“We choreographed some of the moves that David Lee Roth used in the Van Halen rock video for their song ‘Jump,’ because David was a student of Mr. In addition to sharpening his skills, Parker, along with kenpo master Frank Trejo, also helped Roth with his dayjob. In the 1980s Roth added some kenpo to his arsenal, taking up with Elvis’s old master, the legendary Ed Parker, and his associates. “I held that in my hands and… Careful what you show your kids! Inazuma!… Crrrraashh… Lightning…!” “The first time I saw an iaido kenjutsu demonstration with an actual kata I was maybe 10 years old? Eleven?” he told Metropolis. He held his first sword when he was barely out of the single digits. Yoshida, his kendo-teaching next door neighbor, he grew up surrounded by Japanese culture and quickly developed an affinity for it. Thanks to the large Japanese population in his hometown of Pasadena, California and Mr. This is why people celebrate him with fan-made videos like The Ultimate David Lee Roth Karate Kick Compilation, 1 minute and 16 seconds of pure hot-for-sensei genius that makes this collection of Jean-Claude Van Damme doing the splits seem as sluggish and meager as an early-90s Van Hagar record by comparison.ĭLR’s trademark moves are the result of a lifelong love of martial arts. There’s a gleeful, unchained exuberance to DLR’s iconic kicks and split jumps, a guileless desire to show off all of the cool shit he’s learned that might make him look a little goofy, but doesn’t really embarrass himself or everyone he’s ever trained with. He takes his martial arts far more seriously than he takes himself, and it makes his onstage antics playful instead of try-hard or sad. Whereas Elvis, the most infamous musical martial artist, took himself too seriously and ended up making a mockery of the disciplines he loved with his coke-fueled karate rants and heart attack-courting katas, Roth does the opposite. And the quote above is a perfect example of what makes him so brilliant. If there’s such a thing as a Platonic Form of the rock star who incorporates martial arts moves into his performances, then Diamond Dave is certainly the closest thing to that ideal that we’ll see in our lifetime. “Today, I’m the master of the six-foot staff – it’s actually a shower curtain rod, but it just looks great in the lights and I use it on stage.” And I’m going for my menkyo kaiden and I’ve been doing that since I was 12,” he explained. When a reporter with Metropolis, Japan’s leading English magazine, asked David Lee Roth if he was studying kendo while living in Tokyo in 2013, the Van Halen singer and solo star was quick to correct him.

Lightning Wolves by David Lee Summers