David Lee Roth has released another in his occasional series of unreleased tracks reportedly taken from the former Van Halen man's 2007 sessions with guitarist John 5, drummer Gregg Bissonette and keyboardist Brett Tuggle.
Manda Bala – titled after a Portuguese expression that translates literally as "send a bullet" but is more usually used to mean "go for it!" – is an exuberant acoustic number, which may or may not have been released to coincide with Sammy Hagar's 76th birthday. Who knows? Certainly not us.
"Dave and I have about 12 or 13 songs in the can for a future record," John 5 told Guitar World in 2012. "And it’s all acoustic. But not strummy, campfire stuff – I’m talking lots of cool, crazy jazz chords, and 50 or 60 overdubbed guitar tracks, with all this harmonising and other weird stuff going on. Dave’s vocals are incredible. He sings his ass off."
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Other songs to have emerged from the sessions include Somewhere Over The Rainbow Bar and Grill, which Roth released in 2020, Giddy-Up, which came out in May 2021, and Nothing Could Have Stopped Us Back Then Anyway, a tribute to Van Halen which was released last year.
"People really like those songs, so I’m super happy about it," John 5 told al.com in 2021. "Because listen, you can’t deny a good song and Dave writes good songs. He’s written some of the most amazing songs of our lifetime, and Dave worked really hard on these lyrics. I’m not sure when it’s going to come out or if it’ll come out, but I hope it does."
