REVIEW: David Lee Roth – Your Filthy Little Mouth (Japanese import)

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DAVID LEE ROTH – Your Filthy Little Mouth (1994 Warner Japanese edition)

I’ll admit it, I like this album a lot, and I have since it came out in ’94. It was, however, a total flop. I will never forget the summer of 1994. Working in a record store for the first time, there was a lonely stack of Your Filthy Little Mouth discs sitting right next to an equally tall stack of Motley Crue self-titled CDs. I don’t think I sold one that entire summer, though not for lack of storeplay. It was the times, and if this album had been released in 1989, I’m sure it would have been a smash hit across multiple radio formats.

By this time, David no longer had a “real” band. Long gone were the days of Vai and Sheehan, and even poor Jason Becker was now gone, struck with Lou Gehrig’s disease. Dave started writing and playing with guitarist Terry Kilgore, and utilized a lot of studio cats on these sessions. Kilgore’s playing — bluesy, stratty and tubey — was lightyears away from the futuristic sounds coming from Planet Vai.

The album skirts multiple genres, which earned Dave equal amounts of praise and derision. We all knew Dave had lots of different T-shirts in his drawer. “She’s My Machine” is a groove rocker, mid-paced and sexy with Dave doing his best Van Halen impression. Other songs, such as “Big Train” explored the fast and speedy side of Dave’s boogie rock. Deeper in, “Cheatin’ Heart Cafe” (an excellent duet with Travis Tritt) and “Hey You Never Know” hang on the outskirts of Nashville quite successfully.

Meanwhile on side two, you get the eclectic reggae and urban sounds of “No Big ‘Ting” and “You’re Breathin’ It”, neither of which work and weaken an otherwise strong collection of songs. “Your Filthy Little Mouth”, the title track, quickens the pace back to where we started. It is a strong rocker with some of Dave’s patented fun and cool lyricism. The album ends on a slower note — Willie Nelson’s “Night Life” (previously covered by Thin Lizzy) and a track called “Sunburn” which recalls “Coconut Grove” from the first EP.

A stupid and terribly unnecessary remix of “You’re Breathin’ It” is a bonus track, and the final song — unless you own the Japanese version (I found mine at a record show in Guelph Ontario), which tacked on a cool blues called “Mississippi Power”. “Mississippi Power” was also available on the “She’s My Machine” 7″ single (which I also bought at a record show in London Ontario many years before that).  The Japanese version also had a sticker.  Wheee!

DLR STICKER

Lyrically, Dave was at the top of his game, spinning fun and witty lyrics like never before or since in his entire career. Only Dave could sing, “I got a steel-wheeled radial prophylactic for you, and I ain’t afraid to use it now.” All over the album, you will find double and triple entendre as well as Dave’s personal philophy of life. Are you a passenger, or an engineer? “Whatever gets you to the end of the line”. “Take the traveller and the tourist — the essential difference is, the traveller don’t know where he’s going, and the tourist don’t know where he is!”

When the album flopped, Dave disappeared for a few years and went to Vegas. By 1998 he had snapped up John5 (from Rob Halford’s 2wo), and put together the awesome DLR Band which could rival Van Halen in chops and aggression. Your Filthy Little Mouth stands as an interesting detour on Dave’s road of life.

4/5 stars. Only a couple stinkers (and one useless remix).

21 comments

  2. Ahhhhh Shucks man I’m a huge Dave fan,point being I loved the Little Ain’t Enough album.
    This album was a total left turn from his previous efforts just like Skyscraper was a right turn from Eat Em.
    This album is very diverse like u pointed out Mike kinda like I guess if your driving thru some huge neighbourhood u would see/ hear all diverse cultures ,that’s this record for me diverse.
    Gone is Bombastic Dave hello to Multi cultural Dave….give him credit man it’s 1994 and Dave ain’t chasing trends so full props to him for that!
    Another side bar….
    Back in the summer of 91 we had tix to go see Dave co headlining a tour with Cinderella with Extreme opening at Alpine Valley in Wisconsin and the whole leg of the tour was cancelled due to lack of tickets.
    Man I was bummed!

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  4. Have to give credit where credit is due: enlisting Nile Rodgers from CHIC for production on this album is what got me to check out this disc in the first place!

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    1. Yes! Thanks for mentioning this. He did an incredible job. I know DLR did Ice Cream Man with Nile Rogers a little later on too, but I would have liked to see them do more in the future!

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        1. That one is universally loved, but I think he’s done some other quality stuff. He surrounds himself with amazing enablers. Steve Vai, John5, Steve Hunter… and I do like this album!

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        4. I like the sound of that one, too. It’s quite possible I knew about that, as it would have been listed on John5’s discography. Naturally I knew very little about Dave at the time, as I had completely disregarded Van Halen, so it wouldn’t even have registered.

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        5. I was aware of John from his work with Rob Halford in Two. When he joined DLR I wondered what it would sound like. Brilliant, actually. Space-age.

          I think what Dave needs to do next, should Van Halen be on ice (?), is get back and reform the lineup with Steve Vai. Just for a quick club tour or something. It has to happen!

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        6. I’d be all in for that. Another album with those guys, perhaps… cause that is a great album and a great band.

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  6. Saw him on the tour for this album and there was just something about it that didn’t really work. They would play an old number and the place would go crazy, then they’d play a newie and it would get no reaction. Maybe the audience were expecting something different from DLR at that point, but I vividly remember (again!) him introducing one of the numbers off Filthy… with a humourous tale and it was met with silence. The band had to just quickly count in and start to rescue the moment.

    Still, Dave brought Jason Bonham’s current band Motherland with him as support, so that was interesting…

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      1. That’s right. No one really realised or cared about them in 1994 unfortunately.
        McMaster passed away a while back, that’s right. Him and Jason B seemed to stay close as they did more bands after Motherland folded as I recall.

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  7. In my opinion, that review was dead on. This record is reviewed a lot more favorably and fairly 20 plus years later than it was in ‘94. Problem is with a lot of people reviewing some artists, DLR in particular, they don’t even seem to realize they’re telling the artist to “ just do what you were doin on those records I know you for! Make songs like blank or blank! “ Two podcasters I’ve listened to come to mind. It must suck to be an artist that feels they have a lot os stuff in them but they gotta keep giving the people what they want. ( better than most of our jobs though, lol) And yeah, he fell flat on a couple things here, but That’s Life (No pun) and yeah, the show I saw on that tour was herky-jerky because of the way he set up the song list and the audience I was in didn’t even seem to know or care he had new music out. Even if he did get them rockin ( shit, he’s DAVE. He’s got CHARAZZMA! ) he’d halt it by going to something like Night Life as the next song. It was really for the die hardship.

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    1. Hey thanks Kevin! Much appreciated. I really would have liked to see that tour. It’s always interesting when songs are played that nobody recognises. But WE know…

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