On his official YouTube channel, David Lee Roth dropped a brand new track titled ‘Manda Bala’ from his unreleased collaboration with John 5.
Back in 2014, Roth and John 5 worked together on a record. Although the record remained unreleased for years, Roth shared in an interview with Talkin’ Rock With Meltdown in 2019 that it would finally see the light of day soon. He said:
“There’s been a revision of things, and I can start making real plans and start marching into the future. And, of course, you’ll start hearing that material. This is material that we wrote variously for my solo and for Van Halen, and it’s quite a bank of stuff.”
Following this statement, DLR released some of the material in 2021 on his online Van Halen comic book known as ‘The Roth Project.’ One of these tracks was ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow Bar and Grill,’ which was a tribute to Eddie Van Halen.
Last year, he shared another new song named ‘Nothing Could Have Stopped Us Back Then Anyway.’ John 5 said the following about this track in a chat with Ultimate Classic Rock in 2021:
“There’s a song, I’ll tell you, called ‘Nothing Could Have Stopped Us.’ This song is so great, and I just literally will beg Dave and Dave’s team to release this song because it’s about Van Halen, and it’s so good. I mean, it’s so f*cking good. And I just wish he would release it.”
The guitarist had the chance to work with Diamond Dave for the first time when he played on his 1998 solo album, ‘DLR Band.’ The two also worked together on the singer’s sixth studio album, ‘Diamond Dave,’ released in 2003. Over the years, they’ve continued to write music together.
You can listen to ‘Manda Bala’ below.
