WHITESNAKE frontman David Coverdale is featured in a new in-depth career spanning interview with Ultimate-Guitar.com's Steven Rosen. An excerpt is available below.

UG: Let’s connect some of the dots from your past before we get onto the new album. If DEEP PURPLE could have held it together, would you have remained with them? Could you see yourself as being in Purple all these years later if that’s how the dice had tumbled?

Coverdale: "Oh, god, I don’t know; I don’t play that hypothetical game. I don’t do comparisons. It’s there but for the grace of god. Thank god I went on my own journey. But I’m utterly grateful beyond words for the courage that those guys used giving me an opportunity ‘cause the adventure continues. I wanted out very quickly; I wanted out soon as I saw the downward spiral and part of me felt responsible because I brought in the catalyst of that beginning.

UG: Tommy Bolin?

Coverdale: "It wasn’t Tommy’s responsibility or whatever but it was the match that lit the candle to set the explosions in motion. It’s interesting that since Kevin Shirley did the remix of Come Taste the Band, there’s been a lot of people coming on my website asking questions including the guy who seems to be administering the Purple catalog; a guy called Drew Thompson. He was asking me about some documentary that we’d made during the making of Come Taste the Band, which was actually a spoof. He thought it was a legitimate documentary because he was like Sherlock Holmes trying to find footage and stuff on Purple. You know, pursuing the scraping-the-barrel effect."

UG: So you ultimately wanted out of Deep Purple?

Coverdale: "I wanted to finish after what I felt was a very difficult American tour. I felt that if you took Purple in the state that it was into the UK, it would have just broken an awful lot of hearts. And I was talked into it by my friend, Rob Cooksey, who was at that time acting manager of Purple. That was an immense lesson for me that you don’t in big business, you don’t do friends favors of that magnitude. But I was absolutely worn out emotionally and physically by the entire experience. Then for me to turn around and see Jon Lord and Ian Paice, two founder members, playing with their fuckin’ heads down instead of their usual proud and arrogant attitude, body language, was just too much for me. I didn’t want to be part of the complete ripping of the Purple fabric."

Click here for the complete interview.