Doug Aldrich first came to prominence as a member of DIO after years of slogging it out with bands including House of Lords and Hurricane. In 2002, he left Ronnie’s band to become one of the lead guitar players for Whitesnake. Over the years, Snake charmer and bandleader, David Coverdale, grew fond of the wickedly talented muse. Aldrich has since been dubbed The Musical Director of Whitesnake. In fact, Aldrich co-wrote every song on the band’s new album, Forevermore, with his boss, Coverdale. The result is the best Whitesnake album since the classic, self-titled album released in 1987.

With songs like “Love Will Set You Free,” “I Need You (Shine A Light)” and the very British sounding “Fare Thee Well” Whitesnake has proved that classic rock not be classic in age to be great. The new tunes are fresh, sound sonically amazing and will have anyone who loved the 80’s hard rock smiling ear-to-ear and playing this one over and over again. Aldrich, along with fellow axe-slinger Reb Beach, bring excitement and maximum riffage and soloing to the record. Coverdale is in fine voice as well.

In the interview that follows, Doug and I discuss the making of the new album, Coverdale’s voice and the songwriting process behind the new album. We also talk about Jeff Beck, the passing of Ronnie James Dio and the time Doug auditioned for Kiss when he was eighteen years old. Suffice it to say that Whitesnake is back. Tawny has been replaced by a smoking pole dancer in the band’s newest video, “Love Will Set You Free” making one wonder if Rolls Royce’s might just be overrated. Oh to be that pole…　

Doug: Coming from you, that really means a lot. We had a great time making this record. It is a very simple process. There is not a lot of drama; it is very natural and organic. We just started with one song and if we got stuck, then we just moved on. When we came back to it, then we had a fresh perspective. I think this is a very diverse album.

Doug: It is not a coincidence, as David Coverdale has influenced me since I was thirteen-years-old. One time my mom dropped me off at my friend’s house, I remember it because I had just gotten my first really good guitar, which was a Les Paul Gold top; I had little Peavey amp. My friend and I spent the day trying to figure out “Mistreated.” That is when I first heard David. If somebody had said to me then, that I would be jamming with him now, then I would have said they were crazy.

When you’re writing songs you can’t plan anything, really. If you want to get the best out of yourself, then you just have to let it flow. I will say that there are flavors of Whitesnake on the album but there are other influences of both David’s and mine. I can hear the Faces, Zeppelin, Thin Lizzy and the Allman Brothers. David is a huge Allman Brothers fan and I think that is one of the main places he picked up on the twin lead guitars.

When David split from Deep Purple, the most obvious thing for him to do would have been to do another band just like Deep Purple. David took a bold step and went more towards the blues and made something new. Through the years, there were bands like the Allmans, Slade and Thin Lizzy that all had that groove to them; almost like an Ian Paice kind of groove. There are tips of the hat to all of those bands on the new record.

Doug: Before David put any lyrics to that song, he would say, “I really like that Stevie Wonder sounding song.” Stevie used to play the clavinet with that style of sixteenth notes. Over the past five or ten years, I have really learned that you can’t force yourself to write a certain way. You just can’t go into the studio and say, “I am going to write a new ‘Here I Go Again.’” It has to actually come together in an organic way and you have to just let it flow.

Doug: David is very attached to that song, it means a lot to him. I don’t even know what it is he is talking about; there is a lot of speculation about the meaning of that song. After hearing that song over 1000 times last year, when we were writing it and working on it, he was still totally entranced with it. I am going to tell him you like it. I was worried it might be too outside of the boundaries but it really came together well.

Doug: We all thought that was going to be the single. When we were talking about what song we should shoot for a video, I told them the obvious choice was “I Need You (Shine a Light).” It is simple and catchy. We all planned on that song being the one. We sent our top three choices to Frontiers Records and they chose “Love Will Set You Free.”

I agree with you, that it is a cool song. It has that Motown influence that Whitesnake has always had. David is a huge Motown guy. I just was banging around on the guitar, doing kind of that “Shotgun” riff. I took it to David and he just sang something amazing. I stopped and tried to get him to redo what he was doing. We had actually been filming the session that day, so I got a copy of the video and sent it to David and told him that this was a rough idea, but it could really be something. It worked out good.

Doug: David and I would always talk about doing these crazy boogie things and we would just jam together. David had a brainstorm to write a song and put in a huge guitar battle. As soon as we started doing this song he said, “This is the one where we do the guitar battle.” That tune is just relentless. It has a real throwback sound to it. We were in pre-production jamming through that song, and our new drummer, Brian Tichy, was working on it. I was still trying to get my parts down and he was already experimenting with crazy beats. He really played amazing on this song, as well as the entire album.

Doug: That song pretty much fell into place. A lot of times, I would take an idea that David had, or I would just come up with things myself, and take them to him. I didn’t want to go in cold; I like to have my homework done. I had a concept for something that started off really simple with an intimate, acoustic sound. It could have gone a lot of different ways. It could have gone soft to heavy, or it could have stayed acoustic – we did a version like that as well, actually. We could have just left an acoustic intro and then had the rest of the song be heavy. I sat down with David to see what he thought of this weird chord thing that I was doing. He sang the coolest melody over what I was doing and I knew then, that no matter how it ended up, it was going to be really cool. He really hit all the sweet spots in the melody.

Doug: Reb is an extremely talented musician. I think he went to Berkeley College of Music. I think he was also into show business as a kid. He is an extremely talented player.

Doug: It has gotten so much better. David and I write everything and we make the demos. We take the demos to Reb and ask him what he wants to play on. He gets involved with the songs that he really feels good about. You could tell which ones he liked because he would start making those faces and try to get those crazy sounds. I wanted the process to be fun for him. Reb is the type of guy that you don’t want to think too much; you just want him to get in and play. I think Reb and I really bonded making this record. There is still a competition. When we get onstage, he is still going to be gunning for me and I’m going to do whatever I have to do but it’s a good competition now.

In the beginning, he liked the way he played, and I liked the way I played, and we didn’t see eye-to-eye as much; there was more of a hardcore competition. We have matured beyond that now. I really look forward to seeing what different types of things he is going to play.

David wanted us to do a harmony guitar section on “Love Will Set You Free.” I did a lead and the harmony to it. I showed it to Reb and he did it his way and it really sounded fresh. I went back and learned it his way. In the past, I would not have been interested in doing that. I am still learning what works and what doesn’t work. I am learning how to appreciate things more. I feel really blessed to be a guitar player. I used to read articles by guys like George Lynch, or Zakk Wylde, and they would talk about how much they still practiced. You really need to do that because as soon as you think you have it all figured out, then somebody comes along and smacks you down.

Doug: Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck are still out there playing their asses off; they are the greats. Eric Clapton is still playing. We just lost Gary Moore, who was one of the best. Then you have Michael Schenker and Uli Roth… these are all masters of the guitar. I appreciate what you are saying but I am actually not comfortable with compliments. I know there are certain things I do well and I just try to do them to the best of my ability.

I was working on a song with my buddy Derek Sherinian, who is the keyboard player with Black Country Communion. At some point, he is going to do another solo record. Derek is a crazy talented musician. We banged out this song and he put it together and sent it back to me. He came over and he was trying to get me to play a part with him and I was like, “Dude, that is hard. I can’t do it. I can fake it and do it my way but I can’t do it like you do it.” He was fine with that but that just shows that I have to do things my own way. When I do them that way then I can hang in there.

Doug: I saw that. Jeff Beck is a freak of nature. A producer I worked with told me a story about Jeff Beck once. One day, he was doing production with Queen, and Brian May had that famous guitar that he made himself. He told me that people were always picking that guitar up and trying to play it, but the guitar was always out of tune. He told me that you just couldn’t keep it in tune, no matter what you did. He told me that Jeff Beck came in and picked up that guitar and it sounded perfect. Jeff Beck is just that type of natural player who can make any guitar sound good.

Doug: When I saw Gary Moore play, I knew that is how I wanted to play. I wanted to attack each note just like that. Gary didn’t fuck around; you could really feel what Gary was playing, no matter what it was. I think Gary Moore was a really sensitive person. You could tell that from the intensity that came out in his music. His music came from his soul. We toured with Gary but I was really shy back then so I never talked with him much. I wish I would have.

Doug: For me, honestly, I am not just saying this because I work with him, when I first heard David Coverdale sing I knew that was the type of voice I wanted in a singer. He has the biggest voice and a giant tone. It is like Eddie Van Halen’s Brown Sound on guitar, vocally—David is that special. Last tour, we might have cancelled a couple of dates, but David’s voice is back 100%.

You never really know what someone is like until you are in a room working with him. Trying to capture David’s voice on one little microphone is something that just can’t happen. I have never said this before, but you can stick a microphone next to an amp and you can get a sound of what is going on, but you don’t quite get the total real sound. When you hear David Coverdale sing in the studio, without a microphone, you realize what a giant voice he has. Ronnie James Dio had a giant voice as well.

Doug: Absolutely, Paul Rodgers is one of the best.

Doug: This album is classic Coverdale. This is the same way David has sounded since Deep Purple. The one thing about vocalists is that as you get older, the muscles in your throat change, and there are going to be differences. David, to me, has held on well. He is really close to having the same tone that he had in early Whitesnake. He sounds great on this album and that is how he sounds in concert.

Doug: That sounds so proper. It is not like when I do a guitar clinic I am going to be giving out flu shots or something. I am The Director of Notes [laughing]. It’s really not that organized. I think my background is similar to a lot of the guys David has worked with. I love the old Whitesnake guys like Bernie Marsden and Mickey Moody. I have been trying to bring some of that back into the band and I think David digs that. I have a lot of respect for John Sykes. Adrian Vandenberg is amazing as well and you can’t leave him out. There is a common thread throughout my entire background that runs deep with these players.

I think David can tell that I have no agenda. I just want to write things that inspire him to get excited about playing music. A lot of guys rest on their laurels but David is the type of guy who texts you at 5:30 in the morning saying, “Put on a pot of tea. I want to sing right now.” I think that is so cool. David is also very open to songwriting and will listen to any idea. When he sits down with me, I have no inhibitions, whatsoever. If I said, “David, I want to do a song with accordion, kazoo and a singing cat in the background,” he would check it out and see where it goes. That is a great musical partner to hang with, as there are no rules.

Doug: I have done a couple.

Doug: There is a possibility but I am so busy. I have been 24/7 with Whitesnake over the last year while we have been in a creative period. I have been very focused on keeping the creative juices flowing with the new album. If inspiration hits while I am in bed, then I have to get up and go into the studio and put it down, or play it into my phone, or whatever. Then, the next day, I have to get up and start banging away on it and find out what direction it will go.

There is always an odd session, here or there, like I did with Derek Sherinian, but right now its all Whitesnake. We’re going to be very busy touring this year. We are really excited about this version of the band. I think this is the best version of Whitesnake that I have played with.

Doug: I forget what happened to Ace but he was out of the band. Ace is badass, as he has been a rock star forever. Anyway, I went to the studio and I played over a couple of tracks that they were working on. I thought that Kiss might be great opportunity for me. I jammed with them a couple of times and it was beyond putting into words. I was a kid; I was eighteen. In my head, I was probably fifteen. At this time, you have to remember that no one had seen them without makeup on, so I wasn’t very comfortable looking at them. It was wild. I remember walking into the studio and seeing these stacks of Marshalls on stage and that was my backline. They told me I could play as loud as I wanted to play. They actually called me back for a third time. It’s a long story, but basically they knew I was too young, and that I had a lot more to learn before I could be in the position to be in that sort of thing. Vinnie Vincent got the job.

Doug: We are now. That was the time for me when I decided to get serious. I thought to myself that if they had seen something in me then I had better get serious as maybe I could do something one day. I am still trying to get it together now. It made me work hard.

Here is a funny story: Gene had given me his phone number when I was auditioning for Kiss. It was his home phone. When Kiss came to town, I told a bunch of my buddies that I would call up Gene and get us backstage passes. I called Gene’s house and there was a party going on. You could hear glasses and there were people screaming and stuff. Finally, they get Gene on the phone and I go, “Hey Gene, this is Doug Aldrich.” He said, “Who?” He basically said not to call him again. I was like, “Oh man, how humiliating.” A few years later, we did a few gigs with Kiss in Europe and New Zealand. We have since become friends. He is a legend.

Doug: As far as the songs go, Slide It In was a record that my friends and I really got into. For me, Slide It In is the better album. Whitesnake was the big album and those songs are really badass. We still play them and they go over great. They are some of the all-time great rock songs, so you can’t debate that. For my personal taste, however, Slide It In is the one.

Doug: I saw Heaven and Hell dates for 2010 and I thought he must be doing better—that is what made it so hard. I was in touch with Ronnie more about sports than music. He loved the New York Giants. It was football season when he got sick. He had asked me to do a tour at the end of 2009. I told them that if he asked David, and that if he was all right with it, then I would be glad to do it.

When he got sick, I tried to talk to him about fun things, like football and stuff, instead of burdening him with questions about his health. I might just ask how he was doing and he would go, “This thing is a real pain in the ass but I am doing better.” I got a text when I was out of the country telling me that he was really sick and I called Wendy [Dio] right away and she told me that he was not going to make it. I said, “I am coming back home tomorrow. Do you think he will hang in there that long?” She said, “Definitely, he wants to see you but you need to get here.” I was worried about it so I told my wife to get the baby and go see Ronnie. I’m so grateful I did that. She told him that we loved him and he blinked to her so we know he understood. I didn’t get to say goodbye, as he passed away before I could get there.

It was a huge loss for Metal. I feel lucky to have known him and spend time with him, in addition to playing music with him. One time, we went to a sports bar down the street because I wanted to watch an Eagles game. Ronnie went with me to support me. A longtime mate of his named Willie joined us and there was this big guy who was some sort of actor, and he was for the other team and he just would not let up on me. He kept making all these rude comments and Ronnie finally got pissed off. Ronnie jumped up and went nose-to-nose with this big guy. I was like, “Holy shit.” We all got chucked out of the place, but how cool is that, Ronnie stuck up for me.