David Lee Roth’s solo career has been fascinating, frustrating, sometimes glorious, occasionally risible but rarely anything other than entertaining. The man with the billion-dollar ego quit Van Halen in 1985 with the intention of becoming the ultimate showbiz juggernaut, a rock’n’roll Frank Sinatra with the high kicks of an Olympic gymnast and the kind of luxuriant chest rug not seen since Allied Carpets went bust.
As the five releases covered in this no-frills, every-expense-spared box set illustrate, he started strong then precipitously tailed off. 1985’s four-track EP Crazy From The Heat, released while he was technically still in Van Halen, was Showbiz Dave in full effect, serving up showboating Beach Boys, Edgar Winter Band and Lovin’ Spoonful covers, plus a none-more-Vegas update of Louis Prima’s Just A Gigolo/I Ain’t Got Nobody medley. The Van Halen brothers reportedly hated it, and Dave was officially out the door a couple of weeks after it was released.
Galvanised by a dream-team band – virtuoso bassist Billy Sheehan, drummer Gregg Bissonette and hotshot guitarist Steve Vai, whose mere presence was Roth’s fuck you to bandmate-turned-nemesis Eddie Van Halen – he hit Peak Dave with his debut full-length album, 1986’s Eat ’Em And Smile.
It holds its own against any Van Halen record – Yankee Rose features a jawdropping ‘talking guitar’ intro from Vai and a charisma-bomb performance from Roth, while Shy Boy and Goin’ Crazy aren’t far behind. 1988’s Skyscraper ramped up the synths, which worked brilliantly on the monumental Just Like Paradise, one of the all-time great pop-rock singles. There was reflection, too, on Damn Good, which sounded suspiciously like DLR being serious. At least for a second.
It couldn’t get any better than that, and it didn’t. Sheehan and Vai left after Skyscraper, and Roth brought in a bunch of ringers, including guitarist Jason Becker, for 1991’s A Little Ain’t Enough, whose killer title track towered over the rest of an album that was more Blackpool Pleasure Beach than Las Vegas Strip. Diamond Dave had truly lost his dazzle by the time of 1994’s Nile Rodgers-produced Your Filthy Little Mouth, which found our hero trying everything from country music to jazz with all the desperation of a man who would juggle greased ferrets if it meant saving his career.
It didn’t, of course. There were more, increasingly irrelevant, solo albums, before an eventual VH reunion went some way to putting Dave back on his pedestal. But David Lee Roth never did become the Frank Sinatra of rock’n’roll. Hey, that’s showbiz.
