Music

David Lee Roth finally unleashes insane 60-minute, million dollar music video

by Jeremy Mersereau

July 6, 2016

2002's infamous 'No Holds Bar-B-Que' features samurai swords, assault rifles, and catwomen.

On-again off-again Van Halen frontman David Lee Roth is known for many things: luscious golden locks, flamboyant stage presence, never under any circumstances wearing a shirt… and his infamous No Holds Bar-B-Que video project, which he’s finally uploaded to YouTube in full.

Described by Roth back in 2002 as a melting pot of “Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, Soupy Sales, Groucho, Kurosawa, Hugh Hefner, and on and on and on,” the hour-long video is a frenzied onslaught of seemingly-disconnected imagery. In it, Roth practices his samurai swordsmanship to Gerry Rafferty’s “Baker Street”, kayaks with masked catwomen with an assault rifle in hand, and hangs out and sings in what appears to be a Twin Peaks lodge. All of this is crazily, breathlessly edited together in a manner that even the most ADHD viewer would find hard to take in. Sonic the Hedgehog watching the BBQ after taking amphetamines: “Can you… slow this thing down?”

Nearly a decade and a half ago, Roth told the AV Club that the frenetic nature of the video was an attempt to match the viewer’s “biorhythms”, which have become overclocked thanks to being constantly immersed in media culture. “In this, you’re entertained right along with your current state of biorhythms, which is frenzied. If you watch television and listen to radio regularly, if you spend any time at the local shopping mall, then your inner tempo is frenzied,” he said. That…makes a lot of sense, actually.

Through the mists of time, Roth continued about the motivations behind the project:

“I tried to create a different type of television — it’s not really a show and it’s not really a biography. There’s a lot of show-and-tell in there. I’m not really sure what it is. Perhaps that makes it pure. Like Picasso said, it’s bound to go over some people’s heads, so I created a version with a director’s commentary.”

We NEED to hear that commentary. Until now, No Holds Bar-B-Que was never granted an official release (can’t imagine why), but VHS copies of Roth’s opus have been circulating on the tape trading market for some time. Thanks to Roth’s boundless generosity, we can now all appreciate the magic: