“November 25th marked the nine-year anniversary of our failed attempt to reunite the ‘Eat ‘Em And Smile’ band for a few songs at the Lucky Strike bowling alley in Hollywood,” the guitarist wrote.
“Billy Sheehan and Gregg Bissonette were invited to perform ‘Yankee Rose’ and ‘Shy Boy’ at the Lucky Strike bowling alley located in downtown Hollywood where every Wednesday night there was a jam with some great career accomplished artists.”
He revealed the rest of the story, “I’ve joined a few of these jams in the past and they were always a hoot. Billy and Gregg were to perform these songs with Michael Starr (aka Ralph Saenz) from Steel Panther to sing. Billy gave me a call to see if I would be interested in joining and I thought it would be great. I suggested I would call Dave Roth to see if he would be interested in doing this, though I thought it was a long shot. But surprisingly, Dave was very into it.”
“Nobody knew Dave was going to be there. They thought it was myself, Billy, Gregg and our most wonderful keyboard player in the DLR band, Brett Tuggle (God rest his beautiful soul). And Ralph belting out Roth, which he does very well. When Dave and I arrived, the line was 4 people wide and stretched all the way around the building to Hollywood Blvd and beyond,” Vai noted.
The musician added, “There were thousands of people waiting in that line and they had already crammed 2,000 people into this little venue that held 350 people. The tiny stage had a curtain in front of it. We were all ready to go and the only thing I needed to do was play the first chord of ‘Yankee Rose’ and the curtain would open, Dave would come out, and we would be off. ”
“Right when I was about to hit the chord, the club manager came to me and said the fire marshal had shown up and was shutting down the gig, and they were evacuating the building. The urge to just hit the chord was overwhelming in me but I asked, ‘What happens if I play?’ He said, ‘You’ll be fined.’ I said, ‘Fine, I’ll pay the fine, how much is it?’” Steve further shared.
The guitarist revealed the club manager’s reply, “He ran away for a minute and came back and said, ‘The fine would be $5k.’ I said, ‘Great, I’ll pay it.’ And then he said, ‘No Steve, they also said if you play, the venue would be shut down, lose their license, and you, the band and the club owners can be arrested.’ Although this only fueled my fire to hit the chord because I thought, ‘Ah, getting arrested over something like this would be pretty cool.’”
“But then I had to think of the club owner, and also the fire marshal who was walking towards me, so I mustered up all the strength I had in me and put my pick down. I felt gutted. These photos were snapped by Michael Mesker while I was telling everyone that we couldn’t play. Then I went off stage to where Dave was waiting and explained everything to him,” Vai said.
The rocker concluded, “In true Roth fashion, he said… ‘Perfect!!! Now we will get more press out of it than if we actually played.’ And you know what? He was right. The situation was all over the news including TV news and even front page on many papers around the world. I wonder what would have happened if I hit the chord. Do you think I should have?”
Vai had joined David Lee Roth’s band in 1985 and worked on the album ‘Eat ‘Em and Smile’ in 1986. The band toured until 1987, and Vai also contributed to Roth’s 1988 album ‘Skyscraper.’ The guitarist left the band in 1989 and was replaced by Jason Becker.
