Eat Em And Smile - David Lee Roth (1986)

Let’s get this straight first: David Lee Roth is one of the least serious and most uncouth human beings to ever play popular music. His public persona was as a pure entertainer who never worried too much about the artistic side of things. That said, he got out of the highly talent-based Van Halen and followed it up by assembling a top-notch band for his first full solo record.

It would have been impossible to recruit a guitarist with the out-of-this-world inventiveness of Eddie Van Halen, but former Frank Zappa guitarist Steve Vai (O_o) was an excellent choice. His mix of fretboard mastery and histrionics was a founding force of the whole guitar shred genre.

The band is filled out with shred-rock-oriented bassist Billy Sheehan and Greg Bissonette, a session drummer with a special interest in jazz- and rock-based heavy guitarists (and, for some reason, Pat Boone’s metal album)

The music is good time rock that wasn’t quite hair metal but had a lot in common with the decadent, good-taste-defying, highly sexist genre of the moment. Best not to take the lyrics too seriously, but it was a different time.

Tracks I Liked

Yankee Rose - a great opener

Ladies’ Night In Buffalo - what sort of passes for introspection if you squint.

Tobacco Road - a great cover of the Nashville Teens hit

Elephant Gun - I think maybe he’s not talking about an actual firearm…

That’s Life - a Sinatra signature that is really a perfect fit for Roth’s larger-than-life character