David Cloverdale, 54, is one of the leading hard-rock singers of his generation. Born in Yorkshire, he joined Deep Purple as lead singer in 1973 and went on to form Whitesnake, recording multi-platinum albums and touring worldwide during the 1980s and 1990s. The band has now re-formed, and a UK tour opens at the Manchester Apollo on May 27. He lives at Lake Tahoe, Nevada, with his wife, Cathy, and their nine-year-old son, JasperI’VE SPENT a lot of my life in hotels, and had a great time doing it, too. For a couple of fun-filled years, I lived at the Mondrian in Los Angeles. That was an exceptionally naughty time. It was a pretty rock’n’roll place, and I was between marriages, so I had quite a full dance card, you could say.
I’d recommend that existence to any bachelor: just go and live in a hip hotel, where there’s hot and cold running women.
Of course, this was back in the 1980s, before it became too snotty... and I’m very happily married these days, anyway. Now, when I’m in LA, I stay at a small celebrity hotel in West Hollywood, which I’d sooner not name. I’m not being difficult, I just like to be discreet. Go in and you’re tripping over Jack Nicholson and Matt Damon. I’ve just been there, in fact, and I bumped into my old mate Jimmy Page — turned out he was staying in the room next to mine.
My childhood was a bit different. I was born and raised in a place called Saltburn-by-the-Sea, up the coast from Whitby. It was a working-class background, not much money. I can only remember having one holiday, and it was to Butlins, at Filey in Yorkshire. There was a horse called Snowball... poor little bugger, taking fat-bottomed kids for rides all day.
We liked Butlins — though now I’d look on it as a glorified concentration camp. But then, we didn’t know any different. They’d painted the huts bright colours and made it affordable: I say God bless you, Sir Billy Butlin, you deserved your knighthood. What other opportunity would a lad like me have had to ride a horse? My favourite spot for a holiday these days is Las Ventanas, in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. It’s a beautiful resort and extraordinarily private. Last time we arrived, Jennifer Aniston was just leaving: a lot of people from LA fly down to get a tan before the Grammys or the Oscars. At night, they’ll set you up with a romantic dinner on the beach, which is like white talcum powder — lanterns light the way and they actually comb the sand for you before you walk on it. They do an incredible cabaret too, with these Mexican ninja fire-dancers on stilts. It’s supernatural.
Trouble is, I always sweat bullets when I go to these places. You see, my wife and I subscribe to astrology, and there’s a thing called your sun line. It’s like a star map: you can see where it’s good for you to be — to live, work, create, whatever. Our home at Lake Tahoe is absolutely on my sun line, so when I’m there, I just fart creativity and joy. But my wife’s sun line says she should be on the beach. So she holds a sort of IOU — I owe her a beach house. And you can buy places in Cabo San Lucas, but they’re really not cheap. Not cheap at all.
Travel can be a slog — I hate the indignity of airport security and check-in — but touring does take you to some great places. I’ve played a lot in Japan, and I love it: they’ve kept their culture when so many places haven’t. And I love Fiji, as well — I stop over for a break there if I’m on the way back from Australia. I go to a tiny private island, Turtle Island. You stay in a bure, which is basically an unbelievably expensive hut.
Fiji’s also where I was introduced to the pleasures of kava, the local drink. I liked it so much, I thought of changing my name to kavadale. I used to joke about it being liquid cocaine. You never need a dentist over there, because you can’t feel your face.
I’ve had the pleasure of hanging out with local chiefs and trying the real villagers’ stuff — that’s what you want, not the watered-down version they have at resorts. The good stuff keeps them up for days and nights, celebrating... whatever it is they celebrate. To make it, they put the kava root into what looks like a really disgusting old sock. Then they put that into a kind of wok and beat the living daylights out of it until this milky stuff comes out. Watching all that’s a bit off-putting, but you don’t know if these people were ever cannibals, so you go along with it. And after a couple of coconut shells full of this stuff, believe me, you don’t care about the sock any more.
- David Coverdale talked to Stephen Bleach
