It's about time he retired

[Basvarken]

This is painful to watch/hear.

The mix certainly doesn't do Mr Coverdale any favours here. But even if they buried the vocals in the mix it would've been obvious his singing days are over...

[4stringer77]

He set the bar high for himself back in his younger days. Some folks do better at hitting the high notes in old age than others. I think that's Tommy Aldridge on drums.

[4stringer77]

Ok, I just heard the part when it get's to Here I go again. That was brutal. His voice sounds shot.

[uwe]

You guys haven't heard him on a bad night. That is a good night (with some studio doctoring). Sad, I know.

Coverdale, even in his younger days, was essentially a baritone singer. And what a rich baritone he had.





He could go high for short periods, but he didn't sing whole songs, much less albums or concerts and tours like that.

Purple knew this, they didn't want another Ian Gillan and there was always Glenn Hughes with his tenor/falsetto range who could do the high parts well (but to this day has no real authority in his voice in the low register). Ironically, when Coverdale left Deep Purple he said he "didn't want to scream my balls off anymore when singing". And inital Whitesnake stayed very much in his natiural range.

It all went awry when he split up the original Whitesnake and got into the fangs of John Kalodner. He implanted the idea in Coverdale's brain/vocal chords that singing high is singing well and Coverdale's gargantuan vanity went with it (Still that Glenn Hughes chip on his shoulder? Why I cry?). Following the Slide It In tours that for the first time cracked America a little (thanks to Keith Olsen's remix of Martin Birch's previous work), Coverdale's vocal chords were shot for the first time, too much singing outside of his natural range. He was close to losing it forever, but got specialist treatment (from the same guy who saved Klaus Meine's voice I believe) and an operation. Following that he was able to sing higher than ever (just listen to the 1987 album), but I already sensed back then that something was amiss, compared to his pot belly Whitesnake days, he strained hard. By Slip of the Tongue with its impossibly high-pitched vocals his voice was disintegrating, just listen closely to this here (from around the same time), in the studio, but still:



When he stays low it's all very well (the song was initially penned for Billy Idol to sing), but listen around 3.20. When I first heard that back then, I winced. Something like that would have never gone out in Purple days, it sounded like it hurt him singing it.

Things went from bad to worse from then on, Coverdale Page, for all its musical quality, was another vanity project as regards singing high. It was the time when Robert Plant would actually sing lower (which I like a lot better than his banshee stuff where you can never understand the lyrics), yet Coverdale went up another notch. Jon Lord, when hearing Coverdale Page for the first time, was baffled: "I cannot for the life of me understand why David with his wonderful register now sings like he is Robert Plant, he is not and he shouldn't. It hurts me listening to it." (Coverdale got the job with Purple on the basis of singing Nilsson's Everybody's Talking and The Beatles' Yesterday - both in a low register.)

Come the nineties, his vocals live were all strain, strain, strain, even frayed. There were a few exceptions.



(And didn't that mock Bon Jovi haircut and his natural color look so much better on him too? That album didn't sell at all, unfortunately.)

These days it physically hurts me to listen to him. I avoid Whitesnake concerts even as a DP diehard - and he used to be my favorite singer (I liked him better than even Gillan, never mind his less than skillful "Babe, I wanna ball you all night long" lyrics.)

I blame you Americans for ruining his voice. You and your silly Led Zep obsession. After all he is now one of yours, he adopted citizenship a few years ago. The pudgy boy from Redcar up England North.





I've said it again and again: Get a haircut, do old soul classics in the Michael Bolton, Rod Stewart, Joe Cocker mode, all with a little Tom Jones zest and innuendo, and you'd be able to sell ten times as much as with your Whitesnake nostalgia revue. And age gracefully. Like this guy does:



PS: Yup, that is Tommy Aldridge. He's been so often in and out of Whitesnake, I've lost count. Coverdale thinks he's a little too technical and cold and overplays, but when the last drummer left WS, he held a vote among the other musicians which drummer they would like to see play with them and Tommy won the vote hands down. I've never cared for his drumming much, be it with Black Oak, Travers, Ozzy or WS. Give me Ian Paice any day ... But Tommy is no doubt the right drummer for modern WS' "Larger than life and have every guitar chord sound like Godzilla is approaching"-modus operandi. Yawn.

[Highlander]

That was somewhat upsetting to watch that, Rob... truly should come with an Icon Desecration Warning...

I comply fully with Uwe's viewpoint... this type of material would be perfect for him...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBPavSvXHxQ&list=RDZJdGA1F9U4o

Saw him from the end of Purple through to the end of the original Whitesnake so got to see him when he was on form quite a few times; mind you, saw Gillan when he was very much on top form too... both of them, during the 70's, were... so... to hear... goose-bump stuff... Paul Rogers was very much there too...

[4stringer77]

I'm not the Ari that put up the Government video in case anyone was wondering.

[Highlander]

That was almost an apology, Ari... not that uncommon a name is some parts...

[TBird1958]

Nice to see some Marshall bass rigs on stage.


Nothing lasts forever!

[westen44]

This is why I'm glad I decided to focus more on bass playing than singing.  Because certainly for quite a long time in my youth it was the other way around.  Needless to say, usually aging doesn't do any favors for someone's voice.  There do seem to be a few people who are the exceptions, just like anything else.  But they're the lucky ones.  I don't think it's fair, however, to be harsh or critical too much when someone doesn't sound so hot singing anymore.  Time can be a brutal taskmaster. 

[4stringer77]

That was almost an apology, Ari... not that uncommon a name is some parts...

I wouldn't apologize for that vid. Cool to see and hear how much David has changed over time. I bet that other Ari is a cool guy too.
 Uwe, I don't think Led Zeppelin can take all the credit for Coverdale's attempts to reach beyond his natural range. Is Zep also responsible for Little Richard, Geddy Lee, Rob Halford, Joe Elliot and Axl Rose? The tradition of male singers singing androgynously high while still conveying an image of power and sexual aggressiveness goes back  all the way to the castrati I believe. Farinelli is a good movie to see exploring this subject.

[gweimer]

I've always said that without Pat Boone, Little Richard wouldn't have evolved.  He had to become something that couldn't be homogenized very easily.

[uwe]

I wouldn't apologize for that vid. Cool to see and hear how much David has changed over time. I bet that other Ari is a cool guy too.
 Uwe, I don't think Led Zeppelin can take all the credit for Coverdale's attempts to reach beyond his natural range. Is Zep also responsible for Little Richard, Geddy Lee, Rob Halford, Joe Elliot and Axl Rose? The tradition of male singers singing androgynously high while still conveying an image of power and sexual aggressiveness goes back  all the way to the castrati I believe. Farinelli is a good movie to see exploring this subject.

I was joking, you're right of course. Whole pieces of music were just written for castrati because they could project high notes with the power of a man in an age where voices could not be amplfied. But when a dark haired guy with straight hair and a low voice gets a perm, dies his hair blond and starts singing high, you do wonder. It has been done before by someone, you know. Ironically, Plant himself ages gracefully both visually and vocally. I liked the way he sang at the Zep reunion O2, it had grace. Likewise, the way he kept his voice from overpowering hers on that album with Alison Krauss.

[uwe]

This is why I'm glad I decided to focus more on bass playing than singing.  Because certainly for quite a long time in my youth it was the other way around.  Needless to say, usually aging doesn't do any favors for someone's voice.  There do seem to be a few people who are the exceptions, just like anything else.  But they're the lucky ones.  I don't think it's fair, however, to be harsh or critical too much when someone doesn't sound so hot singing anymore.  Time can be a brutal taskmaster. 

I'm the first to defend it if singers have their material downtuned to still do it properly. There is no shame in that. But Coverdale doesn't do that and instead sounds raw and frayed. In a lower register, however, his voice still has the old charm.

[westen44]

I'm the first to defend it if singers have their material downtuned to still do it properly. There is no shame in that. But Coverdale doesn't do that and instead sounds raw and frayed. In a lower register, however, his voice still has the old charm.

Yes, I agree.  Downtuning is the first thing I thought of.  Coverdale does leave himself open and maybe he is just too vain to accept reality.  I was really speaking more in general terms, though.  I haven't seen it here, but all too often I see comments made about singers who don't sound as good as they did in the past.  That just bothers me.  I find the criticism to be rude and insensitive at times.  Sometimes I think a little more thoughtfulness in such matters might be in order. 

[Blackbird]

"Here I Go Again" was atrocious.  Wow.