David Coverdale is in the mood to redecorate. After five decades of screaming, strutting, and seducing stadiums, he’s taken a step back—not to mellow out, but to tidy up. “I wanted Whitesnake to have a sonic consistency,” he said, in a tone that was equal parts art historian and cheeky pub philosopher. “Like restoring a painting. Strip the grime off, give it the shine it deserves.”
The result is Red, White & Blues, a trilogy of albums that takes the old Whitesnake warhorses, scrapes off the 80s reverb, and puts them back on the street in sharper suits. The first installment, The Rock Album, is Coverdale’s chance to fix what always bugged him: too much echo on the snare, too little bite in the guitars, too many production fingerprints from whatever decade they were tracked in. “Other than my voice,” he said, “it all lacked a common identity.”
So he hired Christopher Collier, a younger mixer who could get things done “like a sushi chef,” and let him go to town. Suddenly, Slide It In wasn’t just a 35-year-old cassette memory from someone’s dad’s car—it was reborn in transparent red vinyl, cut at 45 RPM, heavy enough to hurt someone if you threw it. Coverdale sounded delighted: “It gives us more balls for the audio and clarity for the audiophile. 180 grams of nothing but the best.”
Of course, once you start repainting, you find things you didn’t know you’d lost. “We discovered lots of stuff that I didn’t remember,” he admitted. Extra guitars hidden in the tapes, alternate endings, little scraps of Whitesnake DNA that never made it to the surface. “On ‘Is This Love,’ we found an ending I’d forgotten about. You hear every note of the guitar solos now. It’s beautiful.”
Even solo leftovers got drafted into the Snake pit. “She Give Me,” originally a Coverdale one-off from the early 2000s, has been formally adopted. “It fits in there pretty good,” he shrugged. “The musicians are happy—it’s Whitesnake now.” The song tips its hat to Marc Bolan, early Fleetwood Mac, The Who, even Pink Floyd. Coverdale insists that these are tributes, not thefts: “Not as plagiarism. As respect.”
And then there’s the brand-new track, “Always the Same,” recorded during 2017 sessions while Coverdale was doped up on painkillers from dual knee surgeries. “I was doing physical therapy three times a week, and on the off days I’d write with Reb Beach and Joel Hoekstra,” he said. The result: a Whitesnake anthem with the kind of hooks that, had it landed in the Reagan years, would’ve been a Billboard top-five. “But now,” Coverdale smirked, “I offer you ear candy. You can’t watch TV while you’re vacuuming, but you can put Whitesnake on.”
The man is nothing if not candid. He recounted the tour-halting hernia that popped during “Slide It In” in Melbourne (“my nether regions,” he groaned) and segued into a rant about pandemic politics with all the zeal of a rock-god-turned-armchair-epidemiologist. “You can’t do a rock show to a car park full of cars,” he scoffed. “People go to a Whitesnake show to let off steam, not to sit isolated in their vehicles.”
Even sacred cows like “Here I Go Again” weren’t immune to the new paint job. “There has to be risk,” he insisted. “The elements are there, just cleaned up and tucked in.” What you get now are drums with Bonham thud instead of gated reverb mush, Hammond organs where tinny synths used to squeak, and Adrian Vandenberg’s guitar work doubled and toughened by Joel Hoekstra. The songs still strut, but with fresher leather.
And yes, Coverdale can’t resist slipping in one of those tales you’d only get from the guy himself: the infamous freeze-frame moment from the “Still of the Night” video. “Back in the VHS days, people tried to freeze it, but the picture was never good,” he chuckled. “Now with hi-def TV—it’s a high-def nipple.”
For a man approaching his fifth decade as a recording artist, he’s shockingly chipper. “My relationship with my wife is solid, my health is good, my team is inspiring,” he rattled off. “All I want now is a vaccine so we can get out and do my farewell tour.”
Until then, he’s content to keep moving furniture around in the Whitesnake mansion. “This is like redecorating a house I love,” he said. “Fresh coat of paint, move the furniture, make it new. Something for my kids and grandkids to have, something solid. Whitesnake has never been about fashion—we’ve always been real rock. And now it sounds like it too.”
The man is selling high-def nostalgia with a wink and a snare crack. Whitesnake, still of the night, forever.
Listen to the interview above and then check out the videos below.
