Sheehan Says He Has Only Existing Pro-Shot Video Of EEAS Lineup

https://blabbermouth.net/news/billy-...d-smile-lineup

In a new interview with We Go To 11, bassist Billy Sheehan was asked if there is any existing professionally filmed video of a concert performance by VAN HALEN singer David Lee Roth and the band for his debut solo album, "Eat 'Em And Smile". "I've got it," Billy responded (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET). "I have it. I think I'm the only guy with it. They shot it pro. It's Dave's tour and Dave's business, so I can't do anything with it, unfortunately. At some point, maybe I'll try and get in touch with Dave, 'Do you wanna put this out?' But I had a pro-shot [video]… I forgot how I got it. As far as I know, nobody else has it. I just reviewed it the other day and backed it up again to another three drives to make sure I didn't lose it."

Sheehan continued: "I'm not sure if it could be out someday, if Dave would be interested in doing it, but I've got it; it's here for him. If he wants it, I'll be happy to put it on my Dropbox and send it over to him. But most of [the videos that are out there] are hand-held [clips], shaky with [muffled] audio. This one is — the audio is good; it's not great. But it's better than most of the hand-held camera things.

"Back then, a video camera, to sneak it into a venue [was very difficult], but somehow people did. It's pretty amazing. I mean, they were sneaking bottles of Jack Daniel's in, and a camera wasn't too far of a stretch during concerts in 1986 there.

"So, yeah, I do have a pro-shot [concert]," Billy repeated. "And for a while I couldn't find it, so I thought, 'Did I imagine that? Am I fooling myself here?' But sure enough, the other day, 'Uh-uh. There it is. I've got it.'"

Nice to know it exists, I suppose.

If - much like any old unreleased CVH footage - we never get to see it, who gives a shit?

Kinda like looking at one of Ed's custom guitars under glass at an exhibit somewhere:
"Can I play it?"
"No."
"Can anybody else ever play it?"
"No."
"Wow! What a useless guitar!"

Can he not get the 'Church' of Scientology to bring it out? :)

I would like to see it, there is that Detroit bootleg so you can get an idea of the pros and negatives of watching that tour 35 years on, the endless guitar and bass solos won't age that well but admittedly there are still a lot of Vai shredder people out there on the interwebs.

Probably the main problem is how do you monetize a live rock video from the 1980s, Maybe the only way to do it might be to get an EEAS song into Stranger Things soundtrack and then sell the show to Netflix...

A few years back, Sheehan also claimed he had the original master tapes for the "Skyscraper" album.... before they buried it under a bunch of synthesizer bullshit.. Surely somebody out there has to be close enough to Sheehan to make copies of these things and upload them to the goddamned torrent sites if he won't release them himself.

I got confused reading the article because then he mentions audience sourced, but high quality, stuff so not sure if this is a very good quality audience shot piece or a commissioned proshot one...

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Originally Posted by Nickdfresh

I got confused reading the article because then he mentions audience sourced, but high quality, stuff so not sure if this is a very good quality audience shot piece or a commissioned proshot one...

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Sheehan in the article said the EEAS live stuff out there online was the result of audience shot bootlegs vs, the EEAS show he has, which was a professionally filmed one.

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Originally Posted by Nickdfresh

I got confused reading the article because then he mentions audience sourced, but high quality, stuff so not sure if this is a very good quality audience shot piece or a commissioned proshot one...

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No wonder you're a Libtard. You cannot read or comprehend. Go back and read it S L O W L Y, Nickdyslexia.

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Originally Posted by Von Halen

No wonder you're a Libtard. You cannot read or comprehend. Go back and read it S L O W L Y, Nickdyslexia.

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I glanced at the article on my phone, dicklick well before it was posted here. Don't you have some small animals to torture or something?

I would rather hear the Skyscraper release he is holding.

Hey Sarge!

I agree. Maybe Billy should talk to Steve Dave Gregg, and Bret’s family and just
release a tidied up that version. Perhaps next year as a thirty five year anniversary celebration.

Cheers from down under, ash

Dave was the boss. The rest of the band were employees. So the ball is in Dave’s court. I figure if Sheehan has a copy then Dave would likely have one was well. Anyways it’s up to the boss. He could include the video in a boxed set or something but Dave doesn’t think like Gene Simmons.

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Originally Posted by Nitro Express

Dave was the boss. The rest of the band were employees. So the ball is in Dave’s court. I figure if Sheehan has a copy then Dave would likely have one was well. Anyways it’s up to the boss. He could include the video in a boxed set or something but Dave doesn’t think like Gene Simmons.

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There's still a risk with production costs. Dave might have to put up some money to get thing edited/produced and of course there is always the unflattering parts he might not want to remember or show. I'm sure Dave has his own vault but what is the market like for a DLR-EAS release at this point? My guess is decent, if Crue and Leppard can still tour I think there is a small profit in all this but it ain't going to be a top seller on Amazon or Netflix...

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Originally Posted by Nickdfresh

Dave might have to put up some money to get thing edited/produced and of course there is always the unflattering parts he might not want to remember or show.

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I'm thinking of Tokyo Dome here.;)
I'm not sure Dave has any parts he'd rather not remember of.:biggrin:

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Originally Posted by Nickdfresh

There's still a risk with production costs. Dave might have to put up some money to get thing edited/produced and of course there is always the unflattering parts he might not want to remember or show. I'm sure Dave has his own vault but what is the market like for a DLR-EAS release at this point? My guess is decent, if Crue and Leppard can still tour I think there is a small profit in all this but it ain't going to be a top seller on Amazon or Netflix...

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It will be very popular with the dedicated Roth fanatics. You could make money on it doing what Gene Simmons did with his vaults but Dave isn’t the kind of person to hard sell like that. It’s not in his blood. He’s not money motivated like Gene Simmons and Sammy Hagar are. I’m betting with Eddie Van Halen gone Dave is going to just enjoy his private life. He can’t top Van Halen and it’s time to let the memories and history tell the tale. Dave already has the legacy.

Dave has always guarded his image. Maybe that live footage isn’t up to Dave’s level of quality. Maybe he views dwelling on the past as going backwards. Who knows.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Nickdfresh

There's still a risk with production costs. Dave might have to put up some money to get thing edited/produced and of course there is always the unflattering parts he might not want to remember or show. I'm sure Dave has his own vault but what is the market like for a DLR-EAS release at this point? My guess is decent, if Crue and Leppard can still tour I think there is a small profit in all this but it ain't going to be a top seller on Amazon or Netflix...

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Part of the reason nothing comes out of the VH/DLR camps is thinking in terms of the "old" music business and any release requires all this marketing and distribution logistics... or in other terms... someone to make it happen, with a huge paycheck, other than the lazy artist... That bullshit ship sailed and sank long time ago!

Someone with good video talent... like Shelly who did all that great work on the Roth shows could go through it, clean it up and deposit it on any formal web platform for download or streaming.

An artist who shares his work with nobody... remains a nobody... Dave should just share what he's got with what little time he has left.

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Originally Posted by Nitro Express

Dave has always guarded his image. Maybe that live footage isn’t up to Dave’s level of quality. Maybe he views dwelling on the past as going backwards. Who knows.

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Don't be playin the Van Halen card... we, the fans, should not be enablers of such psychotic bullshit. It does not serve our interests...

As far as I know, this is the only pro-shot video (short as it is) that exists in the "public space" from that era of Dave's career...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOzOpsghhs0

Presumably this is NOT the concert that Sheehan has the tape of, since he didn't play on the SkyCrapper tour.

Twenty years ago would have shelled out $100 easy for a professionally restored, official CVH live dvd set a la KISSOLOGY or what Zeppelin did in 2003. My money was there for the taking. Instead, the Van Halens wanted me to buy a coffee cup with an official, patented Eddie Van Halen Frankenstein stripe design.

I guess neither the Van Halens nor Roth either want or need my money anymore. Que sera sera.

Along the lines of what ZahZoo said re: Shelly, I've seen all types of CVH live video boots that had been originally traded on vhs (and were doubtless 100th generation copies) that have been cleaned up to a surprising degree by amateurs using home video hardware restoration kits. I can only imagine the clarity a professional restoration company could provide.

Don't know what the reasons were for not getting something like that done decades ago, much less now that Eddie has passed. But, hey, if it can't happen legitimately and all this shit continues to get dribbled out pirate-style, so be it. Seems retarded not try and monetize it, considering there's...what...a full-length 1978 set out there now, along with a full-length single cam videotaped 1981 show, Largo 1982, a few from South America 1983, US Fest 1983, Montreal 1984. And those are just some of what's out there on video, not even counting live audio boots.

Couple dozen cats got out of the bag way back when, some nearly 40 years ago, all of which are infinitely better than Tokyo Dome.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ZahZoo

Part of the reason nothing comes out of the VH/DLR camps is thinking in terms of the "old" music business and any release requires all this marketing and distribution logistics... or in other terms... someone to make it happen, with a huge paycheck, other than the lazy artist... That bullshit ship sailed and sank long time ago!

Someone with good video talent... like Shelly who did all that great work on the Roth shows could go through it, clean it up and deposit it on any formal web platform for download or streaming.

An artist who shares his work with nobody... remains a nobody... Dave should just share what he's got with what little time he has left.

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The other issue is that there isn't the material for a box set that could include something like this. But U2 has put out several "anniversary" edition albums where they include a 2nd live CD and 'good, better, best' packages that include a DVD or a complete CD live show. Dave could do something similar if they ever decided to remaster EAS but the window is closing....

We know, at the very least, that entire concerts were filmed professionally in 1979 & 1981, because videos were released from those concerts to air on Don Kirshner's Rock Concert... and later MTV. Now of course, there have been numerous claims that the entire concert from Oakland 1981 was "lost" years ago (I refuse to believe that somebody didn't save a copy... but even that person might be dead by now, depending on who it was). Never heard any claims one way or another on the 1979 footage. Then of course you have the US Festival. You have the South American show from 1983 which has only surfaced in really grainy bootleg forms, so far. The Largo show which was apparently recorded on the in-house video system. And the Donnington Festival from 1984, from which there's a version of "Hot For Teacher" that shows up on YouTube now and then, but otherwise, I don't know how widely circulated that is. There may be other "pro-shot" shows out there, but those are the ones I can think of, off the top of my head.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ZahZoo

Part of the reason nothing comes out of the VH/DLR camps is thinking in terms of the "old" music business and any release requires all this marketing and distribution logistics... or in other terms... someone to make it happen, with a huge paycheck, other than the lazy artist... That bullshit ship sailed and sank long time ago!

Someone with good video talent... like Shelly who did all that great work on the Roth shows could go through it, clean it up and deposit it on any formal web platform for download or streaming.

An artist who shares his work with nobody... remains a nobody... Dave should just share what he's got with what little time he has left.

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Mike Savage who made the John 5 video VH montage can also clean up effectively. These guys just do not have the same nostalgia for this stuff fans do

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Originally Posted by Nickdfresh

The other issue is that there isn't the material for a box set that could include something like this. But U2 has put out several "anniversary" edition albums where they include a 2nd live CD and 'good, better, best' packages that include a DVD or a complete CD live show. Dave could do something similar if they ever decided to remaster EAS but the window is closing....

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You're still thinking in terms of the "old" record company perspective... but let's peel this back a bit.

What does U2 have that Diamond Dave does not..?

Material? There's enough for maybe 1 box set from EAS... possibly if the ownership rights to any live shows and unreleased material isn't in some sort of legal mess because no one managed it when it was captured or preserved it since.

That's a huge question and potentially the major road block for anything related to Dave's solo career. We assume all this business stuff is safely stored in good order by some legal firm or management company Dave did or does business with. But... look at how many entities have come and gone within that realm over the years that no longer handle DLR business. Who the hell knows what's been lost across Dave's career with bridges burned and relationships that have soured..?