Whitesnakes studio album number 13 will be released on May 10th. Originally it was announced for 2017/18. Problems with the studio as well as illnesses and OPs of David Coverdale led to the delay. But the waiting was worth it: "Flesh & Blood" should be an absolute listening pleasure for sworn fans of the band.
When David Coverdale calls me, I'm sitting in a café next to the Verti Music Hall in Berlin. Slash is in the city (see the post-report in eclipsed 4/2019), which presents itself from its stormy side on this day - unpleasant, because it is too loud in the café and I stalk back and forth with Old Cov at my ear between the new Berlin concert hall and the Mercedes-Benz-Arena. The connection is interrupted several times. David is persistent and keeps calling. Before the fourth or fifth attempt, the former Purple frontman reassures me: "If it doesn't work out now, then you just let me know after all those promoter appointments." In between, he asks me to greet his old buddy Slash from him. When I reply that I don't have a backstage pass at all, David asks if he should just call Slash and ask him to welcome me. I refuse, because I want to drink one or the other beer with my buddies from Berlin at the concert rather than play the greeting uncle. "Buddies and family go first," Coverdale is clear before the line collapses again. Then it is stable, and the English gentleman inquires what it looks like around the Benz-Arena, because the last time he was there, there was only one huge construction site. "Berlin is fascinating. This is probably the most exciting city in the world." Coverdale has always been associated with Germany.
eclipsed: Do you still have regular contact to your German daughter Jessica?
David Coverdale: By phone anyway. But whenever I'm in Munich or even in Germany, we meet. I'm a family man. She's 41 years old now, the same age as Whitesnake. Unfortunately, shortly after her birth her relationship with her mother Julia broke down and my time in Bavaria was over.
eclipsed: Speaking of family. The video for "Shut Up & Kiss Me" is probably family related. This is your wife Cindy who you kiss at the end, right?
Coverdale: I'm 67, the days when I kissed other women are long gone.
eclipsed: Glenn Hughes told me that he never dared to go to the toilet with Purple because he was afraid that you would make fun of the woman in his company.
Coverdale: (laughs) But he had to go to the bathroom to draw a line, because he was afraid that Ritchie would notice that he was coke. Ritchie would have fired him on the spot. That's how it was in those days. Nowadays my son Jasper and his girlfriend are playing in the video for "Shut".
