Coverdale Dishes on the Mystery of Whitesnake’s Cropped Cover

The cover art for Whitesnake's 1984 classic 'Slide It In' is a shot of a young woman wearing a deep-V neckline with a snake wrapped around her shoulder, and the head descending into her cleavage. But the hard rock band known for having hot women in its videos doesn't show her full face on the album. Why not?

"'Slide It In' was particularly an interesting cover," singer David Coverdale reveals 25 years later to Noisecreep. "It was a 17-year-old model's first assignment. She had to have this python draped around her shoulders, which was all fine and dandy until it started to move between her substantial glow and she fainted dead away.

"So I had to crop the picture at her nose because her eyes were rolling up," Coverdale says. "And then we had to get another model in for the pictures for the back cover. "

The back of the album shows a woman in backless dress with the snake's head at her neck and the body wrapped from shoulder to opposite hip – and it looks like the same woman in the same outfit.

"There's always a story somewhere," Coverdale laughs.