David Coverdale ( b5 )

In 1989 Coverdale recruited Vandenberg to record a new album, Slip of the Tongue. Vandenberg co-wrote the entire album with Coverdale, but a wrist injury sidelined him from contributing the solo guitar work. Steve Vai was recruited, re-recording most of Vandenberg's existing parts and finishing the album. Upon release, it was a great commercial success in Europe and the US.

The album peaked at number 10 in the US, and has achieved platinum status. Critical response was mixed, with Allmusic critics Steve Erlwine and Greg Prato noting that despite high sales, Slip of the Tongue "was a considerable disappointment after the across-the-board success of Whitesnake". The following tour, for which Vandenberg returned to play along with Vai, cemented Whitesnake's reputation as a giant in the world of hard rock. The tour continued until the end of 1990.

At that point, Coverdale had grown uncomfortable with the entity he felt Whitesnake had become, and admitted that he got "caught up in it". In one interview, Coverdale stated:

It got louder and louder, and so did I, to the point now where I have to get dressed up like a "girly man" and tease one's questionable bangs or hair and it's all becoming a bit... boring.

In 1990 Coverdale sang and co-wrote (with Hans Zimmer and Billy Idol) the song "The Last Note of Freedom" for the Tony Scott film Days of Thunder.

On 26 September 1990, after the last show on the Slip of the Tongue tour in Tokyo, Coverdale disbanded Whitesnake indefinitely. Tired of the business in general, the rigors of touring and troubled by his separation and later divorce from Tawny Kitaen, Coverdale wanted to find other values in life and took "private time to reflect" and re-assess his career direction.

Coverdale and Page (1991–1993)

In the early spring of 1991, a collaboration was set up with guitarist Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin fame. Both parties have said that the collaboration revitalised them on many levels. This collaboration resulted in the Coverdale-Page album released in March 1993. The album was a hit all over the world reaching number 4 in the UK and number 5 in the US, and was certified Platinum in the US on 7 April 1995, but the US tour for the album had to be cancelled due to slow ticket sales. After a limited Japanese tour, Coverdale and Page parted ways. In part, the problem had been the comparison to Robert Plant who had fronted Led Zeppelin, as vocalist, with Jimmy Page. Some of their audience criticised Coverdale, feeling he was merely a Plant clone; Plant himself referred to the team-up as ‘David Cover-version’. Others felt the short-lived collaboration only served to inspire Page to once again hook up with Plant, a year later.

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