He was a touring member of Whitesnake from 1987 to 1989, but recently said the stint "didn't mean an awful lot" to him. He was dismissed after the bandleader decided he wanted to focus on working with guitarist Adrian Vandenberg.

Asked about his relationship with Coverdale, Campbell tells RockPages: "It's good. It was strange for a few years. Adrian didn't want another guitar player in the band. It was nothing against me - when he was hired they didn't tell him there would be two guitar players. There was a certain rivalry in the air.

"When the tour ended, David said to us all that the songs on the new record would be written by Adrian and himself, because they had a great working relationship. I knew deep inside that this wasn't a band I would last in for too long."

The situation came to a head when Coverdale had his tour manager tell Campbell that his wife wasn't welcome on the road, because she and the frontman's wife didn't get along.