WHITESNAKE Frontman On Guitarist ALDRICH: 'We Have Now An Almost Telepathic Sense Musically'

Steven Rosen of Ultimate-Guitar.com recently conducted an interview with WHITESNAKE/ex-DEEP PURPLE frontman David Coverdale. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Ultimate-Guitar.com: Let's connect some of the dots from your past before we get onto the new album. If DEEP PURPLE could have held it together, would you have remained with them? Could you see yourself as being in PURPLE all these years later if that's how the dice had tumbled?

David Coverdale: Oh, god, I don't know; I don't play that hypothetical game. I don't do comparisons. It's there but for the grace of god. Thank god I went on my own journey. But I'm utterly grateful beyond words for the courage that those guys used giving me an opportunity 'cause the adventure continues. I wanted out very quickly; I wanted out soon as I saw the downward spiral and part of me felt responsible because I brought in the catalyst of that beginning.

Ultimate-Guitar.com: So you ultimately wanted out of DEEP PURPLE?

David Coverdale: I wanted to finish after what I felt was a very difficult American tour. I felt that if you took PURPLE in the state that it was into the U.K., it would have just broken an awful lot of hearts. And I was talked into it by my friend, Rob Cooksey, who was at that time acting manager of PURPLE. That was an immense lesson for me that you don't in big business, you don't do friends favors of that magnitude. But I was absolutely worn out emotionally and physically by the entire experience. Then for me to turn around and see Jon Lord and Ian Paice, two founder members, playing with their fuckin' heads down instead of their usual proud and arrogant attitude, body language, was just too much for me. I didn't want to be part of the complete ripping of the Purple fabric.

Ultimate-Guitar.com: WHITESNAKE was retired for a while and then you brought it back in 2003. What happened?

David Coverdale: One of the reasons I retired was I didn't recognize the music industry anymore; it had changed entirely. I had no dialog for many years with Universal/Geffen and only kind of reactivated a relationship with them when I revamped WHITESNAKE back in '03. I now get on terrific with the execs there but it's still a relatively faceless corporate entity. When I put WHITESNAKE together again in '03, I told all the musicians, "We'll work together and tour four months out of the year," very naively, of course. "We'll just go out and tour," and everyone was into that and I had no intentions of making a new record. I thought I'd be able to explore and really go deep into my back catalog with songs I've never had an opportunity to visit before. But it's interesting because I would only tour every three years so my older songs maintained a freshness for me. But touring annually? They get old pretty fuckin' quick. And I thought, "Well, if they're feeling like that to me, they've got to be feeling like that to my hardcore audience." So all of a sudden all of these synchronistic elements came together and I was approached by an independent company in Germany called SPV. These guys were fans of music, which I hadn't met for a long time in the music business. All of these elements came together to turn around and go, "OK, well let's give it a go" and came up with "Good To Be Bad", which at the time I was quoted saying, "If this is my last studio record then I'm really fucking happy with it." And of course I can say exactly the same now about this other one ["Forevermore"].

Ultimate-Guitar.com: You co-produced "Forevermore" with Doug Aldrich and Michael McIntyre.

David Coverdale: I've worked with Michael McIntyre, my co-producer, for many years — 25 I think — but I sat down with Doug and said, "These are the elements that I like to work within." And we've never had a problem. Doug, through working with a British singer [Kal Swan] years ago in a band called LION, he was introduced to early WHITESNAKE. He's the first American musician I've worked with who knew the background of WHITESNAKE before "Slide It In".

Ultimate-Guitar.com: You worked with Doug Aldrich for the first time on the previous album, "Good To Be Bad". What was that like working with Doug initially?

David Coverdale: Doug and I pretty much did the "Good To Be Bad" album. He's a very proficient Pro Tools engineer as is Michael and we would layer songs and we would basically just send those songs out for the guys to learn and put their parts on. Whereas the new album was more of a band process, which I think you can hear. But none of it was done in the traditional sense of all musicians; I haven't done an album like that since early WHITESNAKE. Where everybody is in the studio recording at one time. Everybody over-fucking-dubs their work, you know? And that's how it was. This time we have the unmitigated pleasure of a beautiful new voice with [bassist] Michael Devin and Reb [Beach] I brought in to sing because live I'd go, "Fuck, he's got a great voice." He's a very, very modest guy and I brought him in and the blend between him and Devin has given us the best WHITESNAKE vocal sound I've ever had.

Ultimate-Guitar.com: You obviously have a great chemistry with Doug Aldrich.

David Coverdale: A lot of our songs are marriages; he'll come in with half an idea and I'll go, "You know what? What about this?" My extraordinary partner, Doug Aldrich, we have now an almost telepathic sense musically. We're very good friends in a social capacity; our wives get on great. We would write at times fucking iChatting on the phone — go figure. And it made sense. And passed demos back to each other courtesy of the Internet when we didn't have the physical capability of actually being in the same room. But we'd sit chatting or watch a fucking western and then pick up guitars. Our conversation would turn to a musical exchange so we'd be having a musical conversation. "Here, what about this?" It's so effortless with Doug and I and a lot of other experiences that I've had have been like going to the dentist for a fucking root canal or several root canals. This isn't; this is an absolute pleasure, an unmitigated pleasure to sit down and create music with Doug.

Ultimate-Guitar.com: And we end the album with "Forevermore", the 7:26 epic track with acoustic guitars and synth flutes and everything. How did this track evolve?

David Coverdale: A tip of the hat to Doug. We'd achieved all the songs I wanted to do and then it was up to me to finesse them as the melody guy, the lyricist, et cetera. I've been in a situation before where the creative juices have been flowing so significantly that I've ended up with 20 or more songs to actually write. So from that experience, which was very, very overwhelming, I went, "Fuck it, I've got to have a finishing post." And I'd achieved that with the songs on "Forevermore" and Doug said, "Oh, I've got one more song" and I said, "Don't be fuckin' greedy, Doug. Look what we have." We were doing demos downstairs in my home studio and I went upstairs and I was just getting a cup of tea and I thought, "That's not fuckin' fair." And I said, "Alright, we'll do it." He started to play those opening chords and I think originally it was in a minor key and I said, "Fuck it, try it in major" because it screams minor but it's in a major.

Ultimate-Guitar.com: Exactly.

David Coverdale: And it just unfolded immediately and I defer to my brother, Douglas. He came in with that idea and then I picked it up and ran with the fucker because it's a beauty. Before that the album was going to be called "Guilty Pleasures" from one of the lyrics in "Love Will Set You Free" and then I thought, "Oh, I'll keep that for a best of." Who the fuck's gonna turn around and say, "WHITESNAKE are my favorite band?" Ooh, ooh, that's uncool!

Read the entire interview from Ultimate-Guitar.com.