock’s leading instrumentalists have passed through the ranks, and Coverdale intends to maintain the revolving-door personnel policy. “I like the flexibility of it,” he says. “Why should I have to limit myself to a fixed lineup when I have the opportunity to work with some of the world’s best musicians? And if I want do a soundtrack or work on a project with another musician, I don’t have to worry about people going ‘Oh no, you shouldn’t do that.’ ”

Clearly, Coverdale is perfectly comfortable being in charge. “I know exactly what Whitesnake should do and where it should go, and I’ve known from the moment I conceived it,” he enthuses. “I had almost two years of inactivity after leaving Deep Purple, which was 11 years ago March, and I sat down and worked out the whole strategy. It was all based on my experiences, both good and bad, with Deep Purple, and that strategy still applies.

“Whitesnake,” he continues, “is a vehicle for quality rock songs, and the personnel are incidental. It’s up to them, really. I try to give everybody I work with the inspiration to spread their wings and fly. And if they decide to shit in the nest, they shouldn’t expect me to clean it up.”

So is David Coverdale the stern, demanding boss he’s reputed to be? “Considering that I’m supposed to be such a dictator and such an asshole,” he laughs, “there’s always a pretty big queue of the best musicians in the world wanting to work with me. I encourage people to work, and I work with people I think can get the best out of Whitesnake music, and the people I’ve worked with have usually had their finest musical hour when they were working with me. But I won’t compromise the concept of Whitesnake, not at all.

“I’m generous to a fault with musicians, and I’ve always taken care of them. But there’s a dreadful situation that comes up, where people can get an inflated idea of their own importance, and that’s very irritating to me. I know who’s responsible for the music, and if these people are gonna think / need them, it’s a big fuckin’ mistake. I like the teamwork, and that’s why it’s a band, but I’ve been let down by too many people. I mean, I love children, but working with them is a pain in the ass.

“I’ve never been one for washing dirty laundry in public, but I can say that there’s been problems with a lot of the people I’ve worked with—drug problems, ego problems. I’m just not interested in any of that. With Purple, I worked with the biggest and baddest egos in the business, so anything that anybody throws at me now is like a fly buzzing around my head on a summer day—it’s just irritating, and I don’t put up with it. And if drugs rear their ugly head, it’s a one-way ticket home.

“The most important thing is the identity and the concept of Whitesnake. Believe me, I’ll sit down and try to work things out with people. I’ll sit down and discuss things twice if there’s a problem, but never three times. I’m a professional, and if people come in and behave like amateurs, then they’re out. My only responsibility is to the people who keep Whitesnake flying—the fans.”

These days, Coverdale explains, he values attitude more than chops in his coworkers. “I just want to work with positive people now. Anybody can play a bunch of chords on an electric guitar, but there’s a certain rock attitude, and if it’s positive, it’s the most elevating thing in the world. And that’s what I look for now.”

Now that his vocal problems are behind him and America seems more receptive than ever before, Coverdale is ready for Whitesnake to become a household name stateside. “When I was ill, I was invited to join several bands, and it was tempting,” he says. “But I believe more and more in destiny and karma, and that there’s a reason for these things. Whenever things have been on a roll for me, God has always smacked me on the head as if to say ‘Steady on, you’re not ready yet.’ I feel like I’m ready now.

“It seems that a lot of people are interested now, and it seems that the album is opening a lot of people’s eyes to the fact that Whitesnake’s a force to be reckoned with. I know there’s no guarantees, but I’m wide open and very excited about getting out and performing again. I’m curious to see if people have missed me as much as I’ve missed them.”