Jimmy Page celebrates his 81st birthday today (January 9). And while the Led Zeppelin legend has enjoyed huge success in his career, he’s also had a few missteps along the way - including a short-lived superstar project with Whitesnake’s David Coverdale.
The duo were billed as Coverdale • Page. Coverdale himself jokingly christened the project ‘Led Snake’.
With such star power, it seemed inevitable that their self-titled 1993 album would sell millions. Only it didn’t turn out that way.
When the album was released in March 1993, Coverdale and Page gave a joint interview to Kerrang!
Page explained how he and Coverdale had begun working together.
“I wanted to do a really big album and get out on the road and show I was still alive and kicking, basically,” Page said. “I’d been wading through scores of cassettes of singers, and it was getting pretty daunting. I wasn’t getting any inspiration at all. And then I got a call saying, ‘Would you consider working with David?’”
Previously, the pair had met on a few occasions, but only briefly. As a result, their first step was to see if they could connect on a social level.
“We felt we had to get together and see how we got on socially,” Page explained. “I think we agreed on a couple of weeks to see how it would go, and in that time we had such a wealth of material - it just came flowing out. We just went behind locked doors and started writing, and kept everything very private.”
In this interview, Page also felt it was important to clarify a comment he had made about Whitesnake’s 1987 hit Still Of The Night.
Page was of course famous for using a violin bow during his guitar solo in Zeppelin shows, and in the video for Still Of The Night, Whitesnake guitarist Adrian Vandenberg was seen pulling a violin bow across his guitar strings.
Page was reported to have said that he fell off his bed laughing when he saw that video, but as he told Kerrang!, he was laughing at that one moment in the video, not the whole song.
“Shall we get this story straight?” Page said. “The first time I saw Still Of The Night I was sitting on my bed watching the television and I did fall off the bed laughing when the guy picked up the violin bow. That’s what it was about. It wasn’t anything to do with the rest of the song. It was purely the reference to the bow, which wasn’t used on the record as far as I know.”
Page even said how much he was looking forward to touring with Coverdale and performing Still Of The Night and other Whitesnake songs alongside Led Zeppelin classics and Coverdale • Page originals. “We’re both equally proud of the work we’ve done in our respective pasts,” he said. “I’m going to have fun playing Whitesnake songs.”
The Coverdale • Page album had some flashes of brilliance in songs such as Shake My Tree, Ride And Joy and Take Me For A Little While. The album made the top 10 in the US and UK.
A backing band was put together for a world tour, with Guy Pratt (Pink Floyd) on bass and Denny Carmassi (Heart) on drums.
But the only shows came in December 1993 in Japan. And that was the end of Coverdale • Page.
Soon after, Page reunited with former Zeppelin singer Robert Plant, and Coverdale resurrected Whitesnake.
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