Australia's Heavy magazine recently conducted an interview with WHITESNAKE frontman David Coverdale . You can listen to the entire chat below. A few excerpts follow (transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET ).
On touring behind WHITESNAKE 's latest studio album, 2019's "Flesh & Blood" :
David : "It's doing so well. It's getting awards now; it's like awards time in rock magazines. And we're getting awards for 'Best Album Of The Year,' which is amazing. The video 'Shut Up & Kiss Me' has got over two million views, which, for a classic rock act, it's just amazing, to be honest. And what it's done, it has given the whole band and me a collective [big kick in] the ass]. It's revitalized us. We're playing a song that the audience knows, one of the WHITESNAKE classics, and follow it with 'Trouble Is Your Middle Name' or 'Hey You (You Make Me Rock)' , and the fucking crowd is singing it as loud as the classics. So it fits like a beautifully tailored glove into the WHITESNAKE stage show. So much so, we're going now into 2020. It's very rare you can tour for more than one tour cycle, really, on an album. But this is doing so incredibly well and consistent… We're going out — we start with you guys in Australia, then we go to New Zealand and Singapore and Jakarta, which I haven't been since a tragic event with DEEP PURPLE in '76 [or] '75. And then into Japan. We had to reschedule a tour there. It's amazing. We've got a fabulous, almost sold-out U.K. arena tour we're playing in June [this] year. Everything feeds the reservoir that is WHITESNAKE . And this album, I'm thrilled. You know, I had to be talked into doing it. I wrote 18 new songs either on my own with Reb Beach or Joel Hoekstra , my guitar players, recovering from dual knee surgery. [ Laughs ] I had knee replacement surgery. That's what you need to write potent, juicy rock and roll. [ Laughs ]"
On how he would have reacted in 1978 if someone told him WHITESNAKE would still be active in 2020:
David : "I would have laughed. Literally, I was writing the songs 'Here I Go Again' and 'Crying In The Rain' during the breakdown of my first marriage a long, long time ago. And I was coming up to my 30th birthday, and I thought, 'That's it.' 'Cause, really, nobody — I mean THE [ ROLLING ] STONES , THE WHO , are you kidding me? I'm three score and eight [68], but these guys are in their 70s. I can't see doing 'Still Of The Night' in my 70s. So I'm not sure when that's gonna happen. My wife's banned me from using the word 'retirement.' But every fucking day, I'm in gratitude and appreciation that my life is as it is, both in a private circumstance and in a professional circumstance. It's magical. It's magical. And there's a lot of bands — you probably know them; I don't know how long you've been doing this — but there's a lot of bands that stay together for the money, for the economics of it. This band get on terrifically well as friends, as we call brothers, 'Snake Brothers', brothers of the snake, as good as they are live. And believe me, this is one hell of a muscular and powerful fucking band onstage. Extraordinary."
Released last May via Frontiers Music Srl , "Flesh & Blood" followed the 2011 critically acclaimed studio album "Forevermore" and 2015's "The Purple Album" , a reimagining of DEEP PURPLE classics from Coverdale 's time in that band.
Joining Coverdale on "Flesh & Blood" is the powerhouse band comprised of Beach and Hoekstra on guitar, Michael Devin on bass, Tommy Aldridge on drums, and Michele Luppi on keyboards.
