WHITESNAKE's DAVID COVERDALE: From The Moment I Saw OBAMA, I Knew He Was A Star

Jed Gottlieb of BostonHerald.com recently conducted an interview with WHITESNAKE frontman David Coverdale. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

BostonHerald.com: In America, you'll forever be associated with the "Here I Go Again" video and Tawny Kitaen dancing across those Jaguars.

Coverdale: That song was so overground, so oversaturated that there's an immediate connection with Tawny Kitaen and my white Jag. But I was involved in the music as opposed to the images the music was presented with. Those images have nothing to do with the song. The song was about the breakup of my first marriage, not about Jaguars and video vamps.

BostonHerald.com: Is it a bummer to have the meaning of the tune twisted?

Coverdale: Not at all. That song is part of the backdrop of so many people's lives in so many different ways. When you see it in concert it's a big rock anthem with people punching the air and stuff like that. But I think when you're listening to it in the car alone it's not so much a "Wayne's World" outtake. The song is one of the most successful WHITESNAKE songs in terms of its strong melody, strong vocals and whisper-to-a-scream performance. It's got all the elements that I favor. And thank God, as George Harrison would say, "It became an evergreen." So we're stuck with it for sometime to come. And again, thank God, because it helps the mortgage.

BostonHerald.com: I heard you were a big Obama supporter. When I think WHITESNAKE, I don't think health-care reform or funding for stem cell research.

Coverdale: I've never used the stage as a political platform. I've never been comfortable when I've seen artists do that. But (the Bush years) were extremely difficult years for any artist to express themselves truthfully because the odds were stacked against them. Anytime they made any political statement, the hard right was on them like flies on poop. It was insulting to artists' dignity not to have the freedom of speech this country is so highly regarded for.

BostonHerald.com: And Obama represented a change from those years?

Coverdale: From the moment I saw Obama at the 2004 convention, I knew he was a star and loved him immediately. I thought his speech was electrifying. But I was utterly shocked his rise was so meteoric. I actually took American citizenship in order to work and vote for him instead of just being an armchair politician.

BostonHerald.com: Have you ever thought about doing an album front-to-back on tour?

Coverdale: That was the plan during the 20th anniversary of the eponymous, 1987 WHITESNAKE album. But recording (the new album) "Good to Be Bad" took a little longer than I thought, so it didn't happen. Recording the new album was on my dime at my home with no pressure to finish on a deadline. So we took our time, which was great. Although a lot of it was done while we were having a series of pretty scary forest fires in the area that sent every bear in northern Nevada toward my home. We had three weeks of bad break-ins by big black bears, which is not an amusement, I can tell you.

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Fan-filmed video footage of WHITESNAKE performing "Here I Go Again" on July 3, 2009 at the "Taste of Minnesota" festival in St. Paul, Minnesota can be viewed below (courtesy of Duluth, LLC).