Whitesnake were joined by former bandmate, Def Leppard guitarist Vivian Campbell, on December 19th in Sheffield, UK. Watch them perform the Whitesnake classic “Still Of The Night” below:

In a new interview with RockPages.gr, Vivian Campbell discusses the band’s new self-titled album, as well as his relationship with former Dio/Whitesnake bandmate David Coverdale.

Rockpages.gr: How’s your relationship with David Coverdale?

Vivian Campbell: “It’s good. It was strange for a few years; we didn’t speak for many years… with Dio I was fired, with Whitesnake things kinda fizzled out. The tour manager at the time… after the end of the Whitesnake/1987 Tour, we were working on demos of what was supposed to be our next record and there was some evident weirdness even with Adrian (Vandenberg). We were getting along fine with Adrian but the truth is that he didn’t want another guitar player in the band. It was nothing against me. When he was hired in Whitesnake, they didn’t tell him that there would be two guitar players. Having said that, there was a certain rivalry in the air even though neither of us had played on the record and none of us could have a legitimate claim for a solo on the live shows. When the tour ended, David said to us that all the songs on the new record would be written by Adrian and himself because they had a great working relationship. Right then, I knew deep inside me that this wasn’t a band (that) I would last for too long. On top of that, my wife at the time and Tawny Kitaen (Coverdale’s wife at the time) didn’t like each other and during the tour, Whitesnake’s tour manager came to me and said that David didn’t want to bring your wife with me on tour. I had just gotten married and I was thinking: ‘what? Really…?’.”

Rockpages.gr: Why the tour manager and why not David himself? I mean, why didn’t David come to you and said it straight to you?

Vivian Campbell: “Exactly. That’s the problem that I had with David because I always thought that he didn’t have the balls to come to me, look me in the eyes and say what he wanted to say. Even, when he wanted to let me go, he asked the tour manager to break the news to me. Several years ago, we did a tour with Whitesnake, I had the chance to sit with him and explain to him that he had lost my respect when he did that back in the 80s. David was very apologetic and pointed down that he was in this bad relationship… living in an ivory tower, having people do things for him instead of doing those things by himself. But all this belongs to the past… we are all good now.”

Read the full interview at RockPages.gr.