Guitarist Steve Vai recently talked to BBC Radio, where he mentioned his time playing with David Lee Roth.
Here’s what Vai said:
“When the ‘Eat ‘Em and Smile’ thing came along, Dave was very wise to find musicians that he thought not just guitar player, but bass player and the drummer were pretty capable of their instruments. And it allowed Billy and I to just do things that I think were pretty unconventional at the time.
”But that was an era where people were really playing the sh*t out of their instruments, and we just took great pleasure in just taking it as far as we can. And we were lucky that it was accepted.
“There were hard, hard shoes to fill but we didn’t really think of it that way. It was just like, ‘Let’s do this. This will be great, they’ll love this!’ When I’d gotten into the band, it was the most coveted guitar position in the world at the time.
”You were the guitar voice behind Dave Roth who people were used to hearing, and the chosen one himself – Edward. And I admired Edward so much. I love that old Van Halen stuff and he really revolutionized rock guitar.
”So I couldn’t in my mind consider competing because it’s foolish! You can’t compete with Van Halen. So the way I looked at it was, ‘That was that, but now this is this, and I’m going to do my best to put my voice into it.’”
“Because to try to sound like him would have been a terrible defeat. I didn’t feel any competition, I felt like he was an inspiration. Van Halen was Van Halen, and Dave Roth had different aspirations in a sense to some degree.”