David Lee Roth - A Little Ain’t Enough

Details:

• Year of release : 1991
• Label : Warner Brothers WX403
• Review format : Vinyl

This album was seen as something as a make or break release for Roth after his successful arena tour in support of Skyscraper a few years earlier pretty much sold out in the UK (rightly show as it was a fine spectacle) as well as enabled Roth to return to Donington as part of the 1988 Monsters Of Rock line-up. Gone for this release though was Steve Vai whose technical contributions had so shaped Skyscraper, his place taken instead by Jason Becker on lead guitar duties while Steve Hunter was also recruited for the recordings on rhythm and slide duties, although I recall possibly incorrectly that it was Ron Ricochet, himself occasionally involved on the album session, that took the 2nd guitar duties on the live tour.

And on the evidence of the first track only, A Little Ain’t Enough, everything was pretty much business as usual, if a little less flamboyant as this harks back not just to the party-rock nature of Roth’s debut Eat ‘Em And Smile but even back a little longer to his tenure in the world’s finest party rock band Van Halen. Shoot It though can’t maintain that feeling and to me is merely “okay”. A decent enough vocal performance its made lightweight, dated even, by the overuse of keyboards where if they’d held back and allowed the guitar to rule this could have been a cracking rocker.

Lady Luck, another one of those recurring rock song titles, swiftly regains any lost ground though. A mid tempo and quite bluesy number, this one hits so many right buttons with me. It uses the keyboards only to fill out the sound rather than dominate it whilst Becker doesn’t overplay his solo or his verse passages as you feel Vai might have done and turns this into a fine moment. Indeed, there is another slice of typical DLR flavoured bar-room rock to further correct the blip that was Shoot It in the shape of the superbly irreverent Hammerhead Shark whilst the smoldering blues of Tell The Truth gives the album something close to it’s own “Damn Good” slower song. Side closer, Baby’s On Fire sounds the closest thing yet to a Skyscraper outtake and takes a while to get going but ultimately proves itself decent enough if someway off a highlight.

An album that if I recall correctly is lauded as Roth’s finest solo effort on the excellent www.dlrarmy.com web site, gets the second side underway with the ZZ Top-ish 40 Below then delivers another slow surprise in the shape of Sensible Shoes. A superb piece of off beat blues, though a bit of a surprise when lifted as the albums second single, it’s allows Diamond Dave to play the reflective, lounge-lizard singer role to full effect.

I think it’s fairly clear what had been playing on the radio around the time Last Call was written as its too close for comfort in the verses to Aerosmith’s Walk This Way. A similar staccato delivery to the vocal as well as the tune it unfortunately comes a distant second to the song it appears to copy. Fortunately The Dogtown Shuffle soon corrects this wrong, and once more it’s another mid-tempo blues based number that you can’t help thinking couldn’t have been done to quite the same understated effect in the Vai accompanied days. Apart from the odd out of place ‘parp’ from the keyboards everything sounds just right and you guess that Becker’s predecessor would have wedged in quite a few more notes in some of the passages.

If of course you still wanted a bit of Van Halen style Roth, and let’s face it many did in 1991, you can’t go far wrong with the excellent It’s Showtime! Reprising the sound of a few Van Halen tracks, most notably Hot For Teacher it was a timely reminder of the ‘old’ Van Halen sound when that band themselves, in their Sammy Hagar fronted guise, had moved in a somewhat slicker direction with their last album OU812. In fact, almost underscoring the statement that Roth was still Mr. Good Time Rock Frontman, Drop The Bucket closes the album in a similar, if slightly lower grade, party rock vein.

Summary : Far from being a breaker, this album saw Roth continue his roll and again merited an arena tour of the UK. With Vai gone so was much of the flash and this sounds a much more direct album in places. In fact, surprisingly given Roth’s reputation, neither the sleeve or the inner sleeve features a picture of either Roth or the band, the cover going for a devil like figure, the inner sleeve the strange shark pic’ reproduced above, giving the whole package a somewhat darker flavour than the expected Roth style. Ultimately though this album is just as satisfying as Skyscraper, although not up to the level of that superb debut solo full length effort. In fact, I wonder why it’s been years since I last played this?

If You Listen To One Track Listen To : Lady Luck

Score : 3/5

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And God Bless You Tube!! Here’s the electronic press kit for the 1991 Roth release with DLR in typically forthright form….

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BL