Both in his peak Van Halen and solo-artist days, singer David Lee Roth was off-the-wall and off-the-cuff. He combined vaudeville hamminess with rock-star mojo, known for his high-flying and high-kicking stage moves and a jovial sense of humor that made him the consummate frontman of the day. If one reads his memoir Crazy from the Heat, it’s obvious why he was like that—his references span MAD magazine, blaxploitation films, Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, The Beatles, and beyond. His mind could absorb different influences and shuttle in different directions, yet manage to find a way to combine them into his art.
There was one time, however, when things really went sideways. In early 2002, his publicist Mitch Schneider mailed out a videotape of a one-hour montage called David Lee Roth’s No Holds Bar-B-Que. It featured Diamond Dave dancing, prancing, cavorting, and vamping with an unusual collection of characters—three cat ladies, one little person, soldiers, dancers, and others against backdrops that were industrial, palatial, and faux tropical. There were lots of tracking shots and some shaky handheld camera work. There was no actual narrative to this particular collection of songs, none of which emerged in one cohesive whole but on later projects. There were both ‘70s and ‘90s rock and dance influences on the tracks.
It’s hard to fully describe. Just sample it below.
At the time, Roth also embarked on an acoustic radio station tour that quickly fell apart, and he canceled all press with no explanation. This was a strange time for Roth. In 1996, a potential Van Halen reunion quickly fell apart. The singer’s 1998 album DLR Band was good but got very little attention. And his national co-headlining tour with Sammy Hagar was just around the corner, happening later in 2002. But that latter event was nostalgia, and Roth was looking forward with his own work. He still maintained the exuberant, wacky persona he had cultivated years earlier, and it was certainly amplified in No Holds Bar-B-Que.
Wawazat?
So what exactly was going on here?
“We were already working with Dave when a VHS copy of this was sent by messenger to us,” recalled Schneider, founder and partner of SRO PR. “I remember that my associate Amanda Cagan and I watched it, and we thought it was perfectly over the top … in true DLR style. I recall that Dave was really open to any suggestions we had, so we asked if we could send a hard copy of it to the media along with a note. We blew a few people’s minds with it. Folks were asking, ‘What is this?’”
That last question is likely still being asked by people who have just discovered it. “Folks were confounded and fascinated by it,” Schneider said. “It was a very arty and bizarre piece of work. Dave was always inspired by left-of-center artists in different fields.”
Behind the Scenes Mystery
An official budget for the film was never quoted, but rumors suggest anywhere from $500,000 to $1 million, which is sizable given that Roth’s career was at a low point. “He was certainly reinvesting in himself with this project,” said Darren Paltrowitz, author of the recent tome DLR Book: How David Lee Roth Changed the World and host of Paltrocast with Darren Paltrowitz. “It was supposed to be ‘the next direction’ and a calling card of sorts for him, as opposed to a merch piece he would directly recoup upon with sales.”
While the original VHS tape had closing credits, they were removed from the YouTube upload. “[Guitarist] Bart Walsh is also blurred and cropped out of that version too, presumably due to Walsh suing him over unpaid wages,” Paltrowitz noted. “So even if Dave didn’t direct this, he ‘directed’ the reposting. I would presume that Dave directed the original video with his then-manager Matt Sencio at the helm, kind of like Dave’s mid-1980s collaborations with [artist manager] Pete Angelus.”
Paltrowitz had a good recollection of the cast of characters from the Bar-B-Que. “We know it featured Animal the security guard, who was later on Dave’s K-Rock radio show and pre-DLR had been a bodyguard for Eazy-E,” the author said. “[There was] the little person Jimmy, who I believe was in other Dave productions. … Future Donald Trump associate Karen McDougal, the Dahm Triplets, Victoria Fuller—that’s five Playboy Playmates right there—and photographer Neil Zlozower. The band, I believe, was Ray Luzier on drums, Todd Jensen on bass, Toshi Hiketa and Bart Walsh on guitar, and Melissa Elena Reiner on violin. No idea who the harmonica player is, and Melissa also did not know that. There are also dancers, I recall, during the EDM-style dance parties scenes, and I’d have to look closely to see if I recognize anyone in there.”
Weird for Weird’s Sake
Paltrowitz admitted that despite being a big DLR fan, the video is pretty unwatchable. This writer struggled to make it through the first 10 minutes again.
“Marc Elmer told me when editing it that they were intentionally trying to make things weird and unexpected,” Paltrowitz said. “But what I love most from the Dave and Van Halen catalogs generally isn’t the ‘weird’ stuff. ‘Hot for Teacher’ isn’t weird. Nor is ‘Just Like Paradise.’ Yet a lot of the video just comes across as weird for the sake of being weird.”
Schneider had no recollection (nor does this writer) about any album project being connected to this video. Paltrowitz mentioned some of the songs emerged on the Diamond Dave covers album. There was no real game plan around this time. “Dave’s mountain of unreleased recordings was piling up prior to this video,” Paltrowitz said. “It is something he talks about in his autobiography, when he refers to making an expensive music video for ‘Ice Cream Man.’”
In the end, it was one of many projects that Roth worked on. Paltrowitz mentioned unfinished ones like tattoo skin care cream, a digital comic book, the Roth Show video podcast, Dave TV internet show, memoir screenplay, and a possible second autobiography the famed frontman quickly abandoned. It seems that Roth could be so ADHD about this projects that he quickly moved on to new things. This one still lingers in some people’s minds.
“Working with Dave was fun and intense—you had to be on your toes as he was constantly coming up with so many creative ideas,” Schneider said. “I respected him greatly because he understood that presenting one’s self to the media was its own form of entertainment. He was fully committed to showing everyone a good time. Clearly, they do not make rock stars like this anymore. I also want to point out that Dave was a gentleman to me at all times. I think he liked that I ‘got’ him.” He added: “By the time he made that video/film, rock was already so corporatized. But he made everything still feel like the Wild West.”
The project certainly exemplified the former Van Halen’s artistic approach: To thine own Roth be true.
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