David Coverdale Talks Whitesnake’s New ‘Purple Album’

David Coverdale has Ritchie Blackmore to thank for the way the new Whitesnake album came together.

Expanding on his recent remarks regarding the near-reunion with Blackmore that helped inspire The Purple Album, Coverdale opens up in the band's electronic press kit for the record, reiterating that it all started with some outreach from the duo's former Deep Purple bandmate Jon Lord during the period preceding his death in 2012.

In the clip, which you can watch above, Coverdale recalls how he first started entertaining the idea of revisiting his portion of the Purple catalog during talks with Blackmore that evolved after Lord's passing. As the two passed ideas back and forth, Coverdale says he delved back into the arrangements, working out new ways of approaching the material.

"A lot of the ideas weren’t appealing to me, unfortunately," he admits now. "But I was already doing preparatory work on these songs, hoping Ritchie would be open to bringing them up to date and reappraising some of them."

When the reunion fell apart, Coverdale was initially disappointed — but after his wife asked him why he didn't just take the groundwork he'd already done and turn it into a Whitesnake album, he realized he could pay tribute to his time in Deep Purple in a different way.

"I took a little time to think about it," he recalls. "I spoke to my musicians and everybody was incredibly positive, so it was all systems go," paving the way for an album of re-recorded cuts that Coverdale has called an "homage" and "a huge thank-you from me to Deep Purple for the opportunity I was given over 40 years ago."

The Purple Album is scheduled to arrive on May 19, and will be accompanied by a summer tour of the States. It's the first Whitesnake studio album since 2011's Forevermore, and the first to feature new guitarist Joel Hoekstra, formerly of Night Ranger.

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