What he will miss most of all, he says, is the full-throated audience he refers to as the “Whitesnake choir”. Coverdale insists he will continue to make music (“It’s like oxygen to me!”), but he’s reached an age where he’s ready to call time on touring. It’s now in storage, just another relic of half a century of heavy rocking. “That was before Hard Rock became Hard Luck!” he booms. They still own the white Jaguar that appeared in the “Here I Go Again” video, having turned down an offer to sell it to the Hard Rock Cafe.
#Deep purple smoke on the water tonality trial#
That was a nice parting gift.’”Įnjoy unlimited access to 70 million ad-free songs and podcasts with Amazon Music Sign up now for a 30-day free trial Sign upĬoverdale met his third wife, Cindy, in 1990 when they were both getting their hair cut at a salon in Reno called Lookin’ Good. It wasn’t like: ‘Oh my God, we’ve got another hit.’ It was: ‘Thank you, Tawn. I was very sad, and I sent my condolences to her family. “I’ve been involved with my wife, and raised a son. “People tend to forget but it’s been 30 years since we spoke,” he says. Coverdale and Kitaen were married between 19, but had lost contact since. She is still so fervently associated with “Here I Go Again” that news of her death sent the song back to number one on the US Hard Rock charts. Kitaen, an actor who starred opposite Tom Hanks in 1984’s Bachelor Party, died in May this year at the age of 59. It just went absolutely nuts, and it continues to be.”
#Deep purple smoke on the water tonality tv#
“Music television 24/7? It spread over the world to the point that whichever hotel suite I walked into and turned the TV on, nine times out of 10 it was on MTV and seven times out of 10 Tawny was doing cartwheels across two Jags. “There was delicious eye candy in there, but we put Tawny in stylish environments and never utilised her as other rock bands were doing with ripped stockings and what have you,” points out Coverdale. The song’s runaway success was helped immeasurably by a music video starring Coverdale’s then-girlfriend, Tawny Kitaen, wearing a white negligee and dancing across the bonnets of a pair of Jaguar XJs. While the original 1982 version had barely troubled the charts (number 34 in the UK, non-charting in the US), the 1987 version gave Whitesnake a number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and became a singalong anthem which remains their best known song to this day. “In those days, nobody thought Jagger would still be touring at 78! Are you kidding? These guys keep raising the bar, the bastards!” “As I was writing ‘Here I Go Again’ and ‘Crying in the Rain’ about the breakdown of my first marriage, inconsolable, rat-arsed on white port and lemonade – actually, it was white port and 7 Up, let me give credit where it’s due – I thought: ‘The party’s over,’” he recalls.
He couldn’t have known he was only then coming up with what would become their signature hit. Worst of all, he was fast approaching 30, surely over the hill for a rock’n’roll star.
Whitesnake’s prospects didn’t look much rosier, with tensions rising to the point that within a year Coverdale would sack all his bandmates. Back in 1981 he was living in a rented villa on the Algarve and sleeping in a separate room from his first wife Julia as their relationship crumbled. “That’s not too shabby for a man of my dotage.”Ĭoverdale didn’t expect to still be squeezing himself into leather trousers at 70 because he thought it was all over four decades ago.
“I have bluebirds flying out of every orifice,” he trills happily in a way that suggests the sensation is less painful than it sounds. “Reno-by-Sea!” he announces theatrically, then, “He wishes!” He’s in good spirits, despite having had his retirement plans pushed back. “It’s unbelievable to me that I’m still working and active at 70,” he tells me, his rich, sonorous tones singing down the line from Hook City, his home studio on the outskirts of Reno, about 20 minutes from Lake Tahoe. The flamboyant Whitesnake frontman, blessed with the voice of a golden god and the innuendo-laden sense of humour of a naughty schoolboy, has instead been forced by the pandemic to reschedule his band’s last stand until next spring. David Coverdale wanted to retire from touring last year, when he was 69.
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