During a conversation with Subculture Entertainment, Whitesnake frontman David Coverdale said the younger generation of rock bands lacks guitar heroes.
He said (via Blabbermouth):
“If you listen to [Whitesnake’ latest album] ‘Flesh & Blood’, you can hear that the individual performances are all incredible.
“The rhythm section is a separate entity and the incredible guitar interplay is like a beautiful sonic tapestry. And I want that in a performance that people get to see.
“A lot of the new rock bands don’t really have guitar heroes, and, to me, it’s f*cking synonymous with rock. And also the sexy ‘roll.’ I’m not interested in just being a rock band; I wanna be a rock ‘n’ roll band.
“I like the sex [element] in rock, which that’s the ‘roll’ aspect. The whole expression ‘rock and roll’ was [coined] in the blues and jazz days as a sex act: ‘C’mon, baby, let’s go and rock ‘n’ roll.’ Nothing to do with f*cking guitars. [Laughs]
“Yeah, putting the setlist together… You won’t be disappointed, I can guarantee. We’re definitely featuring some of the new songs. We found stuff like ‘Hey You (You Make Me Rock)’ and ‘Shut Up & Kiss Me’ are huge crowd[-participation] songs.
“All of ’em. And ‘Trouble Is Your Middle Name’ – they just fit right into the live performance. It’s as if we’ve been doing ’em for 30 years. But what it’s done is refreshed the older songs.
“So you come out of doing ‘Trouble Is Your Middle Name’ and then play ‘Slow An’ Easy’ or ‘Slide It In’, and those songs are amped up even more because you just played something fresh and new. So it just feeds itself.
“And the crowd and the fans of Whitesnake, from what I can see on social media, are extraordinarily proud of the fact that their favorite band is still creating relevant rock and roll music that stands up to the biggest successes we had 20 years ago, 30 years ago, 40 years ago. And that’s one of the very validating things [about Whitesnake today].”