Wherever You May Go
David Coverdale posted a video for the 2024 remix of Wherever You May Go off his revamped solo album Into the Light, slated for re-release on October 25, along with WhiteSnake and Northwinds.
Thanks to Whitesnake TV for the clip.
Even a friggin’ cynic like me cannot help but be moved by this. Yes, it’s twee, but also beautiful. And reassuringly devoid of dragons and renaissance fairies. Good haircut he had back then too.
To this day I don’t understand why Into The light didn’t do better and find him a new audience, sort of the people who go to Bon Jovi concerts, there is a whole bunch of them. It was an earnest attempt to create music for grown-ups. The whole “resurrected Whitesnake”-phase that followed was actually retrogressive and retarded.
September 5th, 2024 at 20:03Not to forget this nugget here, beautiful as well, great vid too:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEVreJliL2w
There was good, adult stuff on Restless Heart as well:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwLiN3YHV_8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJk38e0BaMo
And it has to be said: The blond hair always looked silly on him, I much preferred him dark (before he turned grey which is perfectly fine).
September 5th, 2024 at 20:16It’s a bit sad, like with Blackmore, Uwe. Wasted talents indeed. DC stated in an interview around 1990 how ridicolous it all had become, the blonde hair, the dresses et al and quit short after that. Only to return to that mode in the 2000s … when, let’s face, it had become even more ridicolous becauise it wasn’t even en vogue anymore – and the man himself certainly had not gotten any younger. But it sold obviously. I wish he had chosen a more soulful and grown up path. He could have done it. Even the Whitesanke albums that followed showed some promise buit were overproduced with walls of guitar and screeching and stuff. Well that it clearly not the case with Blackmore’s offerings… 😀 …but a waste of talent they document as well. Just imagine the two of them sitting on a stool (each their own of course) and play an accoustic version of Soldier of Fortune or what ever. And even if you put that wet dream of some kind of reunion aside … both of them could have done so much more music worth writing home about. given their incredible talents. On the other hand you can’t blame them. Snapshot by RG and many other examples show that it just won’t pay the bills for the gardener to record some decent music. So it’s the so called fans to blame … you can’t say they didn’t try but a lot of those albums we treasure, dear Uwe, just didn’t sell. So back to the same old same old … or in Ritchie’s case: release music for Fernsehgarten.
September 6th, 2024 at 08:03It’s a nice mix and a nice song. There is a short clip of Northwinds and Lady on David’s Twitter feed. They sound great, worth the remix. The vocal on Northwinds sounds like an alternative vocal to me.
Didn’t Into The Light suffer because it was on his own label and distribution wasn’t great?
September 6th, 2024 at 11:37Yes, Jaffa, he couldn’t – just like with Restless Heart – even find a proper US company to distribute it for him.
That just tells you that in the US he had been typecast as this glamorous blond-maned Whitesnake singer with the stadium lion roar – a relic from the 80s – and not as David Coverdale, the artist, who from humble beginnings went on to front Deep Purple, growing into a bona fide songwriter + doing interesting work also outside of WS or DP.
Not that David was entirely blameless for this, given how he let his and Tawny’s images oversaturate the US public in the late 80s. He wanted US fame, created a larger-than-life, yet shallow image for it (bending over backwards to do it) et voilà: He who lives by the sword, dies by the sword.
September 6th, 2024 at 13:28I notice there are a lot of Coverdale bashers on this site,
September 6th, 2024 at 16:40@ 3
Albums like Snapshot sit comfortably on my shelf next to Lordys last (classical)solo albums.
But I think a collaboration Lord/Blackmore doing SOA instrumentals or a med evil/classical infuzed one would have sols well.
Does anybody know how Lords solo albums have done since they were released?
September 6th, 2024 at 21:26@6: Quote one thing in these comments that is DC bashing.
September 7th, 2024 at 00:20Haters, Henry? No, more like estranged lovers willing to forgive the past. DC’s voice is a gift of nature and he can be justly proud of his DP triumvirate of Burn-Stormbringer-Come Taste Taste The Band. There was a time when I preferred Mk III/IV to Mk II because as a teenager DC’s warm machismo appealed to me. Of the three major split-off bands, Whitesnake was the one closest to my heart though GILLAN was perhaps more interesting.
When DC left DP in 1976, he said he was “done screaming his balls off”. Yet his attempted detours from that image proved all commercial failures and his three most successful albums 1987/Slip Of The Tongue/Coverdale Page all contain plenty of songs well outside of his natural range. That doesn’t keep 1987 from being a fine hair metal pop album at the time, but it’s not really music that a 70-year-old can credibly perform.
So I wish Into The Light Had done better and led him on a path where he could have aged more gracefully then he did with Whitesnake on the tours of the last quarter century, that’s all.
But I don’t hate anyone from DP, why should I? It’s tragic that DC seems to have lost his voice, I wish he would find it again and sing more sparsely arranged music in more intimate venues in his rich baritone.
https://youtu.be/lw1T0t2wLaM
September 7th, 2024 at 21:24Just to keep some things in perspective here regarding words & their possible meaning. A recent comment on 5 Sep 2024, number 6 at the “a-third-youth-and-almost-a-masterpiece’ section from Uwe. “I don’t get the Ezrin-bashing either. I think his production and musical directorship has added something to DP they never had before – an overall finesse perhaps?” A comment I began to reply to & then deleted as I thought, surely it isn’t that way, a misrepresented word (bashing). It could very well mean ‘a pile on’ perhaps or ‘singling someone out’? Picking on someone unfairly perhaps? However here @ 9- Uwe has replied that possibly there are some ‘Haters’? Henry @ 6 – did not use that ‘hater’ word & neither am I implying that Uwe suggests that he did. Although we will leave that interpretation for others to pass judgement on. I don’t like the basher or bashing word either & I would prefer to use another word. I did initially take umbrage at Uwe’s comment on 5 Sep & then decided to let him off with a ‘caution’, he he he. However after reading these last few comments I feel the need to balance things a little. And while I am at it, hate or haters is a dramatically overused social media trend word if ever there was one. So of course this evidently raises the question your Honour, are the people who don’t like Bob Ezrin’s production on DP records, haters? (I am going for the jugular here) What did Uwe mean by using the word ‘bashing’. It must simply be for people who don’t like something for whatever reason & they then talk about it occasionally. Sometimes it happens, we use the incorrect word or some might say it is the correct word. All rise, Court dismissed. Cheers.
September 8th, 2024 at 03:56Dearest Herr MacGregor, I use the terms “bashing” and “hater” strictly in a banal young people social media lingo sense. Hopefully, nobody here truly “hates” anybody for their contributions to music, whether they appeal to you or not. I could just as well write “critics” or “detractors”.
Real hate is a psychotic state. As damaging to the hater as to the hated. Go to the Middle East and see what real hate does – on both sides.
But since it seems to rub my Tasmanian friend the wrong way (and I HATE doing that), I’ll gladly use “detractors” (to my ears a bit technical of a term) or something similar in the future.
“Bashing” is to me a harmless term, it is to me heaping critique on someone for something without any objectivity regarding the good things he’s/she’s done or his/her specific situation. Along the lines of “Bob Ezrin can’t produce shit and is the reason why DP doesn’t sound like it used too”. DP and JP albums were regularly bashed in the music press, JP actually only caught my attention after I read a particularly bashing review in the NME – I became a lifelong fan, so even the bad review was a good thing for them. Take in everything you see, but do ‘t believe everything’s without checking the truth (or at least a different view) against it.
September 9th, 2024 at 16:27not worried about it at all Uwe, thanks for the response & as I said I thought it a word most probably used as in a ‘a pile on’ or similar. ‘Everybody getting stuck into’, that sort of thing. All good. Cheers.
September 9th, 2024 at 23:02On the eve of your 73th birthday, let me wish you all well. And if you can avoid this very forum, do it,please. Recently it seems we are ungrateful animals over here. I hope you´re in good health. Thank you for all, DC.
September 21st, 2024 at 15:19Cov’s the Guv’ in his own particular field of music, & I love almost all of his musical output. He’s someone who truly understands what the original meaning of the African-American slang term, “Rock & Roll” actually is, & puts it to proper use. Rock & Roll = Sex!. Rockin’ & a rollin’ all night long!
September 22nd, 2024 at 08:19The funny thing is, if you strip the vocals away from the music, the remaining instrumentals still sound awesome.
DC has put a lot of time & effort into creating his music, & he’s been very successful with it. That means quite a lot of people have invested their own time & money into supporting his efforts, myself included.
So whatever you may think about David Coverdale, I reckon that all of those album & ticket sales speaks for itself. So there… NEXT!
But that is part of the problem of our Geburtstagskind to which we all extend our best wishes, John: Yes, the instrumental backings of latter day Whitesnake sound “awesome” – in a way a Steven Spielberg or Marvel Universe blockbuster film looks “awesome”.
But what about those of us who would like to hear DC’s rich baritone in a chamber play? Less can be more. I guess at one point in his life the boy from Saltburn-by-the-sea decided that everything had to be grand and in full CinemaScope color – spending the better part of his adult life at or near the US West Coast must have nurtured that further. To some of us who really do rate him as a singer and musician as well, all that larger-than-life dream factory and swashbuckling derring-do obscures the real David Coverdale. He must still be somewhere, I would like to meet him.
Rick Rubin should lock him into a studio with just an acoustic guitar and an acoustic piano and not let him out until he has finished an album just by himself – with songs in keys he can still reach. Count me a fan for that.
https://youtu.be/B_tXb4KLOxI
https://youtu.be/3JWiPFT0v2c
September 22nd, 2024 at 15:02Agreed 100% here Uwe!
And John … I can see no, zero, non hate here. Just discussing the pros and cons. And if it’s for album and tickets sales alone that ‘speak for itself’ as you write I guess you think Taylor Swift is even better than our hero from Redcaar?
September 26th, 2024 at 16:26@15 Uwe,
Having separated the vocals from the music means that I can listen to DC crooning his little heart out, OR, as the Doobie Brothers put it, “…whoa oh oh… listen to the music”, whenever I like. So there! As for DC’s intimate vocal stylings, no doubt you’ve heard his demo “Love Me In The Morning”? It’s so sweet, I love it with that simple acoustic guitar sound.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBEBgElZkvU
What a versatile singer David is!.
November 7th, 2024 at 00:36@16 Max,
November 7th, 2024 at 01:05A little intellectual discourse in an even handed, & decidedly friendly way never hurt anyone. But yeah…. I really hate the haters…. OOPSIES!.
As for your scandalous aspersions upon my good self, (Tay Tay is not my musical cup of tea, but she is good looking!), I personally think that a great deal of what our Mr Coverdale has created for our listening pleasure, absolutely leaves Ms Swift’s somewhat plebeian compositions for the birds.
But you cannot deny Ms Swift her due, afterall, She’ a friggin’ billionaire…. & She’s been on the cover of Time magazine! What can I say?, the kids love her.
But that’s the nature of business, so how are your stocks doing today?
David didn’t get the job with Purple for nothing, John, he was/is a great singer and someone who can both pack great emotion and a punch with his vocals. Max and I are both DC voice fans – how can you not be? – it’s just the music of the last 20 years or so hasn’t been very sympathetic to his singing. I really like DC’s tone, the more I hear of it the better. That new solo albums box is a brilliant testament to his strength as a musician. The amount of profound musicality on those solo albums puts a lot of Whitesnake output to simpleton shame.
I’d be happy to never ever hear him scream his balls off to stratospheric heights like he did with Still Of The Night (to me always an insubstantial, show-offy and pretentious number). DC doesn’t need a wall of sound behind him to connect with an audience. Less is definitely more with him, but he somehow missed that train in his career – or maybe the lukewarm reception of Into The Light, a great work, just frustrated him deeply. Behind all the grandeur of the public David Coverdale, I’m not sure he is that secure a person. With latter day Whitesnake I sometimes had the feeling he was hiding/drowning his voice. I would have preferred a bit more Tom Waits authenticity with him, it’s ok to miss notes and have your voice crack as long as the rendition has emotional substance and clout.
On the spectrum of liking or not liking DC, both Max and I are fans, just not fawning over his work with latter day Whitesnake. More Saltburn-by-the-Sea than Lake Tahoe. More the kid from “Up North” in England than the US citizen who addresses everyone as “boys & girls”.
November 7th, 2024 at 16:51@18 Thanks for caring, John, in fact the stocks are doing very well since US election day.
November 8th, 2024 at 08:48