Former DEEP PURPLE and current WHITESNAKE frontman David Coverdale spoke to Darren Paltrowitz about his decision to move out of his longtime home in Incline Village, Nevada and set up base in the Sierra Nevada foothills.
“After having 10 years of degenerative arthritis, after 12 years, or whatever the hell, having a really big house — four floors and absolutely impractical for elevators, at 7,000 feet — instead of fighting for it, as I did in my last divorce, I couldn’t do it anymore; I couldn’t deal with it,” David said. “And it’s just beautiful — postcards from God on a daily basis. It’s one of the most beautiful alpine lakes in the world. There’s no high-rise buildings. You’re not allowed to build above tree level. When people would fly in from Los Angeles, they’d be standing on the deck just biting off chunks of fresh air. But, yeah, it’s a glorious, glorious place.”
Asked what brought him to that area in the first place, the British-born singer, who has lived in America since the mid-1980s, said: “Well, it was tax. I’ve been a tax exile since I was 21 years old. When the ’87 album just started to go batshit, we had a seven-hour meeting in Los Angeles, and they were wooing me to Delaware or Miami. The music business, at that time, of course, was Los Angeles. So I said, ‘What the closest place…’ And funnily enough, at school, I’d done a school project of the Squaw Valley Winter Olympics. So I had heard of Lake Tahoe, but I was unfamiliar with the geographics of it. And the very first day I woke up — I arrived in the middle of the night. There was no streetlights — it was just pitch black. I think I finished a world tour and had a hive of wasps up my ass about something. And the next day I woke up still kind of pissed and grumpy, making a coffee. And I opened these drapes to this drop-jaw, stunning, gorgeous view, widescreen — just unbelievable. I got my coffee, and I walked down to this boat dock, and I sat there, and I felt like all this rusty armor of all the bullshit and the dramas and the soap operas that go on on tours just drop off and into the water. It was an extraordinary meeting. It was like those Hollywood moments of seeing this woman walking in slo-mo, and you suddenly, your drink’s paused, slo-moed halfway to your mouth, and it’s love at first sight and time stopped. That was that kind of moment, and it still is.”
This past April, Coverdale dropped $2.2 million from the asking price of his Lake Tahoe estate. Coverdale put the home on the market in April 2019 for for $9.85 million, but that price came down six months ago to $7.65 million.
Back in late March, it was announced that all of WHITESNAKE‘s previously announced touring activities, including this summer’s U.S. trek with SAMMY HAGAR & THE CIRCLE and NIGHT RANGER, were being canceled so that Coverdale could undergo surgery for bilateral inguinal hernia.
Coverdale had both his knees replaced with titanium in 2017 after suffering from degenerative arthritis. He later explained that he was in so much pain with arthritis in his knees that it hampered his ability to perform live.
WHITESNAKE has been touring in support of its latest album, “Flesh & Blood”, which was released in May 2019 via Frontiers Music Srl. The disc follows the 2011 critically acclaimed studio album “Forevermore” and 2015’s “The Purple Album”, a reimagining of DEEP PURPLE classics from Coverdale‘s time in that band.
