David Lee Roth Meet You at the Funny Pages
"When there aren't whatever more trees, your comic books are going to go the way of all vinyl," David Lee Roth says.
Then he laughs.
"That's good! Marking that one!"
And so he follows upwards.
"Hey, no more vinyl trees 'round hither!"
With Diamond Dave, there'due south always a express joy. And there'southward usually a follow-up. It's how he communicates. And Dave loves to communicate. Since March, the 66-year-old Van Halen vocalizer hasn't been able to exercise information technology from his natural perch, the stage – Covid put a quick stop to both his Las Vegas residency and his solo stint opening for KISS on their End of the Road loonshit bout. Merely a microphone isn't the man'due south only mouthpiece. For the past several months, he's been drawing Covid-themed comics and posting them to his social media pages. And while these single-panel sketches take indulged his dearest for illustrating (as well as, obviously, frogs), they're just the tip of the creative iceberg — the 45 rpm single, if you lot will.
The full album, to hammer a metaphor, is "The Roth Projection," his new interactive digital graphic novel.
What is "The Roth Project," exactly? In the vocaliser'south estimation, it's an entirely new arroyo to the form. Roth collaborated with PhotoshopCAFE founder Colin Smith on the novel, crafting what he calls an immersive "hyper-archetype" platform that pairs Smith's animations with his ain Japanese Sumi-e inspired illustrations. "The kind of work that I do is basically 1500s pen, ink and brush," Roth explains. "Really simple, handmade work that, similar learning a instrument, requires thousands and thousands of hours to master, just to brand a perfectly sparse line that has some sort of graphic symbol to it." Once these manus-drawn panels — and there are hundreds in the final product — were scanned and digitized, anything was possible. "You tin interact with information technology. You take narration. Yous have music," he says. "You have the future."
Congenital effectually a sort of space scroll, readers can navigate "The Roth Project" in numerous means, customizing the experience to their own preferences. Roth narrates the story, and he as well recorded original songs, incidental music and sound furnishings for the soundtrack. The words and music can be listened to together or separately, or muted entirely. And if a detail illustration catches a reader's heart along the style, an "explore" button pauses the scroll to permit for closer inspection.
Every bit for the story itself? In a nutshell, it was inspired by Roth's involvement in the computer program AlphaGo, and the plot, as much as it can be summed up, imagines a futuristic world where artificial intelligence has attained the capability to mimic humans — Roth amidst them — to chaotic and, eventually, murderous ends. "There's a real hard-boiled, dark undertone that'due south perfectly fitting to the general anger of our tremulous times," he says. "Relatively few artists get to show that side of the coin. Just Diamond Dave is very, very real."
David Lee Roth's "The Roth Project"
The words and images, however, are just one selling point (and here is where we circle back to that annotate about comic books going "the way of all vinyl"). "The almost entertaining, the almost colorful and the near engaging affair is the medium itself – the mechanism," Roth continues. "It'due south vastly superior to the turned and printed page." And while the concept behind the graphic novel was 100 percent Dave'south, he besides gives credit where credit is due. "When Miles Davis did 'Bitches Brew,' he assembled the near stellar talent he could. Our talent extends to Colin Smith — and across. The fellas who coded this beast? These are the same fellas who are working for Elon Musk and doing coding for him."
How did Roth manage to assemble this squad?
"It'southward 1 of the privileges of being a pop star," he says with a express joy.
So the follow-up: "Especially one that makes you smile."
To exist sure, fifty-fifty with his deep swoop into the visual arts (and for that matter, stints as an player, author, radio DJ, New York City EMT, daredevil rock climber and tattoo skincare company founder, amidst others), Roth is a popular-star entertainer at heart. Which ways that no thing the pursuit at paw, there'due south always music happening. Recently, he unveiled a new solo song, the uncharacteristically nostalgic "Somewhere Over the Rainbow Bar and Grill" (the tune also appears in "The Roth Project"), and he promises in that location'southward more to come.
"My intention was to release the remainder of the songs Drake-style, unmarried past single," Roth says. "That affords a great focus on the individualized tracks, most of which get lost in the shuffle when yous release an album. Doesn't affair if y'all're Paul McCartney or Metallica; put out 12, 14 songs and we're just engineered as primates to go, 'I like this one and that 1… at present what'southward for dinner?' "
"Somewhere Over the Rainbow Bar and Grill" attracted plenty of attention when Roth issued it every bit a standalone single in late October, and is closing in on a one-half-million YouTube views. "For somebody in my position, at this point in my career, that's a knockout over the park," he says. At the aforementioned time, he acknowledges that his new material volition likely always place second in listeners' minds backside his towering work with Van Halen. "I won the Super Basin seven times over with the Iv Horsemen — own't nothin' going to knock that mountain downward."
On Oct vi of this year, ane of those horsemen, Eddie Van Halen, succumbed to cancer at the historic period of 65. In the wake of his passing, Roth fielded numerous requests for comment on his longtime ring mate. But he has opted to remain silent out of respect for Van Halen and his family.
David Lee Roth'due south analogy for "Somewhere Over the Rainbow Bar & Grill"
When he posted "Somewhere Over the Rainbow Bar and Grill" online, notwithstanding, it was with a unproblematic dedication. On a hand-drawn illustration accompanying the release, Roth wrote, "Hey Ed, I'm gonna miss ya. Run across y'all on the other side…" It was a fitting acknowledgement every bit the vocal itself, though written and recorded prior to Van Halen's death, functions as something of a tribute to their shared history. "I don't usually write autobiographically," he says, "but this was a specific effort to replicate a fourth dimension and a identify."
He points to one lyric, about the "odour of fresh sawdust" on the floor of the dives that would host Van Halen gigs in the band's early days, as beingness central to the vocal'due south genesis: "I actually walked past the door of a local drinking establishment and smelled the sawdust," Roth says. "And like Proust with a lemon cookie, it triggered volumes of memory."
David Lee Roth lyrics for "Somewhere Over the Rainbow Bar and Grill"
Equally for the Eddie Van Halen dedication, he says, "There are two kinds of burials in show concern. One's very quiet, behind the scenes, nobody attends. So there's a 'show biz' approach, where you have a solemn anniversary and it's followed by a reception where everybody gets up and tells stories. They can exist off-colour, they can exist tear-jerkers, they tin can exist of any nature. When my dad passed, the reception was at a Mexican restaurant around the corner. Everybody was eating and drinking and then the speeches become more colorful and much more energetic. Sometimes that's the most heartfelt, heartbreaking, best cloth ever.
"And and so I idea, if that occurred for Ed — which it did not — and everybody was going to get up and tell a story, when it got to my turn I would kickoff with, 'The odour of fresh sawdust on the floor…' And go from there."
He continues, "That'due south the get-go of the story, at least for me. Because that was everywhere we played — the smell of fresh sawdust on the floor."
Roth laughs. "And we were famous for breaking drinking records."
And follows upwards. "Still are! And solo, besides!"
Source: https://variety.com/2020/music/news/david-lee-roth-project-comic-interactive-graphic-novel-van-halen-1234844474/
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