Results 1 to 1 of 1

Thread: A Little Ain't Enough - Part 1 - Making of

  1. #1
    Roadie

    Member No
    19110
    Join Date
    Feb 2006
    Last Online
    08-17-2019 @ 01:16 PM
    Location
    Virginia
    Age
    50
    Posts
    129
    Status
    Offline
    Thanks
    0
    Thanked 51 Times in 29 Posts


    Rep Power
    19

    A Little Ain't Enough - Part 1 - Making of


    Master entertainer David Lee Roth was gearing up to burst back up on the scene with a new band, a new album called A Little Ain’t Enough and a tour.


    “I’m the guy who told you years ago that everybody wants something,” Diamond Dave expounded. “Well that was then, this is now. Now it’s 1991 and if everybody wants something, well then A Little Ain’t Enough. It appeared to me that if it was a good working title for a single then it would be a great working title for an album and a spectacular working title for an entire career.”
    For his third solo LP, rather than recording in his familiar surroundings of Los Angeles, the former Van Halen front-man headed north to Vancouver where he managed to create some controversy with a buxom babe spray-painted on the side of his studio.

    “It upset some people. I told them, ’Ten thousand years from now when they dig up Vancouver, they can either find a blank white wall in a parking lot and go, “Lucky we didn’t live back then,” or they can dig up something with a great graphic on it.’ ”

    And what would the new Roth album sound like?

    “Well, you can expect lead-with-your-face guitar,” he said, “kind of blues rock sort of whoop-it-up, drop-your-pants kind of rock and roll.”

    ALTERNATE ALBUM COVER & TITLE

    (DLR/REDBEARD) - I had come up with an album cover, it was a picture of the gal sitting against an airplane and um, the airplane was in the background. It looked like a B-17 bomber, but it had like uh, a human face on the front of the cockpit wasn't human but it looked human and um she was sitting in the front in a little see-through négligée with a pair of scissors, and um, the name of the album was cuttin' out. I guess the question in the censors mind was exactly what was she cutting? So, the censors are particularly sensitive these days. And, I don't know, you know? For something like that, it's not like I'm making a political statement it's not like my own, my career is based on, oh Jesus, you didn't like this picture. There's a million other pictures we could pick. You know? And um, getting serious here for a second. Censorship is an insidious corrosive thing. It's something that works from the inside out. You know? And you don't even know that it's working frequently. You know, People talk about, well, you know, you want to you know, get a label on your record BEEEP used to say, hey if you get a label on your record it means 100,000 more sales, well that might've been more true you know, A year or two ago. But nowadays, you get a label on your record, a lot of stores don't Stock it. You know, if I have a particular message or something particular I want to get over to the public, no, I'm not going to change that. But in terms of a simple picture on an album cover, who cares? Come on. You know? I can express myself any number of ways.


    I changed the title of the album instead. David reveals. Ever resourceful when it comes to these things, Roth changed the title of his latest album from the proposed Cut N’ Out to A Little Ain’t Enough.

    A LITTLE AIN’T ENOUGH

    (DLR)
    Well I'll tell you when I take- when I disappear I take the ZZ Top approach I take the Stanley Kubrick approach.. When I am gone, I is truly gone. You know? It's the idea of these days
    when you have videos and you have these worldwide tours.. Geez last tour, we toured some 22 countries just closest friends you understand. But umm wow! The average life of an album used to be 100 days. Now with videos and everything you these things go on for 10 months a year and a half, you tour the world, you got four singles happening and all with new clips and Etcetera-etcetera so it's a little bit.. Of you got to leave for a while to clear your mind. I don’t create well under the microscope. And somebody aims a camera at me, I'm going to perform its genetic, it's built in, it's biologically impossible for me not to go do a little soft shoe or whatever you know? so I'm I remove myself completely from the public eye, and I don't create in the public eye you know I find it's best when I can kinda go underground, when I can disappear off to the sidelines you know believe it or not my eyes and ears are bigger than my mouth hey, no comment..

    I'm a big people watcher. You know? I see what's happening around me.. I can only do that if people aren't looking at me. If I'm the observer and the best way for me to do that is to literally cut my hair and disappear for a while. I go off to these faraway countries for a little bit most of my time you know two thirds of it is spent in studio the proverbial basement you know working up songs and what have you. You know? Umm I do a lot of you know, going to the movies, listening to the radio, what have you, you know but none of it is in the public eye. A lot of people are very surprised.

    well it's a twofold thought there Red Beard in that the lyric goes I was vaccinated with a phonograph needle one summer break, that sounds like philosophy that's poetry but then it goes and then I kissed her on her daddy's boat and shot across the lake. Hey! Let's be 12 years old again! Well, the bands that gave me that poetic sense that spirit sense that vaccinated me oh wow! The first time you heard honky-tonk woman the first time you heard those opening riffs of brown sugar. The first time that you heard that opening riff of heartbreaker by Led Zeppelin and the first time you heard the guy in ZZ Top go howwww howww howww howww. And then went back through the library when somebody told you where he got that from and started listening to the Howlin’ Wolves and Otis Rush all these people you know? Yeah, that vaccinated me.


    40 BELOW

    Whipping out your window, licking round your knees. Baby I'll drop below zero, I’m talking 40 degrees. You know? And you say you take one good look at my arctic blast, and you tell her you can kiss my ass! (Laughs)

    Cuz I’m 40 below! Whether or not, this is reality is beside the point. I have to think this way. And if you listen to the outro, at the end, and you hear those little those little Betty Boop kinda things you know, it goes whoooooghhh! I’m cold baby. You know like that. Picked that thing up from the Wizard of Oz, it goes, I’m melting.. Yeah, you’re a horrible-horrible girl!

    DOGTOWN SHUFFLE

    (When asked by Redbeard if the Dogtown Shuffle was a follow-up to Meanstreet)
    Yes it is. And this is where I was living for the better part of half a year while we were up making the record. And this is where I ride my bicycle through when we're on tour and this is where we play when we're on tour. And this is where most people live. this is what's really on the streets it's what you see on CNN, this is what you get off the front page of the newspaper so you do the Dogtown shuffle I know you talk the talk let's see you walk the walk, so many people out there going to sing about this kind of thing and all they did was get it off the screen from CNN. They didn't experience Jack! They didn’t invagle any of that. You know? It’s just a schkoooo! A projection.

    The Wildboyz go- head to head like the good book says be quick or dead, that's how most people live that is how most people experience life out in the streets. You know they don't all live in refrigerator cartons but it's what we experience at the job place, at the workplace. This is what we experience at the local airports. What you experience at the local cafeteria and um, it wasn't meant to be a very friendly song at all you know. Towards the end, even though there's a few little lines there that can be construed as humorous, hey, there goes the neighborhood. Yeah, well, a lot of them are going. A lot of them are going currently. Even As we speak. And yeah, we can address that. But, we don't have to sound sad about it. You know? There's many different kinds of ways to smile and deal with these subjects. You know? You can deal with city life, alah Tracy Chapman and then NWA deals with it in a very different fashion. You know?

    The album was recorded in Vancouver

    David Lee Roth: Getting Down to Your Basic Roots
    May 20, 1990
    |PATRICK GOLDSTEIN


    If you're planning to vacation in Vancouver, Canada, this year, David Lee Roth has a few tips.
    Eager to recapture the bawdy sound of his early albums with Van Halen, hard rock's most mischievous sex symbol (and self-promoter) is in Vancouver recording a new album with hot-shot producer Bob Rock. But it's not the album that's causing a stir--it's Roth's hotel accommodations.
    "I think you could say this place is a combination of New York's 42nd Street and the gorilla exhibit at the L.A. Zoo," said Roth, calling from a phone on the fourth floor of the Nelson Place Hotel in downtown Vancouver. "The only view I have out my window is of a hotel room next door that reminds me of the place in 'Taxi Driver' where De Niro kept saying, 'Are you talking to me? Are you talking to me ?'

    "It's a perfect place to make a rock 'n' roll record. The whole neighborhood has a kind of Yukon Gold Rush feel to it. I've been to nine different strip joints, all within walking distance of the hotel. We've got a welfare office around the corner. Porno stores. Korean delis. Bootleg T-shirt shops. And there's a strip joint in the basement called Champagne Charlie's, though it has a lot more to do with Charlie than it does champagne."

    Roth admits that on his first Vancouver trip he stayed in a plush, rock-royalty spot. "It was a typical 12-star place with monograms in the ashtrays and people who called you sir. But it was all wrong. So we decided to find the place with the most character--and the sleaziest lobby."
    Roth says his band has taken over the entire fourth floor of the Nelson Place, which boasts room rates even the scruffiest young rockers could afford. "We're paying $15 a night, with one towel each, but no life insurance," he said. "When I first arrived I expected to see Tom Waits working the desk."

    Initially, Roth kept the hotel's identity a secret. But since a local rock station revealed the hotel's name, it's become a popular pit-stop for Roth fans who crowd the lobby, eager to meet the singer. "We've had a ton of kids here lately," he said with a laugh. "But that's the way it goes--you buy the land, you get the Indians."
    Roth expects to spend another month in Vancouver, finishing up the album. He says it's a departure from his previous solo efforts, which have cast him more as a hipster crooner than the outrageous hard-rock warrior he made famous with Van Halen.

    "The idea behind staying here is that your environment has an impact on your music. It all stacks up in your subconscious. So we're going for real roots rock. The record's going to be completely original songs. It'll probably sound a lot like--well--the first Van Halen album."

    Roth refused to divulge more details. "Hey, my music is best understood by small children and animals. No one's gonna build a monument for me. I just make it up as I go along."


    July 16, 1990|From Times Wire Services


    Wall.jpg
    VANCOUVER, Canada — Rocker David Lee Roth has caught the wary eye of city officials with a 20-foot-high portrait of a scantily clad woman on the outside wall of a recording studio.
    The portrait, with Roth's name emblazoned across the woman's chest, is on the rear wall of Little Mountain Sound studio, where fans waiting for a peek of favorite rockers who record there have sprayed a montage of graffiti.

    Roth, former lead singer of Van Halen, commissioned the airbrushed artwork that went up last month as a "poetic and symbolic tribute to the city of Vancouver," said his road manager, Eddie Anderson.
    "What better (tribute) than a beautiful woman sitting amidst the city?" Anderson said.

    City officials don't see it that way. They're getting complaints and have told the studio's owners they must apply for a wall mural permit. Even with a permit, the city may decide to order the portrait's removal, said Jack Perry, deputy chief license inspector for the city.
    Last edited by THE SAINT; 07-31-2015 at 12:18 AM. Reason: Changes
    Hey Jackass! You need to [Register] or log in to view signatures on ROTHARMY.COM!

  2. Thanked THE SAINT for this KICKASS post:

    Cato (07-31-2015)


Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)

Similar Threads

  1. The Making of the Skyscraper Video
    By Seshmeister in forum Main VH/DLR Discussion
    Replies: 8
    Last Post: 11-30-2013, 08:13 AM
  2. Article: The Making of the Skyscraper Video
    By Seshmeister in forum vBCms Comments
    Replies: 0
    Last Post: 11-27-2013, 12:09 AM
  3. Article: The Making of the Skyscraper Video
    By Seshmeister in forum vBCms Comments
    Replies: 0
    Last Post: 11-27-2013, 12:09 AM
  4. The making of Goodfellas
    By Seshmeister in forum Max's Non VH/DLR Related Stuff
    Replies: 10
    Last Post: 09-30-2013, 09:55 AM
  5. Kustom is making some good amps these days.
    By Nitro Express in forum This Is Gear Street
    Replies: 9
    Last Post: 12-19-2011, 03:04 AM

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •