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Deep Purple is a damn good band and we've made a niche in rock 'n' roll history. Maybe not a huge one but enough to be very proud of.

I saw Deep Purple live once and I paid money for it and I thought, 'Geez, this is ridiculous.' You just see through all that sort of stuff. I never liked those Deep Purples or those sort of things. I always hated it. I always thought it was a poor man's Led Zeppelin.

Deep Purple definitely belongs in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. 'Cause they had great songs, great musicianship, they had an impact, and they're a huge influence on the heavy metal community as a whole.

Am I the man who killed Deep Purple? I don't think so. I think every band from that era, even if you look at Led Zeppelin, if you look at their first four albums, they're extremely different from one another, and I've never made the same album twice.

Whitesnake more than most rock bands would get a very significant percentage of women in the audience and those were the ones I'd hear the voices because from where I am on stage is a pretty good spot.

No one had ever told me that whites were supposed to sing one kind of music and blacks another - I sang what I liked in the only voice I had.

You had your black bands, and you had your white bands, and if you mixed the two, you found less places to play.

Led Zeppelin. Queen. Deep Purple. These were the bands I listened to. I still listen to them.

There was a time we decided that it was songs that were done especially from my background because of the things we were dealing with, but nowadays, anybody who has a need, and can find the need, they can sing the blues.

When I was playing piano, it was like, 'I'm going to write a song using all the white keys.' My music director, who knew my jazz background, suggested I try big-band music, so we spent a year experimenting with it in concert, and the audience reaction was really good.