![]() ![]() From the delay-fuelled intro of Just Like Paradise to the seasick delivery of the solo on Stand Up, the kid who made his bones with Frank Zappa, post-Malmsteen Alcatrazz and the very special Album with PiL played his nuts off. Of course, the album features some outstanding playing from Vai. All I ever really needed to know, I learned from David Lee Roth.In Praise of David Lee Roth – by Greg Puciato.It’s got the guitar delay thing that goes left and right, and the way I play off of the delay is unique.” But I think Hina is probably my favourite. “I like the chord changes and the energy. “That’s a really cool song,” he says of the latter. While the album included the hit single Just Like Paradise, it’s songs like Hina, the Stairway-esque acoustic classic Damn Good and the title track that Vai is most proud of. I expect that from other people when they’re working with me. I’m very good at assuming a role and knowing where my boundaries are. “You have to remember it was his band,” Vai continues. If it’s a good idea, he’s happy to go with it. I mean, you don’t argue with Dave, but if you have a perspective or an opinion, he’s interested in hearing it. He doesn’t feel he needs to come to the table with everything, so he surrounds himself with good people. But as a partner in the creative process, he listens and doesn’t assume to know everything. People have this image of Roth as being this rock star with a crazy kind of personality, and he is that. Working in the tight confines of a recording studio with someone packing an ego the size of David Lee Roth’s might sound hellish, but that’s not how Vai recalls the experience. ![]() That’s the artist’s creative prerogative.” But by the same token, you get a guy like Dave Roth, and he’s done so much in one way and, he wanted to try something different. It’s not as visceral as Eat ’Em & Smile I’m fully aware of the difference in those records. So the record has a different sound, a different feel. My production skills, and Dave’s, and the approach that he wanted to take, were just very different from Ted. “It was an intense process mixing the record. The first's soothing, interweaving guitar harmonies presaged Vai's Joe Satriani-inspired solo work while the latter finally explodes in the over-the-top fashion of the first album, largely thanks to a Vai solo so fast, so hot not even he could keep up, momentarily losing his fingering in the album's only spontaneous moment.“We liked the way it was coming out,” says the guitarist. And while rockers like "Knucklebones" and "The Bottom Line" don't really impress or offend, "Hina" and "Hot Dog and a Shake" are the album's only two clear standouts. Likewise, the largely acoustic "Damn Good" and the overlong "Two Fools a Minute" (an unconvincing ode to Roth's lounge lizard persona) go nowhere fast, and what the band was trying to achieve with the bizarre title track is still anyone's guess. The aforementioned "Just Like Paradise" is the obvious main offender, but promising examples of arena rock like "Stand Up" and "Perfect Timing" also lose much of their bite through excessive studio tampering. Big and guitar hero Steve Vai mostly flying on auto-pilot (if spectacularly so), keyboard player Brett Tuggle seems like the most unwelcome presence on an album that squanders much of its free-wheeling potential by trying too hard to achieve an exaggerated pop sheen. ![]() With bass wizard Billy Sheehan already gone to form Mr. Simply put, the collaborative spirit that had given their manic debut Eat 'Em and Smile such legitimacy as a band project was collapsing under the unbearable strain of its leader's unstoppable ego. Even as Skyscraper shot up the charts behind the momentum of its ultra-saccharine lead-off single "Just Like Paradise," it was abundantly clear to anyone paying attention that the wheels were already falling off the David Lee Roth bandwagon. ![]()
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