“One of the best”: the singer David Lee Roth called the best in any genre
Most rock and roll bands didn’t need a frontman with a phenomenal singing voice. It would be nice if every vocalist had the same kind of vocal chops that Freddie Mercury did in Queen, but sometimes charisma can be equally as important as someone who practises scalar runs whenever they have downtime on tour. While David Lee Roth could rely on his gift of showmanship to carry him through some of the best years of his life, he knew when some singers had him completely defeated.
But even if Van Halen decided to replace Roth with someone else at the start of their career, there’s a good chance they would have never taken off. Roth was an essential part of their team, and when he hit the stage, he had the same kind of rapport with the crowd that you’d expect of a seasoned entertainer who had been playing music for 20 years.
By rock standards, though, Roth was never that concerned with the biggest names in the genre. Eddie may have been all about listening to bands like Black Sabbath, but Roth was far more eclectic, usually listening to whatever was on the radio to get a feel for the kind of music that he loved. So imagine the band performing with a pop diva and you’d have a pretty good description of the kind of dynamic they had.
That didn’t mean that Roth was swearing off rock altogether. He had a love for all kinds of genres, which is probably why he had enough foresight to break out ‘Dancing in the Street’ on Diver Down or even get behind the six-string himself when doing his version of the blues song ‘Ice Cream Man’. That bluesy flair was always a massive part of rock, and there was no better voice to deliver it than Rod Stewart.
“His songs, you can have other people sing them, but it becomes something other.”
david lee roth
Despite most people knowing Stewart for some of his cheesy hits in the 1980s or the disco era of his career that everyone wants to forget, his beginnings as a blues rocker feature some of the best vocal runs of the genre. Robert Plant hadn’t yet come along to blow out everyone’s speakers, so hearing him sing something like ‘Stay With Me’ with The Faces and have the ability to tone everything back down when singing a song like ‘Maggie May’ was the kind of feat that everyone needed to hear at least once.
Although Roth had a much broader palette for genres, he would have gladly put Stewart up against the heavy hitters anywhere, saying, “Rod Stewart, probably one of the best vocalists in the history of any genre, all together. That’s a no-way division thing. His songs, you can have other people sing them, but it becomes something other.”
However, perhaps the greatest part about Stewart is the fact that he was willing to bend with the times. After all, Roth couldn’t be singing those insane vocal leaps forever, and Stewart’s willingness to think outside the box is probably what led to Roth working with some different influences, even if it did cause him to fall into some pretty huge ditches whenever he went too far overboard.
Roth may play himself up as the consummate showman whenever he plays, but in Stewart, he knew that it was about more than entertaining. It was about showing people the personality behind every word being sung, and even if Roth had his moments when he could sound pitchy, it didn’t matter as long as he had done his job getting some emotion across.
