Whitesnake Singer Accused of Lipsynching was a top story earlier this year and here it is again as we look back at the biggest stories from 2009 so far: (antiMusic) Does Whitesnake's frontman David Coverdale lipsynch, or as our UK friends call it, mime to pre-recorded tapes? One of his peers says that he saw him do it and isn't to happy about the practice. Blabbermouth has the story (and the video):Spain's The Metal Circus recently conducted an interview with legendary vocalist Joe Lynn Turner (Rainbow, Deep Purple, Yngwie Malmsteen) about the new Sunstorm album, "House Of Dreams", his upcoming concerts in Spain with Big Noize, the Russian connection and the fact that Ritchie Blackmore won't ever reform Rainbow.
When asked if he has ever used pre-recorded tapes for backing and/or lead vocals, Joe replied, "To be honest with you, I have one machine that helps sing the backgrounds — it's from DigiTech, and it's a great technology — but it's not samples, it's live; you have to sing into the microphone and then this machine will take your voice, whatever you put into this machine is exactly what you get. So if you sing like sh*t, it's gonna sound like s***. So there's no wizardry, there's no tapes. Because recently I heard on the Internet that David Coverdale was using all kinds of tapes. Well, I was in Finland [in June 2008] with Graham Bonnet and we were on the same festival [Sauna Open Air; see video at the full story link] as Whitesnake, and I couldn't believe he was using these tapes — for lead singing! Not just backgrounds, but lead! And I was... My mouth was open. I was like, 'What the f**k, David?! You can't do this. You look so stupid, so foolish.' And everyone is complaining about this. No, I'm singing live. This is what you get; that's it. . . I'm not trying to talk sh*t... This is true. Everybody sees this. . . I couldn't believe it, because he [David] was always one of my favorite singers. To use tapes for a lead vocal... I can understand backgrounds if the [rest of the bandmembers] don't sing. But for lead?! You've gotta be kidding!" - Check out the video and judge for yourself