David Coverdale has offered an update on the proposed 30th-anniversary re-release of his collaboration with Jimmy Page. The well-received COVERDALE PAGE set was recorded in several studios on both sides of the Atlantic over the winter of 1991-92 before it was finally released in March 1993.
Asked during a February 18 appearance on SiriusXM‘s “Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk” if there has been any progress on a possible reissue of COVERDALE PAGE‘s eponymously titled LP, David said: “Well, I’ve gotta tell you, there’s been immense progress. I finally reached a very positive agreement with my former record company regarding missing assets. And I got the rights to the COVERDALE PAGE album. So, of course, my first phone call was to Jimmy, and I said, ‘We’ve got it. We’ve got it back, and we can do with it what we want.’ And, of course, Jimmy is in lockdown in the U.K., where it’s really very heavy duty [with the pandemic]. So he’s in his country estate… I literally just texted Jimmy two days ago, and I said, ‘Jimmy, I’m so sorry I haven’t been in touch.’ But we’re resuming contact starting next week to discuss. I’ve got a couple of ideas. I wanna see if we can write courtesy of FaceTime or Zoom. I’ve got a couple of ideas which I think would be good for if indeed we can get back into the studio and plan for a very big, luxurious, complete box set [for] the 30th anniversary in 2023.”
As for what extra material might surface on the expanded “Coverdale Page” set, the WHITESNAKE singer said: “We’ve got four unreleased tracks, which just need to be mixed. But since we reconnected, I’ve been messing around, writing at home. And I have two ideas which could make really fun tracks — just to throw at him and ‘see what you can do with this.’ The way we did it before — we wrote really very potent music together.
“The other thing that I recommended to him was, ‘Let’s remaster the original, but I’d love you, in England, with a mixer of your choice, to do the Jimmy Page mix of the album, and I’ll do the David Coverdale mix as bonus stuff,'” he continued. “And I think that’d be great. He trusts me, I trust him, and I think it would be great for the fans to get Jimmy‘s take on it, ’cause we did everything 50/50 on the project. It was an amazing three years together. I loved it. So, yeah, that’s definitely in the pipeline.”
According to David, it is unlikely that work on the “Coverdale Page” reissue will begin in earnest for several months while the entire world is struggling to come out of the colossal impact of COVID-19 pandemic.
“At this moment in time, at his country estate, I don’t think [Jimmy] has a studio,” he said. “And he certainly doesn’t wanna drive into London. He and I are target ages for this dreadful virus. So I completely support him in that scenario, ’cause there isn’t any rush. Nothing is gonna be going on this year. Even if we have the opportunity of recording, I can record stuff over here, send him the drive for him to do his part, and we can mix it through the technology now, which is something you couldn’t do before. But I have a studio at home, and Jimmy doesn’t. So I’m hoping we can get some new bits and pieces and ideas and put that into play next year when it will be safer to get around.”
Upon its release, “Coverdale Page” sold strongly, peaking at No. 4 on the U.K. album chart and No. 5 in the U.S. The album eventually went platinum in the U.S., despite the fact that the project as a whole was marred by the “LED ZEPPELIN clone” tag, including from ZEPPELIN frontman Robert Plant, who openly expressed his disdain for Coverdale, referring to him as “David Cover-version.” Coverdale was equally vitriolic in his response, saying about the LED ZEPPELIN singer, “There’s certainly no love lost between myself and Robert… I wouldn’t send him cat food if he was starving.”
Coverdale later apologized to Plant, saying in a 2013 interview with TeamRock Radio‘s “Classic Rock Magazine Show”: “I hold [Plant] in the highest esteem as a human being, and as an artist, and I really would like to, you know, sit down, buy him a drink, shake hands and say: ‘I’m really sorry,” you know, “Can we be friends again?’ I don’t hold any animosity, just disappointment in myself that I took the bait and ran with some ugly things. Because it’s not appropriate for somebody I respect so much.”
