In a recent interview to Guitar World Steve Vai reminisces on his time in Whitesnake:

David Coverdale had a lot of experience working with gifted players when you joined the fold and seems to be someone who really values the interplay between a frontman and a dazzling lead guitarist. What was he like to work with? Was he hands-on or did he get out of the way and let you do your thing?

David was a prince! He had a lot of confidence in me and basically knew he needed to just let me do my thing. David knew what I was capable of and didn’t really interfere with what I wanted to do. I just did it, and if there was something he didn’t like I was happy to change it because it was his thing. Working with David was great and there was something in his phrasing as a singer that I just adored.

There was really only one situation where David asked me to redo something and I completely agreed. It was on The Deeper the Love. I had done a solo using a piece of rack gear that was the hot new piece of gear at the time. I won’t mention who it was made by, but I hated the thing, but everybody was saying how great it was, so I gave it a spin.

It sounded like shit – thin and buzzy like a deranged mosquito! I wasn’t really satisfied with the sound on the solo and, sure enough, David heard it and went, ‘Steven darling, would you mind redoing this solo – it sounds a bit thin.’ Other than that, he just let me run with it.

Did you have any reservations about not staying wholly true to Whitesnake’s old signature sound?

You have to find a balance between what’s expected of you from the band, what the fans are expecting, what the song requires and is telling you to do – and also being true to your own voice. I had no choice but to express my own voice because that’s all I know!

If I had tried to sound like Yngwie when I had joined Alcatrazz, it just wouldn’t have worked because I’m very satisfied with the way I play, but I also can’t play like Yngwie. It was the same thing when I was playing with Dave Roth; I needed to deliver in a rock context – which was very natural to me – but I’m not going to compete with Edward Van Halen!

There’s no way those records would’ve been accepted if I didn’t have some kind of rock integrity, but I knew what the songs needed and I knew what the audience was expecting and there’s a side of me that I knew could deliver that. It was the same thing with Whitesnake.

The foundation of Whitesnake’s sound was rooted in rock blues, and there’s a whole culture that emanated from Europe in that traditional solid rock blues guitar playing that had a real authenticity to it.

Michael Schenker, Uli Jon Roth, Adrian Vandenberg, Ritchie Blackmore, Jimmy Page – that was the sound all Whitesnake records had been built upon. But Whitesnake had gone through different permutations of guitar sounds throughout the years, and the previous one to me was John Sykes, and he absolutely had his own sound.

Sykes didn’t sound like any other previous Whitesnake guitarist, but his thumbprint is an indelible part of the Whitesnake record he did. The fatness of that record and the rock integrity it had was all Sykes. So I knew I wasn’t going to sound like Sykes and I wasn’t going to try to.

You cheat yourself when you try to do that and play like someone else. And the audience is a lot smarter than you think; they’re very intuitive and perceptive and if you try to pull anything over on them – like biting someone else’s thing – you’ll get beat up for it.

Read more in Guitar World. There’s lots more.

Thanks to BraveWords for the info.

The following message from Ian Gillan was posted to the band’s facebook account today, April 3:

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction…well, not exactly in this case; more cause and effect, where the latter is often greater than the former.

Distribution lines (the physical sales of CDs, vinyl, cassettes (?) etc) and retail outlets are closed until The Dreaded Lurgy gets indigestion.

Therefore, as there are still so many of us who love to hold a new record in our hands, and following advice from our magnificent label, we have decided to delay the release of Whoosh until August.

During my quarantine I’m listening to a lot of music and guessing that it’s the same for many of us during this scary disruption to our lives.

We know, don’t we, that music will play a big part in our celebrations as we step back into the light.

But, health comes first, so I must stuff my excitement about sharing Whoosh with you back into a box for a little while.

Stay well and follow the light…

ig

However, at the time of this writing there was no confirmation from the label itself and their promotional site for the album was still listing release date as June 12th.

This post may be updated with future developments.

[Update Apr 6]: The new date has been set for August 7, 2020.

Thanks to Martin Ashberry and Rich Shailor for the heads up.

As our live calendar keeps filling up with strikeout, the anxiety levels keep rising in certain quarters about the fate of the upcoming Deep Purple tour which is scheduled to begin on May 31 — will it happen or will it not?

Well, we have learned today that it’s both a ‘yes’ and a ‘no’, in a way. The band has never been shy to play in dangerous situations, even being committed to play under the threat of an all out war breaking out. But this time it’s different, with many countries around the world closing their borders and imposing severe restrictions on public gatherings due to the coronavirus pandemic. So the band decided to team up with the company called Eyellusion (the people behind the Dio hologram) and tour as their virtual selves. This will be the first on many levels, not least of which is the fact that while Ronnie’s hologram was computer generated, it was backed by a live band. This time not only the whole band will be virtual and represented by their holograms, but their audience as well.

Another advantage of hologram performance is that avatars do not have to be rendered precisely true to life — certain details and features can be omitted or deliberately altered. For example, a vocalist’s voice can magically obtain the range of his 25 year old self, or a guitar player arthritis can disappear.

Refunds for the tickets will apparently be available to those who don’t want any part of it. Those ticket holders who would like to see the shows will be invited to submit their own holograms via the company website to attend as virtual audience.

A virtual reunion with Blackmore was considered, but the company spokesperson said that accurately rendering water being tossed across the stage is beyond their computational capabilities at the moment. So that would be a ‘no’.

Thanks to Hubert Jesslilt for the info.

Ritchie Blackmore and Candice Night posted a track of Diamond and Rust with reworked lyrics, recorded at their home in Long Island.
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David Coverdale’s local Tahoe Quarterly has a piece on him, his family, and their mansion in Incline Village that they had recently put on the market. It was published in the Winter 2019-2020 edition, which was out some time in November 2019.

Born in a seaside town in North Yorkshire, England, Coverdale moved to the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe—as a “tax exile,” he says—during the height of his fame in 1987. In between world tours in 1990, he met his future wife, Cindy, when they were both getting haircuts at a small salon in Reno called Lookin’ Good.

“It was my worst haircut since my father used to cut my hair,” Coverdale says with a laugh. “But behind me was this beautiful woman, and when she left, the owner was forthcoming with who she was and where she worked and that was it—that was 30 years ago.”

David and Cindy married in 1997 and went on to raise a son, Jasper, in the serene natural sanctuary that is Incline Village. Nestled among boulders and mature trees high above Lake Tahoe’s blue expanse, the Coverdale Estate boasts more than 9,000 square feet of living space along with panoramic views and privacy on a gated acre-plus of prime land.

Read more in Tahoe Quarterly.

Thanks to Yvonne for the info.

David Coverdale announced today that all remaining Whitesnake tours for 2020 — the mainland Europe, the UK, and the double header with Sammy Hagar in the US — are now cancelled.
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The first track from Whoosh! has arrived.
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Hot on the heels of The Cozy Powell Story, there is another book coming from the same author: Tommy Bolin – In and Out of Deep Purple.

It started off so well. As Jon Lord enthused in the October 1975 issue of Melody Maker: ‘Tommy can’t be so bad for us with so many good ideas. All I can say is when you hear the album (Come Taste The Band) you’ll change your mind. Whether you like the music or not, you’ll have to realise that Deep Purple now have an excitement in their playing that they haven’t had in a long time…’

Despite calls of ‘we want Blackmore’ when Deep Purple Mark four played live, there was so much more to American guitarist Tommy Bolin than being Ritchie Blackmore’s replacement. As a result, the purpose of this long-overdue biography is to readdress the existing narrative of Tommy Bolin’s legacy. As well as discussing objectively Tommy’s time with Deep Purple, Laura Shenton offers an insight into his musical achievements in his own right outside of the band, which include two cult rock albums in Teaser and Private Eyes. He also had a stint in The James Gang and made numerous guest appearances, where his versatile and virtuosic skills as a guitarist were utilised, before his untimely death in 1976 at the shockingly young age of 25

What: Tommy Bolin – In and Out of Deep Purple by Laura Shenton
When: March 26 May 28, 2020
Where: Sonicbond Publishing, UK
ISBN: 978-1789520705
Price: £12.99
Format: Paperback, 128 pages, 16 colour pages

The book can be preordered from all good bookstores, for example, this one.

Thanks to Yvonne for the info.

One of the cheapest and easiest ways to protect yourself from the coronavirus is to wash your hands with soap, do it often, and do it thoroughly. Thoroughly means rubbing every nook and cranny of your hands for at least 20 seconds. A good way to measure the time is to sing a verse of your favourite song. Not necessarily out loud.

Or head to Wash Your Lyrics and create your own. You are welcome.

Caveat: the site is pretty busy at the moment (as one can imagine), so it may take a few tries to get it working.

At the yesterday (March 14) show in Mexico, Deep Purple performed with Jordan Rudess on the keyboards. Don Airey could not make it to the gig “for reasons that have not been disclosed”. This leaves a lot of questions unanswered, but it’s not the time to panic. Not yet, anyway. It could be for a number of reasons — for one, international travel is severely disrupted at the moment.

Rudess is one of the best keyboard players on this planet and his day job is with the prog metal phenomena that is known as Dream Theater. He’s not a newbie to the Purple family either, having had a stint with Dixie Dregs in the 90s.

[Update] Mike Airey posted on his Instagram:

Due to my dad currently being in hospital awaiting an operation, @jcrudess from @dreamtheaterofficial stepped up to the plate here in Mexico and did an amazing job of covering the keys position. I looked after #rogerglover and as such switched from stage left to right. A very different perspective and sound! Show went great. Crowd loved it. Hope to have dad behind the organ in no time!

Thanks to Blabbermouth for the info and to Nigel Young for the update.