David Coverdale up to me and said, 'Please keep the band together.' David played me the album that Tommy did with Billy Cobham. We liked his playing on it and invited Tommy to audition.'" The band released one studio album with Bolin, "Come Taste the Band" in 1975. The album was less successful than previous records, and at the end of the tour in March 1976, Coverdale reportedly walked off in tears and handed in his resignation, to which he was told there was no band left to quit. The decision to disband Deep Purple had been made some time before the
David Coverdale 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. In 1994 Coverdale assembled a new line-up of Whitesnake (with the exception of Coverdale's musical partner, guitarist Adrian Vandenberg and bassist Rudy Sarzo, both of whom had been in Whitesnake since 1987) to tour for the release of