Is David Lee Roth Getting Angry In His Old Age?

[theodore templeman]

The tenor of DLR's post 1996 reunion work seems to have a noticable hint of anger. Gone are the goodtime vibes of songs like Beautiful Girls and Just Like Paradise. In their place are songs like Little Texas (is it just me or is that song advocating the use of handguns?) And witness Dave's latest batch of home-spun videos that have appeared on his website. Aggression, weapons, and a pro-military sentiment seem to be the order of the day. In my opinion.

[VH2001]

Originally posted by theodore templeman:
And witness Dave's latest batch of home-spun videos that have appeared on his website. Aggression, weapons, and a pro-military sentiment seem to be the order of the day. In my opinion.

This is just a reflection of the world we are living in today (terrorism, war, etc).

[Glenn]

I think Dave has always (though some of it is his own doing) been unfairly labelled the party boy frontman. Personally, I love getting an alternate vibe from Dave, and that underlying (and sometimes more blatant) aggression and anger has been present since day one. Maybe not an outright statement of "I AM ANGRY", but Dave has never been that blatant lyrically anyway. Some great songs that feature Dave's angry tone are Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love, Atomic Punk, On Fire, Light Up the Sky, Mean Street, Sinner's Swing, Unchained, House of Pain and Girl Gone Bad.

Dave was always multi-dimesional, but when you're trying to create an image and conform just enough to attain mass media success, the easiest thing to categorize and write about is highly likely to overshadow the rest. In Dave's case, his bravado and public extroversion (is that a word??? It is now ) got him labelled as a one dimensional cheerleader. There was always more there.

It would have been really interesting to see Dave grow further with Van Halen after 1984. By leaving them, he seemed initially content to focus on the cheerleader role, while running the band behind him. Had he stayed in VH, he wouldn't have been in that same position to run the show that he put himself in solo. With the push and pull of Eddie and Alex, Dave could have really grown a lot more than he did on his own.

Having said that, Dave did have some solo stuff that pointed to him still being more than able to tap into a darker side. The A Little Ain't Enough album features a couple of tracks like that, notably The Dogtown Shuffle and Lady Luck.

Anyway, this is a good topic for the Opinions forum so I'm going to move it there now. [img]smile.gif[/img]