Just reading about the late Martin Birch who produced them first few Whitesnake albums and a lot of the Iron Maiden albums (along with many other bands I hasten to add) and he said he loved working with Iron Maiden as they were down to earth, perhaps it was refreshing for him after seeing Coverdale's ego get bigger after each album. There's no taking away from Coverdale he had a great voice and tbh if in the mid 80's he'd brought out late 70's sounding records it probably wouldn't have made him loads of money like it did but we can look back now and see the late 70s/early 80s Whitesnake albums have stood the test of time much better imho.
The beauty of hindsight