David Coverdale Reveals The First Challenge He Faced In Deep Purple

David Coverdale recently recalled how Deep Purple tested him to see if he would ‘cut it’ with the band while chatting on the Whitesnake TV.

The act’s ‘test’ took place on Coverdale’s first Scandinavian tour with DP in 1973, as the singer shared how his then-new bandmates caught him off guard after a long night of partying and decided to play a prank, recalling:

“I told a story earlier about my first Scandinavian tour with Deep Purple. I think it was like a testing area to see if Glenn [Hughes] and I could cut it. Glenn, obviously, we know, but I was the unknown factor. Anyway, we went to a recording studio in Copenhagen.

I was supposed to write the lyrics for a song to a rift that Ritchie had, and I’d been partying so hard I’d fallen dead asleep on the couch in the studio. And in those days, you didn’t have iPhones; obviously, you had little Instamatics you’d take with you.”

Well, upon seeing that their new frontman was ‘dead asleep,’ the band decided to mess with him ‘a bit:’

“I was fast asleep [and] the band covered me in Scandinavian porn, the most graphic stuff you can imagine; took thousands of photographs and then put my phone back. So, I didn’t know what was on my phone until I went to collect the pictures from the local pharmacy.”

And to exactly no one’s surprise, really, the public reaction to the ‘prank’ pictures wasn’t the best, as Coverdale recalled:

“And, of course, the girls [in the pharmacy] are looking at me like I’m the most perverted b*stard, and it was quite understandable. It was pretty graphic, but… That was a funny one.”

David then also disclosed the song he was trying to ‘write’ before the prank took place, revealing it was ‘Coronarias Redig‘ from Deep Purple’s 1974 album ‘Burn.’

So, that ‘test’ was one of the first challenges Coverdale faced in the band, though other ‘challenges’ weren’t as ‘funny’ as you can check out why Glenn Hughes thought he and Coverdale were the ‘black sheep‘ of the act.