David Lee Roth released a new song today called “The Shit That Killed Elvis” in both electric and acoustic versions.
The song comes from Roth’s 2007 recordings dubbed “The California Sessions” by guitarist John 5, who also teamed up with Roth for the songs “Somewhere Over the Rainbow Bar and Grill”, “Low-Rez Sunset”, “Giddy-Up!”, “Alligator Pants”, “Pointing at the Moon”, “Nothing Could Have Stopped Us Back Then”, and the recently released “Manda Bala”. Gregg Bissonette (drums) and the late Brett Tuggle (keyboards) joined Roth and John 5 on the recordings.
Roth told Rolling Stone in 2013 the sessions were intended for a stage musical titled “Somewhere Over the Rainbow Bar & Grill”.
“It’s autobiographic,” said Roth. “‘Somewhere Over The Rainbow Bar And Grill’ is the opening theme song, and it’s about an Indiana kid who goes to sleep — think the Wizard Of Oz — and the characters in his life, the butcher, the baker and the newspaper guy, pop out of posters and sing him a song called ‘Giddy-Up!’ And he finds his way to all the good things in life, having discovered rock in the ’60s, and there’s a song titled ‘Alligator Pants’ — yes, I own a pair, I wore them for the last two tours. And things go horribly left-of-center wrong, of course, when you sell your soul to the devil, and one of the tunes is called ‘The Shit That Killed Elvis’. So yeah, it’s pretty stellar material.”
Listen To “The Shit That Killed Elvis” (Electric aka ‘Technicolor’ Version)
Listen To “The Shit That Killed Elvis” (Unplugged Version)