Whitesnake frontman David Coverdale had an important announcement to make: He’s quitting.
Actually, retiring is more like it. And in classy fashion.
“After 50 years-plus of an incredible journey with you, with Deep Purple, with Whitesnake, Jimmy Page, the last few years it’s been very evident to me that it’s time, really, for me to hang up my rock ‘n’ roll platform shoes and my skin-tight jeans,” the 74-year-old singer said while holding a highball glass, in a video posted Thursday on YouTube.
“And, as you can see,” he said, ruffling the chin-length gray hair that has replaced his well-known long locks, “we’ve taken care of the lion’s wig.”
After a few years with local bands in the late 1960s and early ‘70s, including a band that opened for Deep Purple, Coverdale stepped into the rock ‘n’ roll public’s eye when he took over as that band’s frontman in 1973. He would go on to found Whitesnake five years later.
Coverdale hung it up temporarily once before, after wrapping a Whitesnake world tour at the end of 1990, only to find himself “in an appalling, confused state across the board … privately and professionally.” He was married to actor Tawny Kitaen — who had starred in a host of Whitesnake videos in the MTV-dominated late ‘80s — from 1989 to 1991 and remembered that entire time in an interview with The Times a couple of years later as his “mousse abuse” period. The band’s popularity had exploded.
“I just had to stop everything … this whole circus. I had never gone into [music] for the image thing at all … and I really couldn’t do it anymore.”
But it was a short retirement: By the next spring, he had teamed up with Led Zeppelin guitarist Page and begun working on a Coverdale/Page album that was released in 1993. One record exec at the time disparagingly called it a “rock version of a corporate merger.” But the album was a hit.
At the time, Page told The Times that after doing unsatisfying solo work in the years after John Bonham died and Zeppelin broke up, “working with David was a totally different thing. It was suddenly right back to that original spark of creativity and ideas flowing.”
Coverdale chimed in: “A lot of people could misconstrue the band as some sort of corporate (game plan) because we share the same record company, but that was purely coincidental. We didn’t set out to make Led Snake.
“The first indication of just how special this could be was when Jimmy and I started walking around Manhattan and actually stopped traffic,” he continued. “People started honking their horns and asking if we were going to be working together. It was a very chilling moment in a positive sense.”
Despite the record’s success, the bulk of their planned tour had to be axed because of poor ticket sales, leaving a reinvigorated Coverdale to reconstitute Whitesnake in 1994 with some new members. They were together for four years and went on a tour that was billed as Whitesnake’s farewell.
Unsurprisingly, and once again, it was not the band’s last hurrah. Whitesnake returned in 2002 to tour with Scorpions and, in subsequent years, released their 10th, 11th, 12th and 13th studio albums. That last was a bit unlucky, perhaps; less than a year later, the COVID-19 pandemic delayed a planned Whitesnake tour until 2022. Then health problems among the band members — including Coverdale — derailed that effort after only a couple of months.
The singer’s official retirement comes after Whitesnake released a greatest hits record last year.
“It’s time for me to call it a day,” Coverdale said in his Thursday video. “I love you dearly. I thank everyone who’s assisted and supported me on this incredible journey. All the musicians, the crew, the fans, the family. It’s amazing. But it really is time for me to just enjoy my retirement. And I hope you can appreciate that.
“I love you with all my heart,” he said, lifting his highball glass in a toast. “Fare thee well.”
Then the recording cut to a remix of Whitesnake’s song “Forevermore,” with the video including pictures from throughout Coverdale’s career.
“Without a doubt, this is the classiest farewell I have ever seen or heard from an artist,” one fan wrote in comments. “Words cannot express what your music has meant to me. Thank you for everything, and fare thee well, indeed.”
Said another: “Respect to David who knows when it’s time to call it a day. Some never quit, even after it’s too late. David is not that man. Short and to the point with little fanfare. This is how it is done. Bless you, David.”
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