Made Up My Mind

The Zoo Crew just dropped the needle on Made Up My Mind, and if you are a Zoo Freak who likes your rock with a little road dust on the cuffs, this one sits right in the sweet spot. David Lee Roth cut it for Diamond Dave, the 2003 album that closed out his run of solo studio records, and he did not write the tune. He borrowed it from Savoy Brown, the British blues-rock outfit he has name-checked for decades, and he put it second on a record that opens like a pub set from 1969. Over at THE ZOO, that kind of deep-cut move is the whole point. The DJs are not spinning the radio single. They are spinning the song Dave reached for when he decided to pay his old teachers a visit.

Made Up My Mind was written by Chris Youlden, Savoy Brown's sharp-dressed singer in the late sixties, and it opened the studio side of A Step Further, released in 1969 on Decca in Britain and Parrot in the States. Before the album even hit the racks, the song had already turned up as the B-side of the American single Train to Nowhere, Parrot 45-40039, cut loose in June of that year. Youlden sang it, Kim Simmonds played guitar, Lonesome Dave Peverett was still in the band, and the rhythm section of Tony Stevens and Roger Earl would later walk out and start Foghat. The original is short, a little under three minutes, and it has that British-blues snap: a singer who has already decided, a band that does not need to argue with him. Roth's version clocks in at three minutes flat. Same title, same writer, different room.

Diamond Dave was recorded at Henson Recording Studios in Hollywood and issued on July 8, 2003, on Magna Carta. Roth produced it with Alex Gibson, with Nathan Jenkins and Jeremy Zuckerman listed as additional producers. The record is mostly covers, laid back on purpose, and the first three songs are all Savoy Brown numbers written by Youlden. Track one is You Got the Blues, Not Me, which is Roth's retitling of I'm Tired, also from A Step Further. Track two is Made Up My Mind. Track three is Stay While the Night Is Young, a Youlden song Savoy Brown cut later, on the 1972 album Hellbound Train, after Youlden had already left. Roth told KNAC that in the sixties, if you wanted to boogie down, you did Savoy Brown, and he added that he still was not sure what the name Savoy Brown really meant, only that it sounded great. That is the whole first stretch of the album in one sentence. He was not chasing a hit. He was building a set the way a club band builds a set, three songs from the same shelf before he wandered off toward Steve Miller, the Doors, and Jimi Hendrix.

On Made Up My Mind he plays harmonica as well as singing, which fits the room he was trying to build. Brian Young handles the guitars, James Lomenzo is on bass, and Ray Luzier is on the drums. Jeremy Zuckerman adds Hammond B3 organ and rhythm guitar. It is a working band, not a stunt cast, and the track stays close to the original length instead of stretching into a solo showcase. Roth talked to the Las Vegas Sun about the whole cover idea and said that when he goes to the movies and watches somebody redo a picture that was already great, he wonders why they bothered, so some of the album was about getting the cover right. He was less polite about the Beatles, telling the same paper that Tomorrow Never Knows was a great idea that did not quite add up, and that the way his band did it was better. On Diamond Dave that Beatles song is retitled That Beatles Tune. Made Up My Mind never got that kind of boast. It just sits there, second song in, like Dave already knew the answer before the count-off.

The album did not storm the big chart. It reached number 18 on Billboard's Independent Albums list and then slipped out of sight. Reviews split hard. The Daily Vault handed it a B. Entertainment Weekly handed it an F. AllMusic, KNAC, and Rolling Stone weighed in too, and none of them agreed with each other. Roth only kept one song from the record in the live show that followed, Shoo Bop, his take on a Steve Miller tune. Made Up My Mind stayed on the disc. Two other tracks on Diamond Dave, a remake of Ice Cream Man and a cover of Bad Habits, had actually been cut back around 1995 and held. Roth spent about a hundred thousand dollars of his own money on a black-and-white video for that Ice Cream Man remake to push a Las Vegas residency. Made Up My Mind did not get a video. It got a slot between two other Savoy Brown songs and a harmonica part, which is about as Diamond Dave as a decision gets.

Before any of that, there was a kid from Bloomington, Indiana. David Lee Roth was born on October 10, 1954, the son of Nathan Roth, an ophthalmologist, and Sibyl Roth, a teacher. Summers he headed to New York to see his uncle Manny, who ran the Cafe Wha? in Greenwich Village, the same room that had already hosted Bob Dylan and a long line of folk and rock acts trying to get heard. Dave has said the records he heard around the house and on those trips leaned toward Al Jolson, Ray Charles, and a whole lot of Motown, and he has claimed that if you ask whose voice his sits closest to, the answer is Wilson Pickett. He practiced that shout when he was twelve, much to the rabbi's dismay, and he danced because dancing was free. The family moved west, and he landed in the Pasadena schools, including John Muir High School, after a stretch at The Webb Schools in Claremont. His parents sent him to a psychiatrist for a few years and to a horse ranch for troubled teens, trying to settle what the family called his monkey time. It did not settle.

In his late teens he sang with an R&B-tinged rock band called the Red Ball Jets. He has tied the name to the red dye in candy that used to wind him up, and also to a sneaker brand that was everywhere from the fifties into the early seventies. Another Pasadena group, Mammoth, with Alex Van Halen on drums and Eddie Van Halen singing and playing guitar, rented the Red Ball Jets' PA system for about ten dollars a night. Roth auditioned for them more than once and got turned down. He kept showing up. By the summer of 1973 he and Eddie were playing together in an east Pasadena backyard for kids from Muir, Blair, and Pasadena High, running through Black Sabbath, Grand Funk, and Cream while the party worked through a keg. He joined Mammoth as the singer. The name had to go, because another band already owned it, and Roth pushed for Van Halen. Michael Anthony came in on bass. The backyard band became the club band, Gene Simmons caught a show and paid for a demo, and the rest of that story is the one Zoo Freaks already know by heart.

The Diamond Dave nickname is older than the album. Roth has said he would turn up at a Pasadena High dance in suspenders and two-tone Cuban heels while everybody else looked like a surf movie extra, Pendletons tied at the waist, hair parted in the middle. The Van Halen brothers, watching him walk in, figured he sparkled like a diamond. Diamond Dave. He carried the name out of Van Halen in 1985, through Eat 'Em and Smile with Steve Vai and Billy Sheehan, through Skyscraper, through the long stretch of solo records, and back into the band for the 2007 reunion and the 2012 album. Diamond Dave, the record, is the one where he stopped writing for a minute and went back to the songs he had learned before any of that. Made Up My Mind is the cleanest example on the disc. A singer who already knew, a band that did not need a speech, and a harmonica that sounds like he brought it from the old PA rental days.

If you want the man himself, the official site is David Lee Roth. He keeps an official page on Facebook, posts on Instagram, and holds the handle on X. The long-running fan board is The Roth Army, up since 1999 and still arguing about classic Van Halen and solo Dave, and the same crew keeps a page on Facebook. Pull up a chair. The Crew is staying with this one for another spin.