While on tour in Europe in late-1981, Van Halen filmed a promotional video for "So Is This Love?" for Italian television in the 'Prehistoric Park' in Rivolta D'Adda, Italy.
Almost 40 years later, the long-lost footage has surfaced on YouTube, via an account called Kosmo VanHalenItalia.
You can check it out via the player above!
"So Is This Love?" was a Top 20 hit in the U.S. from VH's 1981 Fair Warning album, though the band never released a music video for it in the U.S. (MTV signed on for the first time on August 1, 1981.)
As such, the "So Is This Love?" video has all the guerilla-energy and rough edges typical of the pre-MTV music video era. But the band didn't phone in the performance.
David Lee Roth is in top form, strutting about and high kicking while Eddie Van Halen, Michael Anthony and Alex Van Halen dutifully mime their respective parts behind him, in the shadow of a gargantuan brontosaurus statue.
The occasional B-roll of a triceratops, tyrannosaurus rex or wooly mammoth statue adds additional charm.
Van Halen fans have long had questions about the "dinosaur video," some photos from which were published in the mid-1990s.
The uploader claims the footage aired on Italian state television, RA1, during a show called Happy Circus.
Thumbnail Photo: Getty Images