Billy Sheehan states everything changed and no longer fun in David Lee Roth band during ‘Skyscraper’

Billy Sheehan states everything changed and no longer fun in David Lee Roth band during ‘Skyscraper’

Former David Lee Roth and current Mr. Big. Talas, The Winery Dogs and Sons Of Apollo bassist Billy Sheehan was interviewed by Hall Laurel for her book Soundtrack of Our Youth: History of Hair Metal Music, which was recently released and is available in Kindle and paperback formats.

Sheehan was asked why he ended up leaving the David Lee Roth band to which the bassist stated (with slight edits): “Eat ‘Em & Smile was a blast. Writing, recording, touring, hanging out — we had a great time. I loved the music and live shows. On Skyscraper, everything changed. It was no longer fun. Not my thing. The record was put together a piece at a time, rather than the whole band actually playing together. Unlike Eat ‘Em & Smile. So I put together Mr. Big to do things together as a band again.”

In terms of The Winery Dogs‘ self-imposed hiatus, Sheehan advised: “The Winery Dogs are my favorite band. We did an album, a tour, another album, and another tour, and did not want to get caught in that never ending cycle. There’s a reason why the first record or so of a band are considered their best work(s). After that, the endless cycle of album/tour, album/tour begins to drain the creativity (not in all cases of course), and we didn’t want that to happen. So we took a break. We’ll continue with lots of fresh new ideas and life experiences to write about very soon. In the interim, Sons of Apollo has been a blast! We are enjoying it immensely, and plan to continue to do so.”

You can read the rest of the interview with Sheehan at the Hair Metal Music‘s Facebook page or the book Soundtrack of Our Youth: History of Hair Metal Music.

Amazon describes the book as follows: “More than 450 pages celebrating the history of the hair metal / sleaze rock music era. Book includes more than 50 interviews with superstar musicians like Billy Sheehan and members of bands from Warrant, Twisted Sister, Winger, White Lion, L.A. Guns, Dokken, Danger Danger, Tora Tora, Junkyard, Dangerous Toys, Autograph, Pretty Boy Floyd and several others. We’ve done an extensive year-by-year breakdown of each year between 1981-2017. Also included are rankings of the top 1,000 songs of all time and the top 350 albums of all time. As well as several other features stories on the hair metal / hair band genre.”