{"id":377626,"date":"2025-11-14T05:38:14","date_gmt":"2025-11-14T05:38:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/377626\/"},"modified":"2025-11-14T05:38:14","modified_gmt":"2025-11-14T05:38:14","slug":"whitesnakes-founding-frontman-calls-it-a-career-at-74","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/377626\/","title":{"rendered":"Whitesnake’s Founding Frontman Calls It A Career At 74"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThis might have the Whitesnake<\/a> faithful crying in the rain. Frontman David Coverdale<\/a>, who co-founded the multiplatinum hard rock band in the late 1970s, co-wrote most of its songs and also sang with Deep Purple and Jimmy Page, announced his retirement today. Watch him reveal the news in a video below.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cLadies and gentlemen, boys and girls, brothers and sisters of the Snake, a special announcement for you,\u201d Coverdale said.\u00a0\u201cAfter 50 years-plus of an incredible journey with you \u2014 with\u00a0Deep Purple, with Whitesnake,\u00a0Jimmy Page\u00a0\u2014 the last few years it has been very evident to me that it\u2019s time really for me to hang up my rock\u00a0\u2018n\u2019 roll platform shoes and my skintight jeans.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe English singer added: \u201cAnd as you can see, we\u2019ve taken care of the lion\u2019s wig, but it\u2019s time for me to call it a day. I love you dearly. I\u00a0thank everyone who\u2019s assisted and supported me on this incredible journey: all the musicians, the crew, the fans, the family. It\u2019s amazing. But it really is time for me to just enjoy my retirement, and I hope you can appreciate that.<\/p>\n

\n\tNow 74, Coverdale founded Whitesnake in 1978 after a stint fronting Deep Purple following Ian Gillan\u2019s exit. His recorded three albums with that band \u2014 1974\u2019s Burn and Stormbringer, both of which went gold in the U.S., and 1975\u2019s Come Taste the Band \u2014 singing on such popular tracks as \u201cBurn,\u201d \u201cMistreated\u201d and \u201cSoldier of Fortune.\u201d He was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame with the group in 2016.<\/p>\n

\n\tCoverdale then formed released a pair of solo albums before forming Whitesnake in 1978. Its first two LPs charted in the Top 50 in his native UK, but the band would break out with its third disc, Ready an\u2019 Willing. That 1980 album hit the UK Top 10 and made its first U.S. chart appearance, peaking at No. 90 fueled by the single \u201cFool for Your Loving.\u201d Fans would hear much more of that song late in the decade.<\/p>\n

\n\tRELATED: Bernie Marsden Dies: Whitesnake Guitarist Who Co-Wrote \u2018Here I Go Again\u2019 Was 72
<\/a><\/strong>
Whitesnake\u2019s next two albums, Come an\u2019 Get It (1981) and Saints & Sinners (1982), also reached the UK Top 10 but didn\u2019t click stateside. That changed with the group\u2019s 1984 LP Slide It In, which made the U.S. Top 40 thanks to the single-entendre FM hit \u201cSlow an\u2019 Easy,\u201d \u201cLove Ain\u2019t No Stranger\u201d and its libidinous title track. It was the first Whitesnake album to feature ex-Thin Lizzy guitarist John Sykes, who would co-write many of his new band\u2019s songs with Coverdale.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut the group\u2019s next disc shot Coverdale and company to superstardom.<\/p>\n

\n\tReleased worldwide in March 1987, the eponymous Whitesnake was an international smash, spending eight weeks at No. 2 \u2014 thwarted from the top spot by U2\u2019s The Joshua Tree \u2014 and going Top 10 in a half-dozen countries. The album featured the band\u2019s first big hit single: \u201cHere I Go Again,\u201d a new version of a track from the band\u2019s Saints & Sinners disc, hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. It ranked No. 17 on VH1\u2019s list of the Top 100 Songs of the 1980s and was fueled by its steamy, MTV-smash video that featured Coverdale\u2019s soon-to-be-wife, model Tawny Kitaen. Watch it here:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tWhitesnake also featured such popular tracks as the ballad \u201cIs This Love,\u201d which hit No. 2 in the U.S.; the hard-rocking, Zeppelin-esque \u201cStill of the Night,\u201d \u201cCrying in the Rain,\u201d another reworked Saints & Sinners song; and Give Me All Your Love. The album ultimately sold more that 10 million units stateside and drove sales of its catalog, making Whitesnake of one the poster bands of the \u201chair metal\u201d genre, though it often was bluesier and\/or more hard rocking than most others. <\/p>\n

\n\tRELATED: Tawny Kitaen Dies: \u2018Bachelor Party\u2019 Actress And Whitesnake Video Vixen Was 59<\/a> <\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tThe group then released Slip of the Tongue (1989), which went Top 10 in the U.S. and the UK and featured a reworked version of \u201cFool for Your Loving\u201d that was a huge FM hit, spend four weeks at No. 2 on Billboard\u2019s Mainstream Rock chart. <\/p>\n

\n\tBut Coverdale would dissolve Whitesnake the following year, and in 1993 he teamed with Led Zeppelin\u2019s guitarist to form the one-off Coverdale Page. Their self-titled album made the Top 5 in the U.S. and UK, going platinum stateside, but the pair split late that year.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhitesnake had a run of eight consecutive Top 10 albums in the UK from 1980-94, including one live and one compilation set. Its 2008 disc Good to Be Bad also went Top 10 in Coverdale\u2019s homeland.<\/p>\n

\n\tCoverdale revived Whitesnake in 1997, and the group would release five more studio albums through 2019. None would reach the commercial heights of the band\u2019s \u201980s output, though. Coverdale would continue to tour the world with the group up until this past summer. <\/p>\n

\n\tWhitesnake\u2019s music can be heard in dozens of films and TV shows ranging from I Know What You Did Last Summer, Old School and The O.C. to How I Met Your Mother, It\u2019s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Cobra Kai.<\/p>\n

\n\tHere is the Coverdale\u2019s video announcing his retirement:<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This might have the Whitesnake faithful crying in the rain. Frontman David Coverdale, who co-founded the multiplatinum hard…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":377627,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[185,181351,171,67,132,68,181352],"class_list":{"0":"post-377626","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-david-coverdale","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us","14":"tag-whitesnake"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115546443749892131","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=377626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377626\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/377627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=377626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=377626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=377626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}