Adrian Vandenberg has admitted to a disagreement with David Coverdale over the 2021 reissue of Whitesnake's Restless Heart album. The guitarist made the revelation while chatting to eonmusic at this year's Stonedead Festival in Newark, UK.
Vandenberg, who was a member of Whitesnake from 1987 to 1990, and again from 1994 - 1997 also talked about the injury which prevented him from taking part in the recording of the band's 1990 release, Slip Of The Tongue.
Said Adrian: "I had a serious wrist thing. I was in a hotel working on the guitar parts, because I was already recording the rhythm guitars, and I felt like somebody was holding my wrist, like there was a tight band. I had all kinds of theories about it, and the thing was, there was so much pressure on it because of the success of ’87’ [the self-titled, multi-million selling Whiesnake album], so I told David; “you know what, I’ve got to go home. I’ve got to take care of it”. So we talked about it, and; “well, we need somebody to play the parts”, and we both came up with Steve Vai."
He affirmed: "I know all the theories that say it’s all like a bullshit thing; it wasn’t."
Going on to talk about his work on the 2021 reissue of the band's Restless Heart, Vandenberg admitted that although he worked on it, he and band leader David Coverdale had differing visions for how it should sound.
"The thing was, we ended up in a disagreement about the direction of it," he admitted, adding, "So Joel [Hoekstra, current Whitesnake guitarist] doubled the rhythms that I did on the album to beef it up a little bit."
Expanding, and regarding the album's 1997 creation, he said: "It was weird because the demos that we made for Restless Heart were also more back to Whitesnake being a blues rock band. I’ve always been a Whitesnake fan, so I know exactly what Whitesnake is supposed to be about, and that’s what I discussed with David at the time. We both decided, you know what? It’s a weird period, it’s the ‘90s, let’s bring Whitensnake back to what it originally is, like a blues rock band without too many frills going on, too much polishing and stuff. Like in ‘Too Many Tears’; that’s where David especially excels; he’s got this big, bluesy voice, low register, and that’s just great, and I’m really happy that we recorded that album."
Read the entire interview here.
