It’s the mid-90s and David Lee Roth is floundering. His once promising solo career is hanging on by a thread, and he and many of his hair metal brethren have been caught up in the Nirvana tidal wave that has made them obsolete. Worse, he has to sit by and watch as his former band, Van Halen, not only survived the grunge explosion but somehow reached new heights while taking shots and talking trash at him.
So, Roth decides to change things up. First, he cuts off his signature golden locks and goes with a shorter, more fashionable ‘do à la Metallica. He then leaves L.A. for New York (and promptly gets busted for buying pot in Washington Square Park — back when that was a big deal).
And he decides to update his sound. For his 1994 album, Your Filthy Little Mouth, he hires Nile Rodgers as producer. The former Chic guitarist and singer is best known for producing the likes of Duran Duran, Mick Jagger, David Bowie and The B-52s – hardly a go-to choice for a rocker like him. But that’s just fine for Diamond Dave, who has come up with an eclectic blend of songs and genres that he wishes to pursue for this record. Even his lyrics are more mature and intricate – he even waxes philosophical at times.
Will America (and the rest of the world) embrace this new, older, wiser, and more mature Dave?
I think you already know the answer to this one…
Ever since he quit/was fired from Van Halen, Roth has been trying to find the right guitarist to replace what he had with Eddie Van Halen. First, he and Steve Vai teamed up and seemed like a great combo. They wrote most of Roth’s 1986 debut together, the excellent, platinum selling Eat ‘Em and Smile. But then, things fell apart on their follow-up, 1988’s platinum selling Skyscraper and Vai and bassist Billy Sheehan left Roth’s band.
Roth brought in guitar virtuoso Jason Becker for 1991’s A Little Ain’t Enough. That collaboration ended prematurely, however, when Becker was diagnosed with ALS. The album went gold, but of course that meant it only sold about half as much as its two predecessors. Personally, I love the title track as well as Becker’s guitar work throughout the record. But the album smacked of Dave trying to recapture his classic Van Halen sound. Considering that type of music was going out of style at that point, I guess the biggest surprise is that A Little Ain’t Enough even went gold.
With that in mind, Roth tried to change up his sound for Your Filthy Little Mouth. Despite working with another guitar virtuoso, Terry Kilgore, Roth does not try to recreate his Van Halen sound. Rather than do what Mötley Crüe did on their self-titled 1994 album and go for a grittier, darker approach, Roth tries the old “throw lots of stuff against the wall and see what sticks” approach.
On Your Filthy Little Mouth, Roth does pop, rock, country, blues, funk and even some reggae. And hey, he actually pulls it off! This is a very good album — arguably his best since Eat ‘Em.
Lead single “She’s My Machine” sees him tread on usual territory — using a car as a metaphor for a woman. He’s done it before, and better (“Panama”), but this song is pretty good. As is second single “Night Life,” a slow, bluesy number that allows Dave to really show off his singing ability. It’s one of his best vocal performances in his post-Van Halen career and is a fitting riposte to his many, many detractors who think of him as a pure showman and frontman and a mediocre singer (although that was definitely the case later in his career, as his voice faded).
There are two country songs on the album, and they’re both pretty good. “Cheatin’ Heart Cafe,” which features country music star Travis Tritt, is the better of the two (“Hey, You Never Know” is the other one) and many critics singled it out as one of the highlights of the album. I agree – it probably should have been one of the singles, although Dave probably worried how it would be received by his hardcore fans. I wonder why Roth never tried to do a country album (he did record a bunch of Van Halen covers in bluegrass style in 2006, but no original songs). Then again, given how conservative and political the country music industry can be, I’m sure Diamond Dave would have gone over like a wet fart in Nashville. On the other hand, he’d fit right in with the bro-country acts — hell, he probably inspired many of them.
Some of his songs are darker in tone — which I guess is obligatory if you’re going to try and be more mature. “Everybody’s Got the Monkey” talks about how everyone has problems that they can’t escape from (the old monkey on your back metaphor). “Night Life” is about someone who can’t let go of his past (“Cause I know the night life/ Ain’t no good life/ Yeah, but it’s my life”) — which is a bit on the nose here. Then there’s the cynical “Experience,” a sad, reflective song about the lessons you learn in life. “Till I finally made it/ Life was kinda hit or miss/ But after I made it/ Life was, ‘Take a hit of this.’”
“No Big ‘Ting” is his much ballyhooed reggae song, and the cringe potential here is off the charts. So no one was more surprised than me when I found that I actually enjoyed this song and thought it kind of worked. Guest vocalist Mitchielous handles the rap and reggae parts, allowing Dave to play off him — kind of like what Mark McGrath and Super Cat did on the far-more successful “Fly,” which came out three years later. Roth also legitimately cracked me up with this line in the song: “Yeah, money talks, I should know/ Mine always says, ‘Goodbye.’” Well, I can certainly relate to that.
In fact, there were several instances where Roth really dazzled me with his wit. “Tell me what you want/ And I’ll take the scenic route,” he sings on the title track. “He was a cowboy, was what she wanted/ The closest to a cow she’d been/ Was eating at McDonald’s,” he sings on “Cheatin’ Heart Cafe.” The line made me laugh, so I’ll excuse the lack of rhyme in it. And there’s: “Well, that’s the trouble with self-improvement/ Oh honey, I know when it’s time to quit,” from “A Little Luck.” That one, we’ll get back to.
Not all of his lyrics work. “She’d say, ‘F— me like Chopin/ Or don’t f— me at all,’” he intones on the title track. I have no idea what that means. Chopin was a ladies’ man who was known for writing overly romantic pieces, so maybe that’s what he’s referring to? Some of his piano compositions were known to be fairly difficult to play – I’ve been known to say “f— me” after trying to learn one of his pieces — so maybe Dave had a similar problem?
The title track also contains the line: “How ‘bout a little Henry Miller/ With your Huckleberry Finn” that many critics quoted in their reviews. Roth actually explains that one in the program for his tour. Basically, the entire album is about people that he met once he moved to New York. He wrote the songs over a two-year period as he made his way throughout the city (like Huck and Jim on the raft) – and since this is Diamond Dave we’re talking about, he invokes Miller, a controversial author known for writing sexually explicit books. Hey, no one ever said Dave was a dummy.
And he gives us this gem from “Experience”: “And I’d love to talk philosophy/ But I’ve gotta take a piss/ Man, that philosophy runs right through ya.” Guess grown-up and mature Dave only went so far.
That was certainly the case when it came to how the public received this album. Put simply, no one was buying what David Lee Roth was selling at this point. Your Filthy Little Mouth was the first of his albums or EPs not to go at least gold, and according to Best Selling Albums.org, only sold 24,360 copies in the U.S., U.K. and Japan compared to over 600,000 for A Little Ain’t Enough — a stunning drop-off for anyone, let alone a star like Dave.
“She’s My Machine” hit #12 on the Billboard Modern Rock chart, but that was also an underperformance compared to his prior lead singles (“A Little Ain’t Enough” was #3 on the Modern Rock chart, “Just Like Paradise” and “California Girls” were both Top Ten hits on the Billboard Hot 100 while “Yankee Rose” made the Top 20 on that chart).
Would Dave have been better off tripling down on his usual stuff and delivering Van Halen III? (No, not that Van Halen III) Probably not. He was already getting diminishing returns by then, and another A Little Ain’t Enough probably would have flopped harder than, well, this record did. It didn’t matter that Dave had grown up and matured. It didn’t matter that he had changed up his sound. His time as a star had come and gone.
So, he played the last card in his hand and reunited with Van Halen (kind of). According to Sammy Hagar, Roth’s original replacement, the band had been secretly working with Roth even before Hagar quit/was fired in 1996. Roth worked on two new songs for Van Halen’s Best Of – Volume I. Because it was right after Your Filthy Little Mouth, Dave’s lyrics on those two new Van Halen songs, “Me Wise Magic” and “Can’t Get This Stuff No More,” are similar in style to what he did on his last solo record. “Me Wise Magic” is fairly philosophical rumination about religion that is one of my favorite Van Halen songs. On “Can’t Get This Stuff No More,” he borrows a line from “A Little Luck” and adapts it: “That’s the thing about self-improvement/ Don’t get me wrong, I plan on gettin’ some soon.”
Maybe if he had gotten some self-improvement sooner, it would have led to better relations with the Van Halen brothers and given us the reunion we all wanted in 1996. Or maybe that was never in the cards. According to Gary Cherone, he had already been hired as Van Halen’s new lead singer by the time Roth and the other members made their ill-fated public appearance at the MTV Video Music Awards that year. Either Roth really believed he was back in the band and was simply mistaken, or the brothers just used him to generate interest in the greatest hits album (and/or stick it to Hagar).
So, Roth was back on his own and spent the next decade doing a bunch of different things. He worked as an EMT in New York. He replaced Howard Stern on the radio and flopped badly, only lasting about 4 months. He toured with nemesis Hagar and learned that the old “enemy of my enemy is my friend” approach has its limits. And he released some bizarre albums and videos (even hardcore fans struggle to explain the No Holds Bar-B-Que). Finally, in 2007, Diamond Dave returned to Van Halen with great fanfare. They released a new/old album, went on a couple of tours that were, somehow, less chaotic than Van Halen’s 2004 reunion tour with Hagar, and went their separate ways after Eddie died of cancer in 2020.
Of course, that wasn’t the end of the drama, as Roth and Alex then clashed over a potential reunion/tribute tour to Eddie. Roth even found time to attack Wolfgang, Van Halen bassist and Eddie’s son. Well, it wouldn’t be Van Halen without the fighting and bickering.
