David Coverdale has offered an update on the proposed 30th-anniversary re-release of his collaboration with Jimmy Page. The well-received COVERDALE PAGE set was recorded in several studios on both sides of the Atlantic over the winter of 1991-92 before it was finally released in March 1993.
Coverdale discussed a possible reissue of COVERDALE PAGE‘s eponymously titled LP in a new interview with 107.7 The Bone‘s “Lamont & Tonelli”. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “I was very excited. Jimmy and I worked very well creatively, as you can hear, and we had another four or five songs which were unmixed. And I said, ‘Jimmy, I’ve got all these other ideas. Let’s just do a COVERDALE PAGE ‘2’ or let’s make a double album.’ And sadly, his manager at the time talked him out of it, which was infuriating. However, some of those songs that I had to present to Jimmy are on [David Coverdale & WHITESNAKE‘s 1997] ‘Restless Heart’ record — two of ’em. It was ‘Take Me Back Again’ and ‘Woman Trouble Blues’. Those were originally ideas for Jimmy and I, had we made a second album. But in 2023, it’s the 30th anniversary, so look for something special. It’s gonna be a lot of fun.”
Coverdale previously spoke about his collaboration with Page during a February 2021 appearance on SiriusXM‘s “Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk”. At the time, he said that he and Jimmy were planning a “very big, luxurious, complete box set [for] the [LP’s] 30th anniversary in 2023.”
As for what extra material might surface on the expanded “Coverdale Page” set, the WHITESNAKE singer said: “We’ve got four unreleased tracks, which just need to be mixed. But since we reconnected, I’ve been messing around, writing at home. And I have two ideas which could make really fun tracks — just to throw at him and ‘see what you can do with this.’ The way we did it before — we wrote really very potent music together.
“The other thing that I recommended to him was, ‘Let’s remaster the original, but I’d love you, in England, with a mixer of your choice, to do the Jimmy Page mix of the album, and I’ll do the David Coverdale mix as bonus stuff,'” he continued. “And I think that’d be great. He trusts me, I trust him, and I think it would be great for the fans to get Jimmy‘s take on it, ’cause we did everything 50/50 on the project. It was an amazing three years together. I loved it. So, yeah, that’s definitely in the pipeline.”
Upon its release, “Coverdale Page” sold strongly, peaking at No. 4 on the U.K. album chart and No. 5 in the U.S. The album eventually went platinum in the U.S., despite the fact that the project as a whole was marred by the “LED ZEPPELIN clone” tag, including from ZEPPELIN frontman Robert Plant, who openly expressed his disdain for Coverdale, referring to him as “David Cover-version.” Coverdale was equally vitriolic in his response, saying about the LED ZEPPELIN singer, “There’s certainly no love lost between myself and Robert… I wouldn’t send him cat food if he was starving.”
Coverdale later apologized to Plant, saying in a 2013 interview with TeamRock Radio‘s “Classic Rock Magazine Show”: “I hold [Plant] in the highest esteem as a human being, and as an artist, and I really would like to, you know, sit down, buy him a drink, shake hands and say: ‘I’m really sorry,” you know, “Can we be friends again?’ I don’t hold any animosity, just disappointment in myself that I took the bait and ran with some ugly things. Because it’s not appropriate for somebody I respect so much.”
