Watch The Video For David Lee Roth’s Poignant Van Halen Tribute
Earlier this week David Lee Roth released Nothing Could Have Stopped Us Back Then, a nostalgic tribute to his former band, Van Halen. Now, guitarist John 5, who recorded the song in 2007 with Roth alongside Skyscraper-era Roth band drummer Gregg Bissonette and keyboardist Brett Tuggle, has made a video to accompany the release. You can watch it below.
“Honoured to be a part of this amazing piece of history,” John 5 said in a statement. “When I wrote the song with Dave, I knew it was something very special. I created this video on the tour bus as a tribute with Mike Savage. Very proud to share it with everyone.”
The video features still photographs and archive video of Van Halen both on and off stage, alongside images of gig tickets and flyers
“Dave and I have about 12 or 13 songs in the can for a future record,” John 5 told Guitar World in 2012. “And it’s all acoustic. But not strumm-y, campfire stuff – I’m talking lots of cool, crazy jazz chords, and 50 or 60 overdubbed guitar tracks, with all this harmonising and other weird stuff going on. Dave’s vocals are incredible. He sings his ass off.”
“[Dave] wanted to do this kind of a more California sessions type of thing,” the guitarist added. “And he’s such an artist, I was, like, ‘Whatever you want to do, I’m there for you.’ So it is that kind of vibe. But there’s a lot of multi tracks and different acoustic parts that all work together. It’s kind of orchestrated, if you will.”
Other songs to have emerged from the sessions include Somewhere Over The Rainbow Bar and Grill, which David Lee Roth released in 2020, and Giddy-Up, which came out in May last year.
“People really like those songs,” John 5 old al.com in a 2021 interview, “so I’m super happy about it. Because listen, you can’t deny a good song and Dave writes good songs. He’s written some of the most amazing songs of our lifetime, and Dave worked really hard on these lyrics. I’m not sure when it’s going to come out or if it’ll come out [as a completed album], but I hope it does.”