David Coverdale has revealed that WHITESHAKE is planning “a very special project” to coincide with the band’s farewell tour which kicks off in spring 2022. The WHITESNAKE leader also said that there is little chance of John Sykes appearing with the band, even in a one-off capacity during the tour. Coverdale made the comments while speaking to Eonmusic about the band’s just-released 25th-anniversary edition of the “Restless Heart” album.
Speaking to Eamon O’Neill about the farewell dates, which kick off in Dublin on May 10, 2022, Coverdale said: “We have this farewell tour, and when I say that I’m retiring, I’m retiring from touring at this level. It’s so huge and it takes months and months and months to set up. I was hoping, actually, to retire at 69 which is absolutely the best age for the lead singer of WHITESNAKE to step down.”
He continued: “I have to do this tour of appreciation and gratitude so I can achieve completion. I’m coming up to 50 years of people supporting my work; it’s just extraordinary, it’s a magical life, and, as the song ‘Don’t Fade Away’ says, ‘all in all, it’s been a rocky road,’ but we’ve still got the passion to move forward.”
It was then that the former DEEP PURPLE fronman revealed that he’s planning to put out something to accompany the tour. David said: “We have, next year, a very special project for spring which I can’t talk about that’s going to be a nice surprise for people to accompany the world farewell tour. When this was signed, sealed, delivered, we said, ‘I don’t think we can just put a box set out. It’s my farewell tour. So we’ve worked on a very special project to accompany the tour. It’s not a box, but it’s a really great project.”
Elsewhere, Coverdale admitted that there is little chance of seeing John Sykes on stage with WHITESNAKE again. When asked if there was perhaps, some unfinished business between the pair, he replied: “Not for me. I admire John, I wish him well in everything, but it was interesting that we were so successful in writing together, so successful, but as people, we weren’t. There was a constant rub.”
Expanding, he shared that efforts to reunite the pair were made nearly two decades, but ultimately came to nothing. “A mutual friend put us together in, I think it was ’02 or something like that,” he said, “and we talked and stuff for a long time and it was lovely, but the more and more I spoke with him, I thought, ‘I feel the same as it was 30-odd years ago, and the last thing I want to do is make a commitment and then be calling my wife from Tokyo, saying, ‘What the fuck did I agree to this for?'”
He added: “When we lost Jon Lord [DEEP PURPLE keyboardist], I reached out to a lot of people — including Ritchie [Blackmore], god bless him — to bury whatever potential hatchet, and I put out feelers, and it wasn’t particularly positively received, so what I can tell you is I wish everyone well who I’ve worked with, because they all brought something amazing to the party.”
Read the entire interview at Eonmusic.
