Meet The Guy Who Tried To Fool Canada Into Thinking He Was David Lee Roth

noah | July 16, 2008 10:00 am
ainttalkinboutdave.jpg

The guy who got pulled over while driving under the influence of nuts and tried to explain away his crimes by waving around his scarves claiming he was David Lee Roth has been unmasked: His name’s David Kuntz, and he’s a musician who’s been tooling around Ontario for a number of years. According to the Globe & Mail, Kuntz celebrated slipping through the fingers of the law last month by “[breezing] into a Brantford bar with a few women in hospital scrubs on his arm…. between sips of orange juice mixed with ginger ale and cranberry juice, [he] climbed onstage with a local band and belted out a few bars of ‘Ice Cream Man,’ an early Van Halen tune.” Sounds like the opening to the “Just A Gigolo” video, no? But as it turns out, people do know about the part Kuntz has been playing for years.

As himself, Mr. Kuntz has led a less-than-smooth life since he left home in Cambridge in the early 1980s at age 18.

“We’ve lost contact with him,” his father, also named David Kuntz, said yesterday, adding that the last he heard, his son was living near Chilliwack, B.C. “I don’t know what he’s doing.”

In July of 1988, the younger Mr. Kuntz, who had a band called Madjesty, found himself at the apex of a deadly love triangle, when one of the two women he had been seeing killed the other in a jealous rage. Kimberly Blinkhorn, 28, slashed and stabbed 21-year-old Rowena Parsons 70 times, and was found not guilty of murder by reason of insanity.

“This is something I have to deal with every day,” Mr. Kuntz, who at the time called himself David Angel, told The Globe and Mail after the trial in September, 1989.

What do you say to that? Even pointing out that it sounds like the seedier flip side to one of Roth’s multi-lady fantasies seems kind of, well, grim.

Imposter sings, jumps – and dupes Van Halen fans [Globe & Mail via DListed]