Entertainment For Lively Minds
David Coverdale - what a fruity voice!
Posted by Olthwaite on 8 March 2010 - 11:39am.
I'd never heard David Coverdale speak until I watched Deep Purple's Rock Family Trees last night. What a voice!
He sounded more like a suave, slightly caddish 50s film star - Dennis Price or George Sanders - than a leather-lunged rock god. He also reminded me of Rik Mayall's Bad News character crossed with The Goons' Grytpype Thynne.
Any other musicians whose speaking voices are totally at odds with their image?
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Guy Pratt's excellent memoir 'My Bass And Other Animals'
describes visiting Coverdale at home in Lake Tahoe. Apparently, dress chez Coverdale is strictly pyjamas and robes
Colin Grigson/Bad News on Wogan
Fruity voice in full flow
Coverdale's accent is interesting..
He used to be a broad geordie. He then, shortly after getting the Purple gig, turned up for rehearsals sounding like Roger Moore trying to get inside your younger sister's knickers.
His accent is a complete contrivance.
See also.....
Keith Moon...
Had a very similar west London whine to Stuart Pearce (a seemingly particular nasty nasal Cockernee inflection that spans the area Staines/Uxbridge through to Shepherds Bush - I speak as a sufferer myself) until teaming up with drinking buddies Ollie Reed and Harry Nilsson.
From then on it was all very theatrical darling....
Geordie?
No.
Coverdale is actually from North Yorkhire, around the Redcar/Saltburn area. Roughly as Geordie as someone from Oxford is a Cockney. He original accent is certainly more than a bit Teesside.
East Cleveland, please
As a product of that area, I can spot the twang underneath his RP overlay. Certain vowel sounds just can't be got rid of - A instead of I "A could feel it". And the dying cadence at the end of some sentences.
Alright
I'll give you 'East Cleveland'
But only 'cos I'm from the Boro, like.
Ta, illuminatus
Probably a hair spliting discussion for most, but an important line to draw. Especially when we are all part of the 'global village'.
Sade Adu...
She sounds like she should be selling cockles from a barrow in London's glitzy East End, but looks like an empress gazing regally at her subjects from a throne in Abyssinia.
sounds a lot like this
Bjork
'Ere guvnor, 'ave you seen any geysers round 'ere?
.
Sorry, deleted as it was truly irrelevant.
Green Gartside
Normal speaking voice, but a singing voice somewhere in the stratosphere.
Axl Rose & Slash
These guys look like they should haver each others voices..
Did Mick Jagger and Keith Richards swap accents at some point?
Jagger is the son of a teacher, and Richards the son of a factory worker. They talk as though it was the other way round.
Mick Jagger's voice famously changes with the company he's in...
one minute he's owroight geezah, then he's in his Jamaican riddim and finally he's discussing that splendid cover drive with the chaps at the MCC.
I love him, but The Dame
has been known to wander likewise.
And what company!
"..he's discussing that splendid cover drive with the chaps at the MCC."
And David Hepworth, of course.
Didn't he say Ricardo at what point
Rather than Richard. I bet that got annoying very quickly.
Coverdale
makes Richard Burton sound like Joe Pasquale.
Makes me think of the misheard lyrics
on Pride and Joy from the Coverdale Page album. If you didn't know any better you'd think he was singing:
Take me to your river, baby
Take me to your sea
Purify my soul
and pour your horsehit over me.