Metal-Rules, Marko Syrjälä recently conducted interview with current Whitesnake guitarist Doug Aldrich. Here are few except:

About joining Whitesnake:

He said "When David asked me, originally I was working with Ronnie, we were on tour with Deep Purple and the Scorpions and I heard that David was sending someone to some shows to do some filming of me. Meanwhile, the Scorpions were asking Dio, "Hey we're gonna go on tour with Whitesnake in 2003, do you guys wanna go?" Ronnie said, "No fuckin' way". Me and Jimmy Bain were like "Yeah let's do it, that would be great!" You know, Sykes is gonna be back… I have a lot of respect for other musicians, you know, I mean I really do, Sykes is a great guitar player and a great singer. So we were like, that would be a really cool tour. So then I get a call from David, "Hey come up to my house, I wanna meet you". So I go up and meet David, he's like "I've seen you play, I want you to be in the band". I said "Well, I don't really think that me and Sykes together is gonna work for me, you know", and he says "I'm talking about you doing that job", and I said "Well what about Sykes", and he goes "Well I don't want Sykes, I want you". So I said "Well let me see what my schedule is". At the time I was in Dio, so… and then it turned out that David and I really got a mutual thing going, it was cool."

About unhappy with Dio's album:

Doug says "Nah, it just doesn't sound like what we sounded like together before, I mean, Rudy 's great and Simon played great on it, I thought Simon did a great solo, Simon 's great, and Scott Warren sounded great, but Ronnie was tired and Ronnie doesn't sound his absolute best. He still sounded kick ass, but he was under stress man, he had to make a change mid-tour. I had been in the band for a total of seven shows I think it was, before that thing, and I wasn't up to speed, I couldn't even remember what song came next. I kept having to look at the set list all the time, "What song is that? How does it start?" I couldn't remember, you know. I came over to help, fill in, and see what would happen in the future but then all of a sudden it's like " Doug 's in the band, we're doing a DVD" and I was like "Whoa, whoa, whoa". Originally I thought that was gonna be some footage for a live something, a tribute to Ronnie or like something from his whole career, but it turned into a full on DVD and I didn't play my best, it was not my rig, I was using rental amps, it just sounded like crap man. We didn't even do a sound check that day for that DVD. And I got onstage and both Rudy and I were really freaked out by how it sounded onstage, it sounded really bizarre. So he had to turn down because he was so loud, it was freaking him out, and my sound, I was having trouble with the rentals and it just sounded really uninspiring and I tried to just do my best and play through it, I think there were a couple spots where I played pretty cool, actually like some of the RAINBOW stuff I though it was pretty cool cause it was different, and a couple of like "Gypsy" and stuff like that, but "Stand Up and Shout" , I wasn't happy with that, it's just… and "Don't Talk to Strangers" was another one, on "Evil or Divine" I had been playing that song for the whole tour so I had got something in my head that worked and sounded good, kind of sounded like the record a little bit but it was in my style, my own thing. But on the "Holy Diver Live" I couldn't remember the solo, I just was like "Okay what key are we in? Okay I'm just gonna jam". And it just wasn't as good for me, plus the mix I don't like."

Source Metal-Rules.com