China Town

Album: A Different Kind of Truth (2012)
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Songfacts®:

  • This unrelenting fantasy about gangland wars and call girls in the Lost Angles Chinatown district can best be summed up by its lead line, "headless body in a topless bar." The song is part of A Different Kind Of Truth, the last Van Halen album.
  • Performing this song onstage at the Forum in Los Angeles a few days before the release of A Different Kind Of Truth, Dave Lee Roth suddenly admitted half way through, "I forgot the fu--ing words!"

    "Get to the chorus," the singer urged his bandmates. "I know a way."
  • Eddie Van Halen was famous for his tapping technique on guitar, but that tapping into that leads off the song was played by his son, Wolfgang Van Halen, who joined the band in 2007. Wolf told Songfacts it's a track he was able to "really able to insert my own flair into."

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