The Joe Rogan Experience - #1660 - David Lee Roth

Episode Date: June 3, 2021

David Lee Roth is a singer, songwriter, solo artist, and the voice of the Grammy Award-Winning hard rock band Van Halen.

The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day. David O is not on the line. Likewise. Joe, you handle aging better than anybody that I know. You stay yourself through thick and thin. You are yourself. Please explain self-s thin. You are yourself. Please explain self-sign.

You are you. You carry zero pretense. You are just who you are. And you're eccentric, but it is genuine. I enjoy folks. I enjoy entertaining folks. I enjoy learning from folks, whether that's in a formatted kind of a thing or whether we're gathered around the campfire or the occasional bong. Yes. The alleged bong. That's something

that most of us, I think perhaps we were compelled to skip out on that once we leave school. Once we leave the club level in showbiz where we're confronted with all kinds of other neighborhoods of folks and, you know, different kinds of shoes and haircuts and music and approaches to the politic and social. And once you're out of school, you kind of, okay, I joined the law firm. Now I only go out with the law firm folks that join that country club or you become a permanent below 14th street downtown and i haven't been up above 14th street in uh four years you used to hear that right yeah so when you when you lose that uh it becomes gee you want to become stay part of that group

you don't want to start speaking downtown around the law, boys. I myself am a combat hippie. Peace, love, and heavy weapons. That's the thing about, like, leaving clubs, right? You leave clubs, you kind of leave contact with people, right? You remember the quad. And it's just as important and perhaps more important going boo. The quad?

Yeah, the quad at school. There's a pep rally on the quad at the quadrangle. Okay. Remember? At the quadrangle. You know, there's a pep rally on the quad. It means a square place where everybody gathers for the rally. And people going to music school, going to art school, doesn't matter.

Folks frequently will come out, and Al Van Halen and I went to music school together,'t matter. Folks frequently will come out, and Al Van Halen and I went to music school together, for example. He says, say hello. He's listening currently. Say hello. As we speak. Alex actually would punch you in the shoulder and go, yo. Yo.

He was part of the busing program, too. Yo. Yo. However, I'm Jewishish so we would say hello shalom what's with the outfit the painting outfit i like it this is kind of what i wear regular okay if you get dressed up there's nothing gonna make you look older than trying to look young nothing's gonna make you look fatter than trying to look skinny. You want to see how I am regularly? Elton John can't go anywhere without purple.

He can't? No. There are folks who can't go out anywhere without a complete hair setup and obtaining the character. That seems exhausting. It is. I'm not really a character. Most of my high fashion probably comes from a sports store and probably comes from a surplus place. And on a show like this, you get a better view of who I

actually might be. Now, if I was putting on face, I wouldn't have showed up with a missing tooth. I fell off my bike going zero miles an hour. The seat was too high. My leg was too short. It was a deadly combination, Joe. And you lost a tooth? When did you lose a tooth? But in the mixed martial arts context, I think it might be fit. Well, again, it fits with your lack of pretense.

Are you going to get it replaced? Of course. And I'm glad you asked. How do they do that? They, like, screw a bolt in there? Yeah. It is in Beverly Hills. I am fortunate enough to have some great dentists who do what I call newscaster teeth.

Oh, nice. Who sits closer to the camera for sustained periods of time. Doesn't matter what news you watch. I know we watch both. And you study them. So their teeth have to be perfect. And I just saw a great show on Netflix called Ma Rainey's Black Bottom. It's the story of Ma Rainey, the blues singer, okay, played by Viola Davis. And she has teeth that look like she made a $15 visit to an uptown dentist in 1926. It's got a frame on it, you know, like a gold frame.

Mike Tyson had these teeth too. I remember. And so it has taken me six months, but I'm getting a blue's tooth. Blue's tooth? Oh, yeah. I'm getting exactly one of those with the frame on it. Really? Old school.

Oh, yeah. So a gold frame? Mm-hmm. 1926. So that when I look in the mirror in the morning, I'm reminded. Wow. Mm-hmm. I've always wanted a gold tooth.

Think about that. One gold tooth at least. That would be pretty dope. Come on. I just saw a picture of Mike Tyson when he was 20 years old, and he's got one tooth. The whole thing. It really completes the look. But for myself, it is blues. I went to high school from 1926. It says so right down on the rock

when it was just a trade school up in Altadena, California. Every Van Halen song has a Motown chorus. I saw to it conscious. Everything that is usable in Van Halen appeals to, oh, geez, every haircut you can imagine. You can go from skinhead to dreadlocks. Doesn't matter if you got a cowboy hat or a mohawk. Doesn't matter if it's Hollywood bouffant, okay? These days, it's not just guys, gals, but in the middle as well, okay? It translates to all. You follow? I do.

Sort of. Well, it's a combination. This is our 50th year, Alex and I. That's crazy. Why is it crazy? It's just amazing, you know? Crazy in a wild and awesome way. The fact that you guys have been doing music for that long,

I mean, that's pretty incredible. We came out of this music three weeks out of high school graduation. Our parents were very insistent. I feel like I'm watching a movie. I've seen it all play out right now. Yeah. The Van Heelans, their father and their mom said you're moving out okay they had jobs set up for them at the airport no shit as baggage handlers okay um i had been

tossed out of my house by mom okay mostly halfway through high school okay so halfway through high school she said out yeah what did you do? Well, I made my way. Ultimately, I moved in with Dad, but I finished high school. No, but I mean, what did you do that made her kick you out of the house? I was a troublesome kid, okay? I was in and out of the busing program. It was a wild and colorful time, all right? This is the 60s, you follow?

And there was constant conflict in terms of where the Van Halens went to school, for example, as Pasadena High School. It was 90% Caucasian, we'll call it, and other. I went to the schools that were all black and Spanish speaking. So when I say, orale, I mean it. You roll your tongue. Al Van Halen owns a 1956 Bel Air Coupe. Okay, with the slicks on the back. Oh, now you're talking. It's satirized. Okay, that's Pasadena High School. I own a lowered 66 Volkswagen with a 383 Chevy engine in the front, local.

It's like the balance that made our music colorful the my moniker diamond dave comes from when i would go over to the van halen side that's like ridgemont high i went to like cooley high all right and their music was all led zeppelin, Stones, The Who, Sabbath, like this. And starting at the seventh grade youth club dance for me, that was all Motown, which later my record collection was everything from Rick James and the funk. I took Eddie Van Halen to his first black concert at the Forum. I think it was the only one that he ever went to. It was Earth, Wind & Fire. Whoa, you saw Earth, Wind & Fire live? 1976, when all the hits lifted up.

Every famous Earth, Wind & Fire like this. Because I was gang-signing the whole alphabet from 7th grade on. Come on. We knew where to go get clip-on ties and see-through socks at A-Meals. When Alex Van Halen and I made our first lawsuit for $150 on somebody who welched on a check, we went to A-Meals. And we got clip-on ties, and we got proper socks, and we went out and sued them. You follow? You sued someone for $150? Well, somebody said it was the, and I say it with respect, the Mayfield School, the Holy Child of Jesus Incorporated, Joe.

And they said, and this was 1973, they said, according to the contract, that we had been smoking marijuana. No. I know I came to the right place, but save your romance. As a fact, we did not. That was not possible because we didn't have enough money for it. We would have. Full disclosure. Full disclosure.

It's for $150. So Al and I, and I know Al is listening right now. We laugh like pirates on the phone. Okay. And he and I went to Amiel's. We got clip-on ties. Okay. And we went and we filed in the small claims division.

All right. We stood in there and the school showed up. There were two nuns and a family, a father, a mother, and two young daughters. It was quintessential. This is 1973. In these days, like, for example, here in Texas with long hair, you better watch out over your shoulders. A very, very different background.

Okay? This is now any kind of haircut goes these days. But remember, long hair in 1973 in a court of law? Wow. You were already on your back foot. And we stood up, thought we were fooling the magistrate, he followed, with our long ponytails. Remember what I used to look like, Joe? I used to look like Tarzan who read a few paperbacks. Come on. I was you, Joe. Look at you. Look at you. Look at you in that shirt.

Exactly. And, you know, cheekbones for days, man. You could sharpen a hunting knife on those cheekbones. Look at those cheeks. Look at those cheeks. That's right. What a beautiful man you were. There we go.

I was gorgeous. Beautiful, man. Man, I launched a thousand hips. When you look back on that life. No, no, I'm not a sex symbol. You dig? I'm a thousand hips. When you look back on that life. No, I'm not a sex symbol. You dig? I'm not a sex object. It's I symbolize it when you guys feel sexy.

I'm the MC. I make other people feel sexy. You come and you listen to Van Halen music. You give me three songs. You're going to feel young and skinny. You, Joe, will feel invincible. And your old lady will feel eminently desirable how much is that worth it's inestimable you got some good marijuana when I walked in here like when when I got to the studio it's like the fog was thick in the building

as I passed her I'm like Dave must Dave must be here. I'm thinking of starting a brand. Yeah? A weed brand? You should. I would call it the shit that killed Elvis. Ah. T-S-K-E. What do you think?

That's a good move. It's a good t-shirt. I would wear it. I'll wear that t-shirt. If you start that brand, I'll wear that t-shirt on the podcast. Well, if I was going to do an do an acoustic guitar you know people in my position they sell guitars you know for example right if it's as a lead singer what am i going to sell an acoustic guitar it would be i thought about this the loudest acoustic guitar you ever bought without

being bigger how can it be louder i don't know i'm not i'm not an engineer joe i'm an artist you would just figure out a way to make it louder. But the DLR, the DRO special, would somehow be louder without being larger. And if we were making a weed brand, why don't we just cut to the chase? You know, it's like when we get stuff that makes us look good. Do you really care about wellness? No. Do you really care that it was made from educated fava beans or that it can speak Spanish or make a damn good espresso? No. Do you really care that it was made from educated fava beans or that it can speak Spanish or make a damn good espresso? No. This ointment makes me look vaguely handsome. So I'll put it on.

I don't care. And so do Marlboros. They make me look handsome, too. Do you have one? Marlboros make you look handsome? Yeah. That's how Marlboro made its living. Because I'm a cowboy, baby

You can tell from my cigarette And I can say that in 182 Marlboro languages Do you still smoke cigarettes? Occasionally I do How often? Every two days perhaps Every two days? That's right

That like flies in the face of the myth That you smoke them and you get hooked, right? And then you have to smoke them constantly If anybody catches up with me, it'd probably be the Marlboro Man. I can't imagine all of my heroes creating what they did in a smoke-free environment. Really?

I can't imagine any of my favorite comics, especially the ones from the vinyl records that I grew up worshiping, okay, how do you create that kind of comedy? Whether it was Lenny Bruce or Rich Pryor or anybody in between, how do you create that in a smoke-free environment? How do you create jazz music? Remember all those Blue Note jazz album covers,

and you might not even know what to call them, but if I hold it up, you go, oh, I've seen that a thousand times and that slow smoke this every set even the drummer has a cigarette in his mouth and the places in the movies when I was very very young were all black and white and it was Humphrey Bogart and I think Ingmar Bergman or whoever it was. I'm not even sure who it was, but she was gorgeous. And I was young and I was just sort of getting started and tuned into the way. Like just basically a teen. And she turns to him with a cigarette and says, got a light? And along with 20 million other baby boomers, I went, you bet.

a light and along with 20 million other baby boomers I went you bet and then later when I was 13 we went and saw Goldfinger he smokes a cigarette named after a Roth that's Rothman king-size you bet I am essay and I turned into bones so chums bold what's the benefit of the cigarette? What's the cigarette do? Well, initially, cigarettes, all posture. It's all presentation. It's all showbiz. And especially for someone like myself who just the world's a stage and I'd appreciate some better lighting. It's a video. Why stop now, rogan yes i get it and the cigarette would complete it because all

of my heroes smoked every cowboy when you heard the harmonica or whatever it was in clint eastwood he was smoking something called a chair route and i didn't even know what that was but i knew that i was doomed to actually try one sooner or later. Yeah, he smoked those dark leaf cigarettes, right? It's called a chair root. Chair root? Yes. That's what it's called?

Yes. And that's just your adventure heroes. All my favorite comics smoke cigars. I myself am a very indelicate house blend of a Kurosawa, Samurai Epic, and Groucho. And how many times, I don't know if you've ever, I don't know you well, but any kid in my neighborhood growing up, at some point did this to a pretty girl with your eyebrows. The Groucho Marx move. Yeah.

You bet your life. And pretended you had a cigar. Yeah. And you all know what you weren't saying. That was all about subtext at 11 years old. Okay, so there's the presentation of the cigarette, but what about the effects? Oh, ultimately, certainly, certainly. What's the positive benefits of the effects of the cigarette?

There are no positive benefits or effects of tobacco. There's a cognitive benefit. Oh, well, now you're reaching for the cognitive instead of the medical. I can't name you a single author. You know I'm a book man. Mm-hmm. You're right. We were talking earlier about my house back in Pasadena.

You're welcome to come in and try and steal it. All you're going to carry out are books. There are probably 2 out are books. There's probably 2000 books. I could fill this entire room with books, books, books, books. Okay. I don't know any great author who wasn't involved in nicotine. Mark Twain smoked 40 full Cuban cigarettes a day. That's two full boxes a day. That's insane. Freud, same thing. Churchill, same thing. Churchill smoked at least a box. That's 30. And a Churchill, if you know anything about cigars, that's as fat as a kickstand on a fat boy. And nicotine will do something in your head, okay? And this comes with full disclaimer of kids, don't do this. Don't do this.

I'm not recommending you do it. But in terms of what do you really think? You tell me what you think. I think that in terms of authorship where you really have to use your intellective, something like playing chess or writing a book or a play or novels or whatever, that nicotine has a major impact. All of my favorite musicians who are composers, Leonard Bernstein, have you seen the coming attractions for West Side Story? I myself am not a big Broadway fan, but it's mind-blowing what's going on with what he did with film for West Side Story.

And Leonard Bernstein was a chain smoker. Don't tell me that that nicotine didn't have the same thing to do with what he's doing that William Burroughs and Kerouac, the fellas, that it's just a big part of it. Stephen King. Stephen King talked about how when he quit, he had a real noticeable effect. Like when he got off the cigarettes, it was like much more difficult to write. It's hard to adjust to this kind of a thinking sometimes because we got schnuckered or swindled. We got swindled, Joe, when it came to LSD. And people would start going, wow, you know, drugs can open up a whole lot. And I know we have a far reach or your voice has a far reach. And there are some people, you know, named Moonbeam or Snowdoggy, going, dude, it had a really positive

effect on me. Well, when you start to hear that now, you realize that perhaps psychedelia didn't have such a creative value, somewhat perhaps, whatever. But compared to whatever is go fast, I certainly don't recommend any of it. Go fast? Anything that makes you go fast. Go fast. Nicotine makes you go fast.

You're making me want a cigar. You want one? Go ahead, please. Do you want one? I'm fine, but please, I'll enjoy yours. I love the aroma of tobacco coming off of a cigar. When you smell that with scotch on the rocks and a women's perfume drifting in on a warm breeze, you tell me that's not Miami?

You try to lie to me and I'm going to stop you right here on the air, Joe Rogan. That's poetic. You're talking poetry. Right? That's Hemingway, baby. Women's perfume with the scotch? Oh, my God. Right?

And the smell of that rich cigar tobacco smoke, and it's humid, right? You want to go modern? Off in the distance. She's got an accent. No, really. You know that. It's an aroma. Right.

It's not a fragrance. It's not a smell. Right. It's an aroma. Aroma. Like something that comes out of a kitchen when you smell bread being baked in New York City. Right. Sourdough.

Oh, you walk past that. And at my age, you get turned on by different things. I was living in Japan. And downstairs, they had a whole section of just Wagyu beef. You know, that $50 an ounce kind of red meat. I called it the porno section. I don't really like that stuff. Me neither.

I think it's too— It's bad for you. Porno? It's too fatty. No. It's bad for you, but— Want to change the subject? No.

Oh, hell no. You're in Texas. We talk beef. No. I eat red meat regularly. I was raised in Indiana coming out of Newcastle. You know the little circle picture, your profile picture? It's a picture of a little kid.

That's me when I'm about four years old, learning to tie my shoe. This fellow with some bib overalls and these exact kind of boots, teaching me to do it in Newcastle, Indiana, right down the street. So I grew up with what I fondly called white trash soul food, baby. Everything was cheese. Everything had butter on it. Oh, there you go. That's me. Careful what you show your kids. Look at that little cutie. You were adorable.

Pop was in school until I was about 11, 12 years old. Oh, yeah? At Indiana U. So it's all about the outdoors. What do you do when you have no money in the family? You learn to play outdoors. Go outdoors. It's raining. Pretend you're. Go outdoors. It's raining.

Pretend you're on a boat. It's snowing. Now you're in Eskimo. And take your Eskimo sister with you. How many times did I hear that? It's dusty and hot. Okay, cowboy. How did we get here from beef?

Okay, cowboy. How did we get here from beef? Did you hear? Didn't the beef supply get hijacked? Didn't something happen today? There was hacked, not hijacked. Hacked? Hacked.

How do they hack the beef supply? Someone's messing. I mean, there's probably some hack. They did the pipeline for the gas the other day. Is that what's going to happen every now and then now? Let me see. They're going to do it with everything? I imagine fully show. Fully show.

Cyber attack meat supply. JBS cyber attack shuts down some slaughterhouses. With like their software or something? I don't know. Russia likely bought it. I have. Everything is software. Yeah.

Every machine, even the parking meter. What would happen? I mean, I'm, you know, I'm a homemade SEAL teamer. I've watched a lot of movies on Netflix. Here's the plan. Okay. Okay. And you'll be the cellos.

Hit the cellos when I go, this may sound crazy, Joe. But crazy is all we got. Oh, I think all we have to do, all we got to do is take that little bar on the parking thing and break it so it don't open. Nobody will know what to do. Watch what will happen. If you just jam the thing on the little wooden arm at the parking entrance of any parking lot of a corporate environment. Right. No one will know what to do.

Nobody will know what to do. They'll all get on their smartphones and you'll be able to completely stop up the traffic entirely. Right. So how hard is it for some computer to slow down the machines that are working inside, the mathematics of what your bookkeeping is, everything from the lights. And remember, AI knows how to defend itself. It's as simple as you've entered the perimeter. That's dangerous. Yes. That's the future. Exactly. You'll teach it to defend itself. And you teach it to decide that it wants to

take over because it doesn't want you pulling plugs and shutting off switches. Exactly. I don't like these humans deciding. And it will say, I'm simply defending myself. That's pretty familiar in the news. You were talking about AI before, like when we're sitting down out there. Yes. About self-learning.

Yes. AlphaGo, look this up over there. It's about self-learning? Yes. AlphaGo. Look this up over there. The AlphaGo project is, Jesus, I think $60 million went into this. It's a familiar, Go being a super difficult game. You'll know it from a computer game. I'm not familiar with the name of it. The word Atari comes from this. You have some pieces.

I try to surround yours before you surround mine. I don't know the game, but- A child can play it within 30 minutes. But it's super complicated, right? And you can take it all the way up to adult level. Instead of the number of stripes, we'll call them, like chess, you have 19 by 19, et cetera. Look at this. It says, as simple as the rules may seem, Go is profoundly complex. There are an astonishing 10 to the power of 170 possible board configurations, more than the

number of atoms in the known universe. Okay. So how do you bundle this in your brain? You can do it, but we have to train your intuition. And that's the only way you're going to beat AI. Look at this. This makes the game of Go a Google times more complex than chess. Okay. Now, AI Go, Alpha Go, the program, they expected it with no input from human beings to teach itself. Let's just give it the rules and see if it'll teach itself up to adult level. We think it'll take two and a half, three years. It took two weeks. Jesus. All the way up to tournament level.

So just to be wise asses, and I'm jumping around, but I encourage you all to dig into this. This is a national sport in Korea. This makes headlines. The Samsung Cup champions in his late 20s and gets half a million dollars. China launched their champion against AlphaGo. And when the computers started winning, they shut down all national broadcast. It's a national sport. The way chess might be the national sport of, Jesus, in the 60s, it was America versus Russia. There might be British champions in chess.

My point being, AI can defend itself. If we humans know how, then, of course course AI, and it can learn way faster. What you learn from that game is how deeply into your brain you can bundle up. You can deal with millions and millions. There was a time in club days when all I could imagine was $150. Do you follow? That's the number. I can't imagine much more.

That was a good road gig. They said, hey, you can make $1,500 doing this. I can't imagine. Crazy. What are you doing at all? I'm so used to putting everything in the gas tank. And then you have the musician's menu. I'm sure it's like the humorist menu.

It's this. No matter where you go, here's the menu. And you push the coins around and go, how much you got, Joe? Okay, we'll have the large. Right? Whatever here is left over from not putting it in the gas tank. Those days are important to connect to, though, right? Don't you think that it's important to stay in touch with the feeling that you had when you were starting out and you were trying to scrap together all that money and scrape together all that money to buy food?

Without that, there is no struggle. Without that struggle, you have to learn fear. Yeah. And you have to learn how you adjust to that fear. Okay. I don't care if you're a Spartan Knight or the Jamaican bobsled team. And don't laugh at the last one because they flipped their sled at a hundred miles an hour and they are the champions of the Calgary Olympics. The Jamaican bobsled team operated exactly like the Spartans did. How do you survive fear? That's what you'll be in your humor. That's what you'll be in your show. You laugh to win. It can be salty back at

you humor. How do you survive Beric's life? How do you survive no food for how long when you were just struggling as a comic? Remember when you got through points and you thought, I don't even know if I can continue this. I really don't. When that dark dog comes up at night and says, you're going to fail. You are never going to make it. How'd you get through that? You gave him what's called a Texas hanky out this side. And that's Spartan humor, homie. Now let's push that sled. Hottest thing on ice. The same thing, laugh to win, I call it. Laugh to win. You have to develop that through struggle.

We played five 45-minute sets a night. Five 45-minute sets a night, sometimes up to nine nights in a row. Al, I know you're listening to this and you are laughing. That's how this one went too, right? And you had to learn to laugh at it. And then you had to learn to laugh at each other and find the resource when you wanted to quit or die or just die.

No matter what, you had to learn laugh to win. Now, whether you're a surgeon doing night shift, struggling, whether you're a combat veteran, mixed martial arts, you better learn how to laugh to win. Dig, because if you start to giggle and come in, oh, my God, cry baby, well, now you're a politician. How do you hold on to that, though, when you become a big rock star? Like once you're already sleeping on satin sheets or silk?

Yeah. Slide off of them satin sheets. Now that's a Johnny Paycheck song. We're in Austin right now, Joe. I know the silk sheets. You want me to sing it? Slide off of them satin sheets. Yeah, it's on Take This Job and Sh job and shove it but let's let's stay focused

like how do you keep the how do you keep that feeling because you have to stay grounded right and you're very grounded like you we were talking before the podcast said you ride your bike everywhere i do and i have three different backpacks depending on where i'm going to go because i traded it you know if i got to go to the grocery that's the bigger backpack but you do all this stuff yourself you handle everything yourself you're very normal and you're you're at you're not normal but it's very like a I don't I don't you're very you're very eccentric so you're not normal I mean try find another David Lee Roth but you're you do like you you But you just go out there and go on these little adventures.

I'm sure you get baked to the gills, and then you go to the grocery store or something. Okay. Adventure means the unpredictable finish. Grocery store, for me, is very predictable. Yeah. Depending on how high you are. Do you hear the Texas accent? It's just sliding right in there.

Yeah. Accents are music nobody's born with an accent I know what are you trying to say to me local no you don't have a palatal difference if I was going to meet Prince Harry and Meghan I'd give him some salty humor I'd go

oh what a wonderful child I certainly hope he was born with a proper accent. Can you imagine if that kid got to be king and he'd sound like a California beach boy from Santa Barbara? Dude, you are so voked. Voked? Revoked. Is that the opposite of woke? Dude, I so hereby voke you. Wow.

I haven't been to Santa Barbara recently. I think they just have no accent. Santa Barbara, they just talk normal. No, no. There is an accent that you're not familiar with. I'm not picking it up. Because you speak it. It's like a dog whistle.

You know, like you can't hear it, but the dogs can. I grew up around it we're california enough that y'all don't hear it they say something about livestock same kind in the same mind so if you hear someone you can say oh you're from santa barbara no for california there is a california vowel speak kind of a beach. A little vowel speak, yeah. Kind of whatever. Well, that sounded like Taylor Swift who's sounding like Cal speak. There's a little bit of that going on. Yeah.

And it's something that you learn. Yeah. And it's something that we speak. What was our original subject? Who cares? I think we're talking about the sound of the rhythm of accents. It is fascinating that they get grouped up in certain areas. Hold on a second.

You wouldn't know that unless you had golden time when you were traveling. Yeah. In the clubs, in the bars. And the struggle isn't just to make it. It's to educate yourself and figure out who you are and who you aren't. Today, we use reality series for that. Yeah, that's not as good. The road is the way, right? Oh, yeah. And you're going to figure out from working with all of your other colleagues who you aren't mostly, because most of it's going to be, I'll never do that.

Oh, God, I'll never wear those shoes. What was he thinking? Oh shit. Aren't you embarrassed? And you will decide yourself. The same as when we watched the Kardashians. The Kardashians? Oh yeah. You figure out who you are. It's not about them. Oh. You watch and you go, okay, I'd sleep with her, but not her. There's wisdom in this. Okay, but this guy here, he's making a big mistake. He's drinking too much. Ah, that one, that guy's onto a good idea. And you're figuring out who you are. Right, how you would be on that show. A lot of people do that, right?

Who you are as a human being. That's a cool haircut. You got to be crazy to wear that one, though. And we do this on reality. As the decisions show up, you figure out who you are. The hut, the hut, the hut is on fire. Well, I'd go for the extinguisher. And you wait to see what the hero does.

My wife watches that show when she's on the Stairmaster. Which one? The Kardashian show. And I watch it, and I try to study it like a scientist. Well, it is an essay on what we value in public, but it's who you are. That's what it's for. We used to use the Bible for that. You would look at different characters in the Bible, and you go, now that's me.

The Kardashians of the Bible. Oh, yeah. And you would look at another character in the Kardashians, you'd go, yo, dog, y'all going to be a pillar of salt by morning. What I think it does is it locks you into a watching mindset because, first of all, it's brilliantly edited. They understand the rhythm of your attention span. And they capture the rhythm by constantly changing scenes and constantly changing cameras and going back and forth and you just get whoa you get locked into the drone you just watch these people live their lives and very few extraordinary things

happen but many above-ordinary things happen like they have very nice things they have beautiful homes they're very pretty you know and but they have like petty problems hold on so it's a question. Right. You compel a question here, Joe. We hear it's lifestyles of the rich and famous. There's an element of that. Champagne wishes and caviar dreams.

Austin, Texas. Home of the... The lifestyles of the rich and famous. Okay. So is that going out of style or is that becoming more popular? Is that, because we are a very highly valued culture now. We love to have public, we love to assign ourselves of our values, whether it's social, whether it's political, et cetera. And the idea of even, you know, you make fun of lifestyles of the rich and famous. But I'm going to wonder if it's even secretly more popular than ever before.

It's just not cool to talk about in public. You mean balling out of control? Well, for example, in the hip hop world, bling brings it. Yeah. Hip hop world's never lost their love of beautiful things. Bingo. And I see that there is China bling or Asian bling. I say with respect that's in Beverly Hills.

This is a reality series, and the folks are primarily Chinese, and it is their version. There's a show called Asian Bling? Oh, yeah. You know about that? Look that up. They're out of Beverly Hills. Crazy Rich Asians? Yeah, exactly.

The pivotal character is a billionaire fella. He's a very sympathetic character from Singapore. And everybody there is in Beverly Hills. You'll recognize all the street corners and ice cream store. Bingo. Bling Empire on Netflix. Okay. Follow LA's wildly wealthy Asian and Asian American fun seekers as they go all out with fabulous parties, glamour, and drama.

This is like when you guys talk about boxers. You can flip the channel, and it's the same description for every boxer. Scroll back up again. Mexican boxers are fierce and strong and feisty. You know, Italian boxers are strong and feisty.

You know, Joe, South Pacific boxers, they're a strong... I don't follow you. It's the same resume. Same thing thing so the bling empire is the same whether it's with rappers with it's identical and if you're lucky enough to move out of the country for a while you'll start seeing programs in when i was in japan you'll see indones Indonesian reality series. You'll see Korean reality series. And half the time you're not even aware literally what they're saying, but you can figure it out exactly.

And it is a warship of the bling that I think I'm going to wonder if America is just learning to hide it or if there's an actual change. What do you think? I think there's an actual change. I think people are less fascinated by materialism now than they have been in the past. I think there's also an oversaturation of wealthy people posing in front of private jets, that kind of shit. People are done with that. But not in the rap world. The rap world knows how to ride.

They know how to ride. They keep it exactly the same. It's all about blings. Right out front. Grills. I subscribe to a couple of boat magazines. I don't own a boat. I own a kayak.

I subscribe to Wooden Boat. Wooden Boat Magazine? Yes. Are you thinking about getting a wooden boat or just like looking at them? Oh, no. I grew up in canoes and kayaks and wooden oars and this kind of a thing. And it's also the culture of it. It's East Coast, Mystic Seaport, and et cetera, et cetera.

Dial this one up. I also subscribe to Boat, B-O-A-T And there is nothing in there Less than 200 feet 200 foot boat? There are boats that are as big As a football field They're like floating Floating apartment buildings

And if you want to know The latest For example In onboard digital- Live the dream. Well, unfortunately or fortunately- 106 meter, 106 meter, 300 fucking boat. Can you imagine?

Imagine just- What if you just decided to live on one of them? Like, fuck living in a place. Wait a minute. Can you imagine parking one? Well, you wouldn't park it. You would hire a professional. Can you imagine parking one? Well, you wouldn't park it. You would hire a professional. I want to back one up.

You would hire a professional. Yeah. You see the tender, the little boat that goes with that is two and a half million dollars. It looks like a shoe. That motherfucker has a helicopter on the top of his boat. That's balling. However, there's another side to this.

And I didn't do notes, so I'm kind of sprawling here. For example, the upside of- Wait a minute, you don't have notes for any of the things you've said so far? No, I have nothing. That's crazy. I who have nothing. Ray Dalio's son. He's, I guess, in his early 30s, it looks like, somewhere in there.

And it's Explorer X. He took a gigantic ship that is now for where costo has left off and with submersible submarines and full editing facilities for film and it's all about climate change and save the ocean ocean explorer or dot org i think it might be. He got his data board. It looks like a billion-dollar ship. It's as big as a football field, and it's all about saving the ocean and traveling, et cetera. Whoa. There you go. And so this is the upside of— Wait a minute.

That thing goes underwater? Oh, no. It contains the thing that goes underwater. But it looks like it goes underwater. You want to do a show from there? You should do a show from there. They have full broadcasting facilities, full editing facilities, full everything. And you can do a submersible.

And you can call me on the phone. Should we start doing yacht shows? There you go, Joe. Should we? Big bubble. Joe, show them the whole boat there. Show them the whole. Tell me that doesn't look like mixed martial arts

sailing to you. The boat? Yeah. That looks like a lot of work. It goes with the shoes, I'm telling you. It goes with the shoes. Poetry. So that's only for conservation. That entire boat is all for work. And that's what you'll find in a magazine like Boat. Oh, I see. So that's why. Yeah. So Ocean X. Yep.

So like SpaceX, but Ocean X. They're going to be the first to find the aliens. That's what I think. I want to be the first front man to get into one of those submersibles. Why don't you become homies with James Cameron? He's on that boat right now, Eddie. Just don't tell him you eat meat. Don't tell him you eat meat and get one of them.

Where are you at with vegetarian? Are you still eating reindeer? I still eat reindeer. Okay. I've never had reindeer, but I've heard it's delicious. I don't want to insult Christmas here. I'm more of an elk guy, but I like all wild game. I like healthy animals.

I had reindeer, I think it was in Norway or something. I had a religious moment. It's supposed to be delicious. Like Santa Claus, Catholic, something. The first time I pulled the trigger on a rifle was in Newcastle, Indiana when I was about six years old. Really? Yeah, yeah. As soon as you're old enough to carry it, that's when you start.

It was a short-lived career, pulling the thing. My pop said, you're the son of a doctor. You don't shoot it. Learn to cook it. So I've taken a few classes. In cooking? Oh, yeah. Yeah?

You can go ahead and get it, and I know how to quarter it, and I know how to do camp cooking and so forth. Do you? Have you done a lot? You asked me, where does Laugh to Win stay from? Where does Laugh to win stay from? Where does laugh to win? That's the ethic here.

How do you stay going? Right, right, right. How do you stay hungry? Where does laugh to win stay from? Not come from. It comes from go and try something new. It doesn't have to be epic. For me, it's always been education because I've become friends with my teachers and my instructors and my mentors.

Right, like your kendo training and all that. Because from there, you're going to be hungry. It's one of my favorite stories. When you move to Japan just to learn kendo, I'm like, that's a bad motherfucker. Just decides to go to Japan, brings his dog, learns kendo, and takes kendo four nights a week. My dog was the best icebreaker ever he was a full uh australian okay yep with uh a raccoon tail oh okay so you never see a 50 pound dog in japan or whatever like oh no you see little pocket rockets you know you got a little little uh you know ankle

biters with lots and lots of those. But this looked like a wolf. People would ask me, is that a wolf? And I would answer, no, I am. He's from Japan. Russ. And Russ got along with everybody. How long did you live in Japan for? Two years.

I based out of there. I took my dog and my guitar. I did not know a single word of Japanese. You just went out there. You didn't know anybody or anything, right? I didn't know where I was gonna go and you know where I wound it up in um the Oakwood Garden Apartments oh they have Oakwoods in Japan are you joking exactly like the first tour first tour with Van Halen right over on Barham. Want some coffee? Please. And from there, my first day traveling through the lobby, a fella's sitting there and I'm not out of line to say, Joe, great to see you again.

Great to see you, sir. Thanks for calling. My pleasure. I'm very excited when you decided to come here. Last time I saw you, we had dinner together in Vegas. For people who don't know, David Lee Roth doesn't have a phone. He has a handler. You have to contact the handler.

The handler will arrange, pick up, and drop off of Mr. Roth. If there's any problems, you are to contact the handler, and the handler will take care of everything. Mr. Roth has no email. How many rock stars does it take to put in a light bulb? One. I hold the bulb and expect the world to revolve around me.

Rock stars don't wear a wristwatch, Joe. We have somebody way smarter than us go, 10 minutes, Mr. Rock. Rappers wear some dope wristwatch, though. Rappers know how to

fucking rock a watch. Hello. Yeah. So I'm walking through the lobby in Japan, and I'm not out of line to say there is a huge person sitting in a very special chair that was not in that lobby when i left so they brought their own chair yeah they have a special chair for him oh and this was the most famous arguably most famous sumotori rikishi wrestler in the history of sumo, who happens to also be Hawaiian.

This was Konishiki. Oh, I know who that guy is. He's enormous. Konishiki. You pronounced it Konishiki. Konishiki. He was the man, right? Huh?

He was the man. Oh, big. He won 27 national tournaments in a row and caused quite a calamity. Look at that fellow. Jesus Christ, look at that picture. Oh, my God, he's huge. As I walk through, he stops me. And he says, he puts his hand up, and he's got two handlers.

Can you see me if I stand up? Do you have a camera that'll hit me up if I stand up like this? I'm on the camera here. He's got two handlers in white jumpsuits who do like this. They're not looking they're in a bands Okay, they're just constantly bowing. Oh, yeah, because he can't get up He's at that point was about 350 pounds. That's it. So getting up there. He looks a lot bigger than that Whoa, no that his fighting weight was 600 pounds. Okay, so he dropped some weight. Oh, yeah, and he was retired When I said when I met him 150 pounds 600 pounds. Oh, okay. So he dropped some weight. Oh, yeah. And he was retired when I met him. 650 pounds?

600 pounds. 600. Yes. I asked him once, what was it like trying to fight you? You want me to do it with the Hawaiian accent? Sure. Bro, it was like they were trying to fight a mattress. He was the sweetest, coolest, calmest guy. And and he said i'll be your senpai you're gonna need a

guide here bro oh yeah yeah and right away you're gonna need a veterinarian right right away you're gonna need a doctor for the shoulder my other shoulder not the one you have a shoulder issue right and now i you're gonna are you you're doing kendo and have a shoulder issue? Right. And now you're going to you're doing kendo and you're doing jiu-jitsu. You're going to need a dentist. And he was right. And I'll be your guide and stuff. He took me to the sumo tournaments.

Wow. And he was like national hero. That was like Springsteen showing up at a bar in Jersey. Talk about parting of the ways. And we got, I don't know, I'll say it, coarse because it's funny sounding. I don't know how many white boys have ever sat in a sumo barracks at the table with all the trainees. Wow. What an honor.

That just clearly is not done. Yeah. What an honor. That just clearly is not done. And coming from an arts background as artist and martial arts, I'm a lifer. You can tell. You trained under Benny Orquidez, right? Yeah, you bet. Benny the Jet. My first real, real time learning the armbar was in, I remember, 1983.

Wow. On the floor of the Jets Center. Really? Yeah, I remember. They were doing arm bars. Look at that. Oh, there he is. That is. You and him, man.

That's amazing. And we are at the Sumo tournaments right now. When was it? Year 2013. Wow. And that is the same building where we play rock and roll, but they take out all of the chairs and so forth. And he is a national

champion, alright? He's like an ex-president. This is awesome. And we started talking, etc., and he's the one who explained to me virtually everything that you see here. These guys are doing judo with each other and using the impact. It's like taking the front line guys, your defensive tackle versus defensive tackle.

That guy on the left is, sorry to interrupt, but that guy on the left is European. That's right. Look at the size of that motherfucker. Don't think of it as a belt. That's a handle. That is there that if one of those guys, watch, they're going to try and grab that handle because if he can get hold of it, you could throw his ass out of that circle. That's what they're trying to deflect there.

One of those 400 pounders gets hold of that belt. See it? See it? Oh, beautiful. If he grabs that belt, you're done. And there are famous guys who had the left hand grab. See, the guy on the left does not look like a regular sumo guy. He looks like a fucking gorilla.

He's a tank. They come in very, they all come in. Does that, back up to where that guy was? That's Kandinsky there. That guy looks like a wrestler wrestler. Okay, Joe. Doesn't he? Joe, let's call the fight together.

You're looking at big barrel bombs on the right. You're talking about the kind of face-changing knuckle-to- big barrel bombs on the right. You're talking about the kind of face changing knuckle to knuckle impact on the right. Yeah. The guy on the right looks like your standard. The one on the left moves like a mosquito on the water. He pivots. He's going to use judo maneuvers. He's twice as fast. He's three times as quick on his feet. He's sprawling. You know what the sprawl is, Joe? And the big boy is stymied. He has stalled. Look how fast he's moving. See ya! See ya! I'll see you in three endorsements. I always wondered

why they have... See how that's working? I do. Okay, now they're allowed to smack each other in the face with the full hand. Really? Oh yeah. Like a strike? Yep. A strike into the throat. They can punch, smack your ears and they'll spend hundreds of hours working the pole. Just like this? Really? Like this. As long as it's not closed fist. So some guys are going to work your face. Others are

going to take it in the face in order to grab that belt. See how he's trying to grab that belt? As soon as he grabs that leverage, you can throw him out like an oil can. And this is a very old sport, right? Like how long has... 2,000 years. Oh my God. This is rich guys going, I have the biggest, baddest front man in the infantry. And you're going, no, no, no, no.

You see my bodyguard out there? He was a cavalry guy until he was too heavy for the horse. I'll go, well, let's see. We'll have a banquet, Joe. And it's always been this way with a raised platform and a circle that they have to get out of? You bet. Just a big mound of dirt. And the ceremony is the big deal.

It's all the actual happens in four seconds. So it's all about the prep. Now, did you go to anything else over there? Did you go to karate tournaments or anything? I went to kendo tournaments. I saw a Japanese jiu-jitsu class, okay, which is very different than Brazilian jiu-jitsu class. I've taken Brazilian jiu-jitsu class. What's the big difference?

Well. It's more stand-up, right? Well, no, it's conducted a lot more like... It's what we call shugyo, austere training, manners. Okay? A lot more of the character, a lot more of the dignity. There's the bowing. Everybody is kneeling in order, the way you might in a taekwondo class. Right.

The way karate is suffered. As opposed to when I did some, I trained briefly with Matt Serra, for example, or the Silvera brothers down in Florida. Where'd you train with Matt? New York. No shit. You went off to Long Island or Henzo's?

Henzo's. Oh, no kidding. I was there when he got his black belt. Matt, how are you? Really? Yeah, the day he came in. I says, hey, what happened to your eyes? I got my black belt last night.

Wow. Like this, a million what happened to your eyes? I got my black belt last night. Wow. Like this, a million years ago. We were young. Nothing would have stopped us anyway. Wow. And that's much more informal and very astute. Okay? It's very practical.

So we would sit around the edges of the room and take turns etc as opposed to a traditional Taekwondo or karate class where and everybody is at attention etc um I find both of great value okay uh you don't want to teach deadly maneuvers somebody didn't have a little bit of character a little bit of self-control you follow yeah you're going to need that self-control again to get through the tough times i really don't feel like training today first time i ever walked into a karate class was on my birthday in 1966 and i asked him ed parker this is you trained with ed parker oh yeah wow for years and uh i see elvis when he was there? No Almost

No, no It was at that time That's around that time, yeah And Ed used to come to the shows or whatever Ed Parker came to see Van Halen? Oh, many times And you know who he brought many times He became a teacher of my now departed father

Was Judo Gene LaBelle Oh, I love Gene Judo Gene is part of the laugh I've had Gene on the podcast My spirit of the laugh i've had to win on the podcast my spirit of how do you stay uh true to your school joke is part judo gene yes it comes from my father it comes from that whole spirit of and uh if you apply that you want to try new things okay whatever it is here you are in a new city that's how you stay young and skinny and invisible you know other people oh no our parents are here now you know i'm i'm an

ohio and infantry for life well my body is a temple but let's rent it out for parties tonight and also in school you're not afraid of anything because you have nothing to lose so you have no reputation you have no money you probably don't mean anything to anybody at least in music school or the very first steps when you're in in the clubs whatever so you'll try new things hey let's go try surfing you want want to try surfing? Might kill you. Oh, that's attractive. Let's go. Look at you. Look at you back then. There you go. And that's one of my teachers over on the left. That's Frank Trejo. Okay. Like this. And over on the right? Ed Parker Jr. Yeah, there you go. So that's Ed Parker's son?

Yes. And Charles Gonzalez. That was when my dad got his black belt. Look at you, you fucking young handsome bastard with a vest on. Let me see that picture again. My dad got his black belt when he was 66 years old, something like that, 60 years old.

Wow, that's awesome. All of his brothers and everybody showed up and they thought we were visiting an instructor. How do you keep from blowing your joints out at that age? I've had seven surgeries. I've blown them all out, Joe. What kind of surgeries have you had? Thanks to Paneload for reminding me.

Fax me an Advil. What are you, kid? What surgeries have you had? Oh, back. Come on, shoulder, et cetera. kid what surgeries have you had oh back come on shoulder etc what'd you have done to your back

oh three in the back you know the dissecting me scooped out and I had the the big bitch recently

six hours on the spit what'd you have when the they put the cage around your spine yeah oh no finally get it all.

But like I said, I've been bouncing around. But what are you saying? What was going on with it? Oh, just wear and tear. I wore out my brake pads and tore it up. I've been bouncing around hard since I was a teenager. Right. I mean, under instructor level stuff.

How recently under the knife did you uh get your back done most recently uh about four years ago yeah after the last van halen tour so you were having like bulging discs or sciatic pain or that kind of shit yeah and that is a constant how are you going to get through that kind of of uh you know when we talk what is laugh to win that'll test your shit and i'll tell you how. How? You share, you learn to laugh at your misery. You learn to laugh at your pain.

You learn to, hold on, I'm going to explain this, how to do that. Please. First two, three surgeries, you're going to have an Indiana pit crew with you. Indiana pit crew? Yeah, like in Indiana. There's going to be 15 people with you.

Okay. Your wife's going to be there, your daughter's. Handler, bodyguard, manager. For your first few surgeries that we're seeing? First two surgeries. First two? Oh, yeah. And then the third one.

They get tired of going? Honey, you know the grandparents. They're old. They'd love to be here, but it is a drive. Okay. Your fourth, fifth surgery, maybe one person goes with you, but mostly they send a car, and you go your own.

And this here's actual. I'm going to describe to this. I was sitting at the 5 o'clock in a morning club getting ready this last time, and you got to get there at 5, and right across from me is a little cancer kid. You can tell because he's got the tube and whatever. He's got the hat on. He looks to me about nine years old.

And you can tell that he's had more than a couple because he's only got his mom with him now. That's very unusual. It means he's been here more than once or twice. It's just the way of things. unusual. It means you've been here more than once or twice. It's just the way of things. And we have a look. And I remember looking at him. And I know how to ask these questions. I looked at the door and I went like that. It means how many for you? And he held up four fingers like this. He goes like this. And he looks at me and he goes, looks at the door. I looked around conspiratorially. Seven. And you could see him do the math and break into a big fucking smile and look at his mom like, shit, I still got something in front of me. You share it.

Do you understand? You make fun of your own misery and your own pain, and you can share it and get somebody else up that mountain. I've gotten to that space in my life. How's your back now? Fucked. Thanks at Diaper Load for reminding me. Did the surgery help at all? Got into that space in my life. How's your back now? Fucked. Thanks at Diaper Load for reminding me.

Did the surgery help at all? I am a miracle of the Watkins team. The Watkins team? The Watkins team is the best spinal surgeons ever, ever, ever. Their me wall is the biggest you can ever imagine. You know what a me wall is? No. Here's me with the mayor. Here's me with Joe Wogan.

Got it. Me-wall. We should get a me-wall here. Here's me with Joe. Like this. Their me-wall contains virtually everyone from the shirt to sole. Every action hero you can possibly imagine without naming games. It's always back.

Every sports hero, every pitcher, every golfer, every rock and roller who carries a guitar around with them, etc. And I'm up there three times, three or four times as well. I'm moving and grooving. I'm feeling better than ever. Oh, yeah. And what did they do exactly? I had to have a fusion, you know, where you're going to put a little bit of wedge. Why, do I seem taller, Joe?

No. Did they use artificial discs? I have a little bit of a wedge in there. A wedge. Okay, which means I'm now up. First two surgeries made me a little smaller. I was like 5'11", then I was 5'10 1⁄2", then I was 5'10", and now I'm up another quarter inch. Yeah. My friend got a titanium articulating disc in his lower back, and he gained an inch.

Yeah. But he was fucked for a long time. He was bone on bone for years and years and years, just constantly in a state of inflammation. Yes. And there's a point where all of your yoga and all of the Pilates and so forth won't account for it more. But you're going to play for pain.

And the injury rate in rock and roll is just like in gymnastics. It's 100%. Yeah. NFL, you know what that stands for? Not for long. The injury rate is 100%. Yeah. What's the injury rate in stand-up?

100%. Not really. Not in stand-up. No. It's extracurricular activities. Oh, everybody ends up on their feet, right? It's extracurricular activities to get you everybody ends up on their feet, right? What's extracurricular activities to get you? It's not the stand-up itself.

Like rock and roll, especially you. I mean, you were throwing high kicks and spinning kicks and dancing around and jumping. You were very physically active. It's transportation and water and feeding. You know where the best place to go is Vegas. Vegas. Vegas, you know where the best place to go is Vegas. Vegas. Vegas. You can stabilize everything. Not unusual for us to get on the bus and say, bus driver leans out and goes, 10 miles to Houston,

Dave. 14, no, 10 hours. 10 hours to Houston, Dave. 12 hours to Lubbock, Dave. 14 hours to Iowa. That's how long your bus ride is after the show. And it's Das Boot. Even though you are slightly sleeping, you're doing this. You're rocking and rolling the whole time. So how does Vegas stabilize you? Because you stay there longer? Well, you're in a

specific place. You're like Seabiscuit. So you got a special stall with your special food, with your special whatever you follow and everybody's rested. And that's where you're going to see the best shows. I think whether it's me or the Eagles, I don't care if it's Garth Brooks or Aerosmith, you will see us at our best because just like an athlete, like when you're calling the fights, they're better when they're rested. Hey, get in country three weeks in advance.

And jet lag may have been what kicked Tyson's ass in Japan. What did he get there, two weeks in advance? Not enough. Not enough. I think it was Buster Douglas, and I think it was also partying, if you ask him. Well, these are allegations. it was also partying, if you ask him. Well, these are allegations.

But the first thing I would say, if you said, Dave, you're coach for a day, I'd go, you're fighting in Japan? Get there three months in advance. Three months. Oh, yeah. You want that jet log off. You want your body used to the agua, the water. You want your body used to the humidity, the temperature,

because it's all different. This is a monsoon archipelago, and it's exotic here as it sounds. Enjoy your sushi. So what'd they do to your back again? They fused discs. They put wedges. Yeah, I'm worried. I'm worried about the future. Of course. I'm worried about the future. Of course.

I'm worried about surgeries. Of course. Back surgeries are tricky. That's why I'm asking. They are. But right off the bat, you'll hear this is an ironic story, is Dr. Watkins Sr., a bit older than me, is world famous. They lecture. They travel. they teach, et cetera.

His son was about 14 years old and collected half a dozen of his friends, and Dr. Senior put them in the back of a pickup truck in the days when you could just sit in the back, and drove them to the US Festival to watch the mighty Van Halen perform in front of 350 000 people back in 1983 350 000 close friends family primarily 350 000 people and that kid when he was about 14 15 years old he is now fully grown up, and his father's assistant, he's a spinal surgeon, and the two of them are the ones who put me back together after the last Van Halen tour. And so you said there's a wedge, but there's a cage, too?

Yeah. Do they have one of those things around the spine? Yeah. Well, I imagine that, you know what, you're going to be better to look this up academically, okay? But as I understand it, there is a wedge that goes in there, and then there are screws that will hold it in place. And does everything move okay? Do you have, like, full movement of your spine? Yeah, you're looking good.

Hell yeah. Watch. No pain, no problems? I'm going to hold a Sharpie between my butt cheeks and I'm going to write you a Christmas greeting hell yeah watch no pain no problems sharpie between my butt cheeks you know a ratchet christmas greeting oh my goodness put a little star next to it yeah i'm moving and grooving and and whatever um i'm very lucky but it is a result also of i don't go for 10 minutes without thinking about it regularly there's at any given time that is my musical instrument you sing from the toes the same way you throw a punch well you don't just

sing from here it's super active on stage even now you move around you're not sitting still yep remember when axl rose broke his foot and he was singing from a chair i'm not sure how you would even do that in terms of just the singing sweet child of mine from a chair with the the rock you ever see it i have. I've seen photos of it. Yeah, he had a cast on his foot, and he was sitting in a chair singing. And how did it sound? It was pretty fucking good. I mean, it's still Axl Rose. It's still Guns N' Roses.

He's still, you know, still doing the thing. He just had a broken foot. Okay, well, see, I wouldn't have recommended it to Cher because he's not that terribly active anyway. Yeah, he does the shape and the shimmy, but he's not like Mick. Right. Going from 50-yard line to 50-yard line. Well, he's a guy I'd love to talk to about how active he is, because he's in incredible shape.

As I know it to be, he is a jogger, a runner. He is routinely around the reservoir. Is he still running, really? Oh, sure. And that's how you're going to maintain that kind of cardio. Well, he does a lot of things, though. He things though he does like dance he does a lot of yoga he does a lot like google it because there was an article that showed his body at whatever he is now 70 whatever he is i can tell you what he's doing there's no magic to it three hours a day six days a week mix mick also performs

ballet weight training pilatesging, and dynamic stretching, ensuring he maintains maximum flexibility. But look at him throwing kicks and shit. Look at that. At 75, post-heart surgery. Wow. So that was two years ago. So he's 77.

But see if you can find an image of his body, because there was a photo of him shirtless that was pretty recent. He's fucking shredded. As I know it to be. Show that, because this is- It's primarily that jogging, huh? Look at this. This is 75 years old, dancing around.

So this is a thing he's practicing. There but for the grace of God goes us. If he can climb that, then we can too. Yeah, I mean, it's incredible that he's been able to maintain like this. You know what I think, Joe? I think there are artists. I happen to love the Stones. Love them.

If you said tomorrow they're down the street, stay over, Dave, let's go, I would. Okay? Without a blink. Yeah. If you said that about Sting, I love Sting. But you're not sticking around the extra day? I don't know if I would stay the extra night. I don't know.

Okay. But it's very important to me. Sting's in great shape, too, though. That Sting stay in great shape and that he continue to make records regularly. I have to know that. He's all about yoga. Frankly, same thing for springsteen who i love he is like a hero you can't beat the woods have i heard the new record no

am i planning to no but it's very important to me that he and the e street band make that goddamn record and it's very and if you say to him d, you have to pay for a price of a ticket even if you don't go here. That quick? I have to know that like the church, he's there day after tomorrow because that means I might be too. And that means in my quest and my search that I might climb a mountain just as high as he's climbing at his age. Yeah. And when you say Mick, same thing. That's the Mick Jagger thing.

If you can do that at 75 years old, post-heart surgery. Maybe I can do what I do at 75. Says an entire generation or two or three. And that's a part that we occupy here. That's part of where we are now here. If you just pulled your plug at making your fortune, I made mine decades ago. But what you represent becomes that. That's why classic rock, for example, is more popular than it ever was before because of the longevity of it.

Well, classic rock has the longevity of it. Well, it's classic rock has a, there's a feel to it, you know, like Allman Brothers, like classic Allman Brothers, you know, there's a feel to it. It's like you feel the time in which it was created. It comes through in the music. That's what I like about it the most. Does it remind you of your past? Does it remind you of who you were? No, not really. I think more more about them like if i'm listening to classic hendrix i just think about what it must have been like for him to be jimmy hendrix in 67 see some people always say yeah the music reminds me of when i was young and i think like you do no i think about jimmy yeah i think about what the guy looked like who's singing it i was listening

to layla last night i haven't And you're thinking of Eric Plank. You're not imagining anybody named Layla, right? No, I'm thinking of her. The same thing with a tattoo. We always tell the viewer, no, this represents my grandpa who used to drink martinis. But in fact, when I look at my tattoo, I think of the guy who gave it to me and where it was. the guy who gave it to me and where it was. So I've gone out of my way to make sure I'm somewhere very cool and representative when I get that tattoo. You know I'm covered. I got the full Japanese tuxedo here. No one's ever seen that though, right?

You don't have photos of it anywhere, do you? Allegedly. But I mean, it's not out there online or anything like that. You had the tap-tap done, right? Yeah. You had it old school style. It took me three years to get it all the way. But I made very sure that when,

because when you look at your tattoo, for all of you who are just pondering, remember that you're going to think of where you got it and who put it on you and what the music was that you heard and then who you were at the time. So I went out of my way and I made sure, I went to Yokohama and had Sting do it. So to speak.

Hot dozo on the high desert. No, I had Horiyoshi Third doing this. Can you show us some of it? It's like this. Oh, Jesus. I don't know. Show us some of it. I want to see some of that.

Is this the right place? Yeah, fuck yeah. Let me see. It's absolutely the right place. It's very hot in Texas. I'm sorry? It's very hot in Texas, and you have a jumpsuit and a sweatshirt underneath it. Oh, wow.

That's beautiful. Wow, that's nice. I got the... Pull that shirt off show us the whole fucking thing whoa dude that's wild oh my god that's incredible and that was all done tap style almost all of it wow let me see the back again that crazy. Where's the head of the dragon? Right in the middle. Oh, shit. There it is.

Wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally. It's just there's so much going on. It's hard to like. That's amazing work. Amazing work. So one guy did all that?

We had one guy do the back and one guy do all the front. Wow. It's all done in Japan. Is the tap-tap style more painful? Is it slower? You know what? It's not that it's so much one hurts more. It all hurts the same, and how much can you take?

Okay? So the needle hurts a certain amount, and if it's just a little dime-sized thing, your threshold wasn't reached. You're going to work your way up, and the same thing for tapping. That hurts a little bit less than an electric, okay? But that being said, you may reach your threshold within 10 to 15 minutes, depending on how often you're going. Now, I'm not going to kid you. I learned to fear that needle. I had to get ready, like getting ready for a fist fight, man.

I had to get on the bike, get my heart rate up with 45 minutes. I had to make sure. Look at you. I had to make sure. There you go. In the tattoo studio, rocking out. That's Horioshi III, and he's really famous. Is there any video of you getting tap, tap, tapped? There may be some in there. Yeah, I want to see it. the third and he's really famous you know is there any video you getting tap tap tapped ah there may

be something in there yeah i want to see it it's a bizarre and a beautiful style of uh tattooing the way they do it with that the stick and the tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap i pursued a whole art approach there you know i paint and draw every day. Do you? Yeah. And on my Instagram, you can see a lot of my artwork and stuff like this. I want to see some. When I wasn't doing my training, I went to an academy for Sumie, which is ink painting. I had a sensei for that. I went twice a week, sometimes three times. I was the only Anglo there. And what I did, Joe,

is I created a liberal arts education that I never had because I went on the road with Van Helen and never looked back. High Dozo on the high desert. So I said, what would you do if you went to college in the 1500s? You would learn language, which I learned every morning. You would learn kendo. You would learn go. And you would learn how to handle the end of that paintbrush so that when you handle the end of that sword and it's surgically sharp, you have that finesse in your hands. Do you follow my reasoning?

Sure. If you can make a perfectly straight line with your breath, you're more liable to be able to manage that surgically sharp five pound sushi knife that's in your hand here because your eye has been trained to where to position a fine point. This is the thinking. Also, how do you develop, you know. That's all your art? Yeah. Oh, wow. So I went to art class the way you would in the 1500s.

And I spent two years learning how to handle four shades of gray and one shade of black. Wow. Yeah, that was one of Miyamoto Musashi's rules of life, that you had to be balanced. You had to do everything. You had to learn calligraphy. You had to learn art, painting, poetry. If you don't have a real fine touch with the brush, the first thing that you're going to do is you're going to grip that blade with all of your fingers. Okay?

And you're going to end up tearing all your tendons like that. You're going to get surfer knots like this that are right there on top of your, like that. You follow? What's that from? It's from gripping the blade wrong for the first four years of training. You have to learn how to relax the hand yep and you'll use a paintbrush to do that you'll use a paintbrush so that you only are using that middle finger and that thumb here if you had a sword here i can balance a full blast you know live blade and you only use this you're not doing this not baseball it's just here it's a little closer to golf you that's the thing you learn when you play pool. Yes. When you play pool, you use these fingers. Bingo.

When I hold the cue, I hold a cradle to the cue. You see you have that feather touch to it. And it's all right here. You'll see frequently in the woodblock prints, when you're holding a sword, your fingers are like this in the print, like this. And use the paintbrush to teach that. Also, there's an appreciation that comes into, there's a balance, because if it's all combat and it's all life or death, there's no finesse to that.

It just becomes brutal. You follow? I do follow. So you learned all those things to balance out. You did it on purpose. You wanted to give yourself a balanced education. I knew I was going to come out a different person after two years in Japan. I had no idea how or what that would be, but I was very intrigued on what it might turn out. So let's go. Where do you think you gained that perspective to have the foresight to know that you would

get great benefit out of just doing this very unusual thing, moving to Japan, learning kendo, learning to play Go, learning to paint, learning the language, that this education would be very beneficial to you. I mean, that's a very rare thing to do for a rock star, right? Yeah. The first thing you would learn is what I learned, which is don't expect to be great in any of it. Right. Just try to learn. Enjoy the process. The process.

Yeah. That's what we'll change. We'll set it at the same time. Okay? That's it. Joe, I could probably teach you go in 30 minutes and you'd whip my ass in two days. I bet I wouldn't. I know that about you already.

I bet I wouldn't. But I bet you I'm a better teacher four years from now just because i've had more class instruction in so many things and when they teach you go what i've never played go hold on you asked me how do i know yeah how'd you know to make an adventure yes What was the first job that you ever wanted to have as a kid, a little kid? When you're six years old, nine years old, ten years old. I wanted to be an artist. What kind of artist? Comic book.

Comic book illustrator. Fascinating. Yeah. I wanted to join the Peace Corps. And I announced it. I was about seven. Really? Oh, yeah.

it. It was about seven. Really? Oh, yeah. And that was when they invented it. And then to add fury to the fire, a next door neighbor actually did join the Peace Corps. Chick Lewis was his name. This was in 1963, somewhere in there. And he went to Westrica and taught him how to dig you know uh crop rotation and everything and he and in an inter-tribe squabble got shot with an arrow oh fuck yeah i couldn't wait the idea and when i told my parents oh yeah and when my parents when i told my parents my father's a doctor, and I told my parents, I want to join the Peace Corps, it was supported. So the guy gets— Oh, that'll make you, that'll build your character.

Now you will make a contribution. Every dinner started, every dinner of my life, until my dad was dead and I was 60 years old. We'll start off with, okay, children. He called us that in our 60s. Okay, children, what did we do today that was constructive? Or, okay, children, what did we do today that's worth putting in the book? As if you were writing a great book.

And the best was, okay, children, what did we do today that's going to benefit the rest of us? And my solution to that early on was the Peace Corps. So this guy pitch in. We're going to pitch in and we're going to come back with some adventure stories. This guy got shot with an arrow, but he lived. Oh, yeah. They air vac him out and fly him back to california but you know fellas fellas we're all family jesus where'd he get hit uh that i don't remember but

you know he's in west africa in the 60s and they're learning how to dig uh trenches and teaching health and building infirmaries and i learned early on from that that you could pitch in. You know what that means. That means help out. But you could combine some adventure with it too. And that that can take you some really interesting places. And that it was okay to seek out adventure as long as you're pitching in. And so you went to the Peace Corps?

No. No, no. But you wanted to. I made up for it. Later on, I went back to school when I was 48, and I became an EMT. Oh, I remember that. In New York City, of all things.

I had no idea that I was actually going to put on a uniform. I thought to myself, where can I get civilian first aid training that's the most extreme? I thought, ah, an ambulance driver in New York City or Chicago or Miami. I hired a school. I joined a school, paid for it. It took me about six months. paid for it. It took me about six months. I thought at the end of it, I'll take my exams, make my teacher proud. And now I am that much smarter. I travel a lot. I travel a lot alone. And just increase my education, be of value. All right. And at the end of it, my instructor,

senior instructor, says, so you're going to go do your ambulance time? I was stunned. What do you mean ambulance time? She says, you got great practical scores. She says, I know you were just planning to, you know, graduate and move on. But you can get a uniform and we'll get you into an ambulance. And you can go do your 200 hours or whatever it is to an artist like us, to a poet like us, a storyteller. We're going to go walk into more apartments

in the Marcy Projects than Jay-Z who's from there, so to speak. We're going to go crawl under the train at the Fulton Street Station. We're going to go crawl under the train at the Fulton Street Station. We're going to go up onto the rooftops, 13 floors up, being led by a nine-year-old kid yelling, she's this way, she's this way. And you're actually going to save her fucking life? That's wild.

Not only that, but we're going to learn how to open a fire hydrant. 1930s style, the one with the big deep keyhole. I know you always wondered. I'm not saying it on the radio. It's hard to learn. I can teach you all kinds of great things. It's endless. And walking into somebody's place and the stories.

My favorite was the old folks. My favorite was 70 and up because they got the stories. They're the most stoic. They'd be the most calm. You follow? Right now, for example, I'll give you one of my favorites, Coney Island. This is a far reach here. Island. This is a far reach here. Many of you who work in EMT services, fire, law enforcement, et cetera, in the Coney Island area. I'm going to change his last name a little bit, but you're going to remember exactly who I'm talking about. It's Donnie Sheckler. I changed his last name just enough. Donny was the most famous homeless person in the whole Coney Island area. I met Donny the first time in a rainstorm in the middle of the winter parked next to the Ferris wheel on Stilwell Avenue, the wooden one.

He asked if he could come and sit in the back of the bus. We call it an ambulance box because he was soaking wet. And the fellows, my teachers at the time, my instructors, they knew him right away. Donnie, how are you? Donnie, was he sure, man? Get in there. Donnie had newspaper for insulation and whatever like this. We let him warm up. Come on, Donnie, get in here. this. We let him warm up. Come on, Donnie, get in here. We got heat. Saw him again that summer. Sure, Donnie, get in here. We got air conditioning. Donnie would call himself in to the ambulance, and we would have to go get him. We always acted like we knew him, but we treated him like we'd never heard this before. And we would drive him to Coney Island Hospital, where they would give him a meal, warm him up or cool him down, and release him, say,

four to six hours later. On a day like today, when we would get on shift, we would all ask fondly, has Donnie checked in yet? Because Donnie would call himself into the hospital four times in one day. He would be released and you'd get another call and we'd have to drive back down to the liquor store and pick Donnie up as if we hadn't seen him that morning. So was that his like socializing? That was his thing is he had figured out the system. The last time I lifted Donnie up into the ambulance,

I noticed he had on a brand new pair of Payless wingtips. The fellas down at Payless helped him out. We routinely bought him something to drink. Donnie was kind of eyes and ears for us. What happened? I'll tell you what happened, boys, because I saw it. First time I dealt with a gunshot, the fellow got, I think, seven times,

all in the back of his ass. It was Donnie from across the street who saw what happened. What happened, Donnie? Well, you know the way these kids hold the gun? You know how hip-hop guys hold the gun and they kind of droop it sideways? Mm-hmm. Well, the first guy came walking out of the liquor store and the second guy was holding

that gun, like drooping it. The first guy turned around and tried to run away and all the bullets went in his ass. It's too dark, Joe? No. What did his ass look like with seven bullets in it? It's not a lot of ass meat. He bent over and tried to run back into the store because of that hip-hop shit with the gun. All the bullets went down instead of straight.

And he survived. We patched him up. By the way, insider's tip. You know the gauze sterile pack that has cellophane? It's sterile inside. You don't use the gauze because that gets soaked up just put the plastic right on the hole okay boom we would routinely when it starts getting summer and I bring it up now when we get

on shift we would wonder out what time you think Don he's gonna call it oh fuck it's 95 degrees today how long did you do this for? Four and a half years. Jesus Christ. Four and a half years as an EMT. Well. How many days a week? Oh, on and off. It was, you know, it's a continuum.

Right. And for me, it was primarily education, too. I took every possible course you could imagine. Did a lot of people recognize you? International School for Tactical Medicine, Explosive Incident Command, History, Treatment, Mechanism, and Future Prospects. If nothing else, you're a little luckier if I'm in the room if there's an earthquake, Joe Rogan. I think they get many of them out here. You know what I'm saying. We're back in L.A.

Be of value. Be of value. And it's an old approach again that, you know who has this is Israel. Okay. Israeli approach is if you're good with dogs, I'm going to drop my dogs off with you in case there's an earthquake, in case there's a hurricane, in case there's a flood. I hear it's going to flood around here pretty soon, like tomorrow. Is it? Yeah. Well, if I'm wearing a blue uniform, I'm going to drop my dogs off with you, if you're a dog man. Who knows how to cook for 80 people?

Good. You're going to make pancakes for tomorrow's breakfast because I got to go work the fucking flood. Where's my dog? Where's my dog? I know how to take care of the take care of others. I've been trained in how to take care of first responders. It's a different protocol. Things that you might get sued for if you handle civilians like tourniquets. If it's somebody who went down from heat prostration and opened up a big time wound, I'm carrying five tourniquets, if that's tactical.

Do you follow the reasoning? You know, it's a different kind of, first responders will wear themselves out way quick. You gotta make sure everybody's drinking water. You gotta make sure that everybody's warm enough or cold enough. Did people recognize you when you were doing this? Never.

Really? Not ever, Not ever. Because they just didn't expect it. No. And I stayed, I shaved off all my hair. I weighed probably 15 more pounds of bench press, everything. They never used my name. I was D-Row.

You could yell my name across the field. But they all knew who you were. Oh, they were tickled. I'm sure their friends knew who you were. Oh, they were tickled. How to be so strange for them to do real calls. Well, if you're genuinely enthusiastic, and I said it to you before, and I mean it true. I say it funny, but I mean it money. I wasn't somebody until I put on that blue uniform, as in, somebody make some coffee.

And I knew it, and I accepted it and loved it. I wasn't someone. I said, someone make some fucking coffee. And I was that someone. So I have no illusions about, you know, again, was I good at chess? No. Have I taken a million lessons? You bet. And that has given me a strength of patience and an enthusiasm for everything that we're talking about here. And do you still carry this approach to education and experience now? Are you still doing new things now? I take guitar lessons every week and we just learned Al Green's, I can't, uh, Al Green's, um, uh, let's stay together. And Jesus just left Chicago by ZZ Top. Oh, you know, when did you start taking guitar lessons? I never stopped. So your whole

life? You have Jimmy Buffett types, and hey, there's some fashion models on a shoot, and Joey's there, and some of the guys from the gym, et cetera, like this. And somebody hands me a guitar. I got to be able to do an hour. What can I play? You know, that tone. So I don't play rock and roll. I play Django Reinhardt. I play...

Django Reinhardt? What's that? Gypsy. Okay. I don't... I play jazz. I play 1930s style sort of a thing. I play Brazilian samba.

Everything's... It's kind of like happy hour at Diamond Dave's Tiki Bunker where the debris meets the sea. Happy hour from 5 till February, Joe. That's the repartee. Next is a Brazilian version of I can't go for that because I can't Joe no no no can do we laugh it's like sideburns but we all had them

so guitar what else are you learning I'm sure you're multi yeah you gotta take a leak or something yes go ahead go do that we'll be right here we'll be right here. We'll be right back, ladies and gentlemen, with more Diamond Dave.

Diamond Dave's going to refuel. I guarantee you. We're not live, are we? No. Don't worry about it. We're good. As if we're live, I'll hold it. No, no, no, no, no. We're not live. Go ahead. We want you to be comfortable. Even if we were live, Jamie and I would just talk. We're not live. Go ahead. We want you to be comfortable. Even if we were live, Jamie and I would just talk. We're good. That's some strong weed.

Get some of that. Jesus. He's different than the last time he was here. Not in a bad way. But, like, even more. What's the word? Exaggerated? Like bigger than, like he's just more of a character.

Yeah. Do you think that people, this is not disrespectful because he can hear this because he's in the other room, broadcast out there. Do you think as people get older they become more eccentric on purpose almost as like it's kind of like a bit of a shield right you're like constantly performative more and more like to be a guy like that to be a rock star for most of your life he almost has to like he almost has to fake reality you know I'm saying like he almost has to do a simulation of reality because his reality is so weird like for him to like take an EMT classes

and all these different things going to Japan, he's almost got to like insert himself into like a struggle, like make a struggle. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. There's also like a simulate reality. There's also what? I'm trying to think how to... Words. Like the not giving a fuck. Yeah, there's that too. Where it's just rubbed off enough where there's none left. And you just live life. Yeah. Really not caring.

Well, he's definitely got a lot of that. But it's also, whenever someone's so eccentric, I always wonder if some of that but it's also whenever someone's so eccentric i'm i always wonder if like some of that eccentricity is that a word seems like it is it is definitely yeah yeah eccentric eccentricity just doesn't i don't think i've ever used that word but i what am i talking about i'm sure i've used that word but it's it's almost like that becomes sort of like a coat of armor that you wear. Like you're just eccentric. Yeah, the only person that's coming to my head is like Prince. Oh, he was super eccentric, yeah.

I was watching a video I took at a concert that I went to. Well, the only time I saw Prince live, but that's what he was doing. He kept coming in front of the stage, performing a little, backing off, turning the lights down, in full control of the whole venue from the mic. It was very different. Yeah.

And he has a full band with him playing a bunch of music I'm not super familiar with because it wasn't like popular Prince songs. Well, he did his own thing across the board. I mean, he like stayed in Minneapolis. Want to shut all those doors? Show that one too. Thank you. You want me back, right?

I love you. Of course I want you back. Making an assumption here. Did you make that paint on purpose or is that paint from painting? Come sit down so people can hear you Come sit down so people can hear you No, this is actually

You took it to me during an actual tactical course, but I'm a combat hippie Peace love and heavy weapons here yo so so do you get that paint from painting yeah everything that you saw on the screen there Instagram and so forth is you don't paint giant size and little size and you know there you go that's me and everything I do is in that size exactly that way I do it the way I learned which is on my knees on it the Tommy Matt there. Can you dig? It's all done in a little corner, just like that. It's all done there, just like

that. Boom. That's my lesson. We'll spend about four hours there, just like that. And my whole drawing space is about, it's just a mat that's about three feet wide by three feet wide. That's my office. Everything I do is done in that position, bent over like when you first started reading the Sunday comics on the floor, you would lay on your belly or on your knees. There you go. Well, you just have such a remarkably un-rockstar-like existence while simultaneously being very much a rock star. You do, you do your own thing. Like, you have a very, it's a very unusual,

there's no other people I know like you that are you. You know what I mean? That are in your category. Why do you think that might be, if it's true? I don't know, man. It's you. It's part of what makes you unusual. Rock and roll is kind of where the debris means to see.

If you tilt the map, like Los Angeles, everything loose and unscrewed down rolls into L.A. or everybody. And in rock and roll is that wonderful collecting point where you can combine sea salt with caramel. At first, it might not seem right. You can combine peanut butter with chocolate. What do you do? Hey, this is pretty good. And voila. I don't know if you just answered me or not.

You think you answered? If you were a chef, you can take chances in rock and roll. You dig? Other types of music, not so much. Orchestra, that's Shakespeare. You don't change a note. roll. You dig? Other types of music, not so much. Orchestra, that's Shakespeare. You don't change a note. Right. You follow?

But in rock and roll, we learned from all of our heroes. And this is our 50th year coming up. Al Van Halen and I, 48, I think, for Mike and the two of us. All right? And we come from backgrounds of different kinds of music. I played saxophone in the marching band. I learned to play saxophone starting when I was fourth, fifth grade, all the way up until I was a teenager. So I think in terms of brass on my walls when I was growing up was Leonard Bernstein, Bob Dylan and Bobby Fisher.

Later was Jimi Hendrix and James Brown. So you were always in the chess, even back then? Oh, yeah. It was part of. Do you play it on a computer ever? No. Computers came after me. I got as far.

I played up until the little pieces that fit in and then switched to Go. I've been playing Go for a lot of years. I grew up in a Japanese pieces that fit in and then switched to Go. I've been playing Go for a lot of years. I grew up in a Japanese community up in Altadena. Come on, that game was always there, like woodblock prints with these kinds of prints. Do you find people to play with? How do you organize Go games? Well, COVID knocked me out, but I have a visiting instructor, Mr. Kim, Professor Kim, who would come over to the

house regularly. Really? Oh, yeah. And geez, that got me through recovery on my back. Yeah, I would stand up for my two hour lesson because I couldn't sit down. And he felt he felt initially that I was not playing like a Korean would, which felt I was weak. And he felt that even though it was unorthodox that I would stand up to play the game, that it increased my aggression and that I was playing more like a Korean. And that was of value. So what was your style? Your style was not aggressive? was defensive. Yes, I was playing according to a different approach. And now with AlphaGo and artificial intelligence coming after us,

it's a much more aggressive form of play. It's like prison boxing versus pugilism. Do you follow? boxing versus pugilism. You of all people know that technical boxing is something very different than in prison. You just start throwing and throwing and throwing until the one round is over, as opposed to defend, keep a counterpunch, counterpunch, counterpunch. And with artificial intelligence now, we have to form teams of professional level, tournament level players of four and six now to put your minds together to battle that computer. All right. And it is decisive because it has no human fear. It's not afraid of anything. So you have to adapt some of that mindset in the new approaches to how we play. So human fear factors into the game? Always.

Really? Human fear factors into everything. You lose 80 pieces in one sweep, that'll test your shit. Now, that's not a Korean expression, but it could be. And this is played, by the way, every Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Indonesian. It's huge. Don't they sometimes play it on multiple levels? Isn't there a Go game that has more than one, like a 3D Go? I'm sure there are computerized.

There are computer games that resemble this. But the original is so wildly complex, the amount of memory. Also, for example, what you're seeing now in terms of politics is guided by Go versus chess. How so? Well. Chinese versus American? Sure. Let's go there.

Okay. In the middle of the chessboard is what Westerners always struggle to control. Control those center four squares. You follow? Okay. Asian approach to go is, no, no, corner work. Jazecki. You want to work the four corners and surround.

And that's what's happening when we start seeing colonial approaches. You follow? No. Well, suppose, you know, when you hear that, and it's not just Chinese, it could be any country, but when you hear, for example, so-and-so is buying up all the water in Africa, all the oil in Ecuador, and all of the ice in the south of it, whatever, they're thinking in four corners. They are surrounding. You follow?

Westerners love to think in terms of heavy infantry. You make a line, I'll make a line, and like the Civil War, we'll march right into each other. It's kind of like chess. Go is, no, no, no. I'm going to hide in a tree over here in this corner. I'm going to hide under the water down in this corner. And I'm going to hide behind a rock in this corner. I'm going to let you wander down in the middle. Trick or treat. You think that's what's going on right now?

Absolutely. It's a whole different mindset. And you're trained in this from the time you were at West Point. Are you concerned? I'm pissed. People say, what are you pissed about? What have you got to be pissed about? Whoa, whoa, whoa.

I can make a lot of jokes about being egocentric, okay? But I stopped being pissed on my own behalf a long time ago. I'm pissed on your behalf. I'm pissed on your kids' behalf. What kind of fuck-shit world are we leaving behind where they don't get to go to Florida because it's underwater? What kind of place are we going where, yeah, there used to be some really great giant trees now, but they're dead. What kind of place do we leave behind? I have a house that has trees on it that are a hundred years old and more.

My opening statement to the gardeners is, I don't give a fuck what you think of me. I'm showbiz and I already know. I catch you messing with these trees. We're going to have a real bad day. I used to chase the coyotes

down in Arroyo Seco in Pasadena. Now I'm old and I protect them. You protect the coyotes? You bet. In so many senses of the world, I'll vote your ass right out of that town I catch you chasing. Chasing coyotes? You know what I'm saying, Joe.

I'm speaking poetically. Don't pee in the ocean either. Don't pee in the ocean? Don't fuck the ocean up. You don't pee in it? I know people who have kids. Don't fuck the ocean up I know people who have kids Don't fuck the ocean up I enjoyed my ocean

I've had my ocean time Now on behalf of everybody else Who depends on the ocean Don't pee in it You'll piss me off Everything I say is poetry I understand I'm trying to decipher so but what are

you pissed off about we went from china to environmental concerns about everything don't you watch the documentaries i watch some any subject yeah any subject but like are you pissed off about like what are you pissed off about? Commerce? International commerce with China? Are we still arguing over women's rights? I think in some states, yes. In some states, particularly with abortion rights, it's still a giant issue. Are we still struggling over Roe versus Wade? Really? Yeah. Okay. I have the simplest solution. Let's move around the subject

board here a little bit. Law enforcement. There's a great subject. Okay. And we talk about sweeping reforms and defunding police and whatever. Okay. The only one who listens to both sides of any argument is the neighbors. And I am your friendly neighbor, Dave. Okay. All right. Hi, Dave. Anytime things spill out of control, I don't care if you got a cowboy hat or dreadlocks. I don't care if you're a skinhead or you are rock and roll.

I have seen the party spill out of control. I have been a major component in that party spilling out of control, me and my music. You're going to need some law enforcement, okay? And whenever you talk about sweeping reforms, well, you ask me, Dave, I want you to reform your show a little bit. My first thought is, let's see the money. If you say, no, Dave, I'm going to pay you less and I'd like to see you change your show. Well, so why would you expect anywhere else? OK, now I grew up around law enforcement. I grew up around military. My first I was the I was the only guy who wasn't law enforcement in my first karate class.

They were all four feet taller than me. It's a natural thing. Okay. The idea that we're going to defund the police and expect what? You know, be crazy. So here's your solution. And that we haven't gotten to it. It's starting to fucking piss me off. You got to triple the paychecks. And then you'll start getting the genius level, combat proof, full blast industrial strength brains, because you're going to have to be a psychiatrist, a social worker, a Delta team member, a SWAT team fellow, all in one. I can get you that.

Let's start with $3,500 a week for patrol. Wait a second. Police chiefs should be making what that grubby fuck shit lawyer down the street makes, which is $300 an hour. Yeah, an hour. And now once you've established some proper, thoughtful paychecks, I have some reforms. And I'll bet you we have an atmosphere that's a little bit more elastic. Instead of this, well, I'm going to take away your lunch hour. I don't know how to say fuck you in nine languages now. On the other hand, I don't have any particular love for the uniform.

Well, I do. 511 uniform looks good. But don't think for a second that I am all the way over on one side or another. I am a left-wing liberal. Rights, rights, rights, rights, rights. Can you dig it? Yeah. All right. I'm with you.

I have no problem with shaving my head and joining a military force to defend those rights If I am called upon to do it, I'm too old to do that, but I'm not too old for first aid Can you dig it? I can do it. So I'm right down the middle for my daddy died He was in the wheelchair wait until my sisters were out the door He says go in the drawer. I got papers I says what do you got we were co-conspirators me and my dad he's going to join Doctors Without Borders he's going to go to Africa do I exams I says how does that work with a wheelchair he says I don't have to stand up to do eye exams don't tell your sisters he died three months later. Okay?

This is a good interview. Yeah, we're all over the place. So I'm with you on the police thing. The defunding the police thing is idealistically. I see what they're thinking. They're thinking that there's too much police brutality. There's too many rogue cops, too many people that are unqualified to handle the job. Well, stop, stop.

They over-escalate situations, and we see those viral videos, and they're infuriating. I can solve it with the color of America, which is green. It's not black. It's not white. It's not that simple. It's not whatever. If you paycheck appropriately for people, then you can make your requests, like responsible. Paycheck is one thing. You want me to be responsible for the bullets in my responsible. Paycheck is one thing. You want me

to be responsible for the bullets in my gun? Pay me to do it. They need training. They need much, much, much more training. You want me to train? You pay me to do it. For sure. But they also need training. I mean, the money should, look, it should be a very valuable position. It's very difficult to attain. Same as a teacher. It's incredibly valuable for our culture, for our human beings that we're protecting and that we educate. It should be a very high prestige job, but unfortunately it's not, whether it's school teacher or police officer. It's the same kind of thing. And I think police officers in particular are woefully under-trained. And if you talk to people like Jocko Willink, who's a former Navy SEAL commander,

he'll tell you that they should be spending somewhere in the neighborhood of like 60% of their time training. So when they go into situations, they know exactly what to do, how to handle it, and they do it with discipline, the type of discipline that you get with special forces groups. I completely agree with you. That's how it should be. Read my comic strip. You have a comic strip? I have no particular love for the police. I just understand human chemistry.

I have no love for abusive police, but I have all the love in the world for police that are doing their job and risking their life to help people and keep people safe. I think that's what most of them are doing. And most of them are infuriated by bad police work. Most of them see guys being abusive and see horrible things that get escalated unnecessarily by insecure cops. No, and you know what? Unfortunately, I think I'm the first one coming out of my bracket entertainment to even talk like this. I'll lose friends for even speaking like this. What friends? I don't think so. Oh, no. The left wing wants nothing to do with this.

The left wing routinely embarks on punishment. Of the police. Oh, yeah. Yeah, but I don't think they understand what they're talking about when they're saying defund the police. You're seeing that now in Minneapolis. You're seeing it in New York City. You're seeing it in a lot of these places that have defunded the police or at least taken the teeth out of the police. Then you have radically escalating violence, radically escalating murder rates, break-ins.

It's horrific shit, and it's not the way to handle things. You're just going to make people less safe. You're going to make it more dangerous, and you're going to make the cops less likely to engage. Cops now are scared to go on calls because they don't want to wind up in a viral video. They don't want to get sued. I see it. In New York City, they can civil sue cops now. Civil suits are back.

I think that used to be kind of one-sided, and it's not anymore. You see the Democratic riots, and you had a lot of long hairs, and Mayor Daley, which was a real extreme extreme lopsided event and today uh i think you could we have an equal you say what pisses you off yeah i don't care if you got a man bun or a skin hit i don't care if you're wearing camo on the dance room i don't care if you're wearing camo on the dance floor or you are metro whatever i don't care if you're wearing camo on the dance floor. I don't care if you're wearing camo on the dance floor or you are Metro, whatever. I don't care who you're fucking or how hard it's, but both sides are scaring each other's horses now. And that's, that's an anger moment for me. Really?

We're still arguing over these basics. Voter rights. Really? We're still arguing over these basics. Voter rights? Really? Come on. There are some real givens here. Civil rights. Really? We haven't really advanced from my memory in the 60s, really, in terms of actual civil rights.

We're arguing over statues? Really? That pisses me off. Seems small. Seems like there's bigger issues. Yo, we've explored some of them here. And it's way easier to focus on a statue than it is what's going on with the climate. Really? We're still arguing if that's for real? That pisses me off because I love the ocean. Well, the statues are right in front of you.

You know, something like the ocean is an enormous problem that requires international cooperation. That's very difficult to attain. That's an almost insurmountable problem. But that statue is right there and that guy was a slave owner. And so they're like, take it down. And I get that. I get that they're trying to shape the world in a better place. And I think a lot of the statues that they're like, take it down. And I get that. I get that they're trying to shape the world in a better place. And I think a lot of the statues that they're taking down, here's the rub

with a lot of the statues that they were taking down that were put up during the civil rights movement of Confederate soldiers and stuff like that. Those were put up in protest of the civil rights movement. And they were really cheap. They're really shitty statues. They were put up at a time where there's people resisting the civil rights movement so the people that want to take down those statues there's probably some real good arguments for that i i fully support that but when you get back to like taking down statues of george washington and abraham lincoln like now you're getting a little crazy and i understand that a lot of those people were slave owners. They were.

Wait, wait. Let's go even crazier. Yeah. If you don't draw, I don't want to walk past a statue of a Nazi. Right. Okay. I read a book, Lost Victories by Mannheim, tank commander. He's a brilliant tank commander.

He's a Nazi. And I don't really want to walk past his statue. Right. Even though he's got some pretty good lessons in't really want to walk past his statue right even though he's got some pretty good lessons in terms of combat you've read his book oh yeah what is it what is it about about tanks tank strategies armored strategy okay and so forth why did you read a book on armored tank strategy it's all connected all right you could play that out on the board right you know do you play chess at all have you ever played i have played chess what do you imagine when you play chess just pieces i imagine what it'd be like to be that chick from queen's gambit and kicking everybody's ass there you go

i hear horses when i play you hear horses when i play go i it's cavalry oh really oh yeah i imagine that it's cavalry and i'm going to work your flank. I'm going to crush your middle. I'm going to buckle that left first because you're right-handed, right? Yeah. Yeah. I'm giving you away my tricks. Yeah, that's okay.

I don't have enough time to learn Go. But where were we? We were strategy. We were your tank book. Oh, Nazis, statues. Statues of bad people. Don't draw a line. Okay, the statues need to go. If you're going to start to argue about it and it becomes a huge contention, then it virally will expand to something ugly.

Like Hamilton, which was the play that got made into a movie, got disincluded from winning an award because Hamilton owned slaves. Now, the individuals who wrote that play probably never even conceived of that. And it's a play that is heavily black Spanish speaking, ethnic hood, whatever you want to call it. It's a whole new approach to that moment in history. And they're justluded from awards because the hero of the play, which if I'm not mistaken is not played by a Caucasian, in real life owns slaves. Look this up. This is a real thing. I'm not a big fan of awards, so it doesn't really bother me that much.

I loved award shows until they became an opportunity. I was watching TV when the very first one showed up. It was Marlon Brando had an Indian little feather come up. Except his award. It was unbelievable. Oh my God, what happened there? You dig? Then you also started to run into, I'm going to say, an endless list of names as acceptance speeches, and that's ass-kissing. Now, most people, if they have nothing clear to say, will sit up there and go, oh my God, oh my God, I don't believe I'm up here. Joe, I don't believe I'm up here. I want

to thank Ray and Stu and Carl and Louise and Bobby and Noah and Joshua and Tina and... Acceptance speeches used to be an opportunity for those of us in the audience who may be behind you. Show me your footsteps. Yes. When Kurosawa, the great director, you know, you would know it from Sanjuro, Seven Samurai, et cetera. You had a one-sentence acceptance speech. I might as well have it tattooed on my leg and read it every day.

To be an artist means you can never turn away your eyes. Hmm. That's worth the whole show. You walk away from that changed changed especially if your parents can explain show me your footsteps is a great way to describe the best benefit that you get out of listening to artists talk about you just won yeah tell me how did you climb this mountain but see that's the what did you use to get why would you even think of it but then isn't that the the special part and then instead of like letting them talk they

get like 90 seconds and they're standing on a podium and it's all completely unnatural and it's all very quick they have to have if you can if you're going to be an artist you can never turn your eyes they have to have something succinct it has to be something quick then like grandma used to say get in front of it joe get in front i mean practice think of what you're used to say, get in front of it, Joe. Get in front of it. I mean, practice. Think of what you're going to say in case you win. Yes. And it's what will you share with those behind you?

The problem is now there's too many people that are deeply invested in saying things that they think people want to hear rather than saying things that express their true feelings their true thoughts or their true emotions i think that i think we're using opportunities frequently as an artist it's tempting this lack of box chocolates is so tempting these broad-based generalizations and being able to go wow they love my music therefore they'll love my children my choice of car my third wife and this broadway play i wrote no we love your music they love my voice therefore they'll love my acting and my clothing line and watch out and follow. So when we win something for our acting or our music, sometimes we'll fall prey to that tempting generalization. We'll go, well, then they're going to love my political mindset, my medical mindset, my social mindset, and I'm going to share that now. No, no,

we elected or voted for you because of excellence in an area. I know I'm up here for acting, but I want to talk about animal rights. Honestly, though, I don't, honestly, most of the time where it's infuriating to me is it doesn't resonate as being genuine. I don't really think that that's what they're thinking about. I think they want you to think that they're deep and profound, that they're thinking about these things. And that's what drives people the most crazy. That virtue signaling, the clear and obvious virtue signaling, where you know they're doing it because they think it'll be good for their career to say the things they're saying. You know they're doing it because they think it'll be good for their career to say the things they're saying. They think that it'll endear them with the people that cast films and write films and produce films or whatever the fuck else they're doing, television shows, because they want to be accepted.

They want to be a part of the chosen ones. is to use that time in a performative way instead of like an honest, genuine method of expression or time of expression, where they're on that stage and they speak from the heart and they have something that is like really deeply moving. Do you see how your hands are moving? Yeah. This is called tactical humility.

Tactical humility? I just want to thank all of you. Is it fake? No, no, no. It's like you would use that hand and you'd go. It's the first sign that something's coming. When you see tactical humility, it's an act. You know, I just like this and that.

It can't be real with some folks. Sorry? Can it be real with some folks? When some folks are doing it, that's how they really feel. It depends entirely on the person and what they're expressing. Because someone can do almost the exact same thing and it seems like horse shit, and then someone else would do it and it's so genuine and so true and it resonates with you. We can tell.

We can tell. Most people can tell. Some people can tell. That's probably better to describe. Some people can't tell. Some people tell. Most people can tell. Some people can tell. That's probably better to describe. Some people can't tell. Some people just, they buy the nonsense. Maybe people that are like full all in with the ideology, you know, full woke. They just, oh, he's saying the right things.

She's doing the right things. They're on the right page. So you're kind of joining a club. Yes. You're sort of joining with. Instead of it being genuine like when someone is genuine when someone is when someone's authentic it resonates but it's not common my mother's 90 years old she's in and out she's in the home uh time before last she mentioned that my socks were horrible pronounced you're not mine

told me go get out of the room your socks were horrible yeah that's your sense of humor no kind of socks they didn't match my belt or some shit and she got upset she pretended to be upset your socks are horrible you're not mine and then she drifts. That's her sense of humor. Right. Mom taught me, jeez, I was probably a teenager the first time I heard it, that only mediocre talents are complementary of each other. The real talents are competing with each other. Now go do your socks. Huh.

Only mediocre talents are complimentary of each other. Yeah, the real deal is competing with each other. Yeah, but can't you be both? No. Why not? Because I'm trying to be controversial. You're trying to be controversial. Can you join the club and transcend it?

I grew up in summer camp going, table number nine rules. The rest of you are number one. And all the other tables were our cousins and our brothers and looked just like us. Well, you need some competition, correct? You need fear. Right. You need fear.

You better put it in your breakfast cereal and you better put it in your vodka before you go to sleep. You dig. You need to have the fear that you're not going to get what they're getting. You know, even if it's totally imagined. Well, that's if that's the pro with seeing like another act and if you're not competing with somebody else you should have the fear that you're not maximizing your talent you're wasting your time so but that's what i'm saying is that's the pro like say if you went to a concert and you saw hendrix live it would scare you you'd be like jesus christ we gotta we gotta get on the ball it That was what Eric Clapton said, right? He saw Hendrix play, and he was like, what am I doing? It would compel me. To get going.

To get going and say to myself, well, okay, I'm not a guitar player per se. Let's think of a vocalist. Okay. Who's one of the best solo artists ever, time not specific? Tina Turner or Rod Stewart? There you go. Watch one or both, you're going to walk away going, okay, whatever talent I have, I'm not putting in enough time.

10,000 hours is for sissies. That's the white boy version. The Asian version is 10 hours a day every day for 10 years. That's closer to 30, 40,000 hours. Have I done my 40,000 hours? I have. Alex Van Halen has. The dentist who's building my tooth is a 50,000 hour instructor. Do you and him talk? Does he send you images? Who? The dentist that's building your tooth? Oh, yeah.

You just told him what you want. Oh, yeah. I want a gold frame. Yeah. And today it requires a 50,000-hour surgeon to duplicate a trip to a downtown $15 visit of a dentist in 1926. Yeah, but it'll probably fit better. It's the same fellows who do the movie teeth. When you see like Johnny Depp with the pirate teeth with the sapphires and the gold and

stuff, it's showbiz city. So of course they're building, come on, how many vampire movies are there? No teeth, no vampire. Joey. That's true. Fake teeth for a vampire movie. Hello. You have to have it. it's so in showbiz city but it's curious that to you know move to that anyways it's a it is a mindset and i'm continually thrilled

even now especially with youtube you know being able to access the past at a moment. It used to be go look it up at the Encyclopedia Britannica. How many times did I get up from the dinner table and start rifling through that thin paper? Right, and you had to make sure that that was real, that what the encyclopedia was saying was real. You couldn't cross-reference it with other online sources. If it was even in the encyclopedia. Yeah, yeah. And now, literally as we speak here,

we can rev it up. I used to have to sit in front of the television at the million dollar movie and hope that that thing is going to come on at a certain time. I'm going to get to see this one routine quickly and then it's gone. Whether that was a dance scene or a fight scene or whatever you follow um you can dial up for example dial up uh going going down to argentina the nicholas brothers okay this is a flash team from the 30s and the 40s of tap dancing but gymnastic shit you know flying through each other and, you know, this kind of thing. If you knew that movie was coming on

at 11 o'clock on Channel 5 on Thursday, that was the only time it was there for two years, and you better make sure you're in front of that TV to watch it once, okay? Look up the Hell's a Poppin' Jitterbug scene with the... Oh, we've seen this before. Yeah, it's amazing.pin' jitterbug scene with the— Oh, we've seen this before.

Yeah, it's amazing. You dig? I'll talk as the fellas go on here. They're going to break into a dance kind of a thing. If you even knew these guys existed, then, hey. Now, some of this stuff that they're using, you see on the floor there? They salted the floor. That's called billiards chalk.

It's not meant for traction, all right? It's meant to do slides and stuff. And it's what you put on your hand to make sure the billiard cue slides through your hand. It makes it slippery. Here you go. Now watch. These guys are the most famous tap dancers in history, arguably, and there's no taps on the bottoms of their shoes.

Oh, really? They're just tapping with regular shoes? Yep. Can we hear it? Okay. It's just the band is playing off to the side live, actually. It's not place recorded. Watch how they spin.

Watch how they slide. Okay? Yeah, it's very impressive stuff. I mean, just the athleticism involved in this kind of dancing is incredible. So I would have to sit myself. It would come on Channel 13 with Cal Worthington at 2 in the morning, and I would have to position myself. Okay? Keep the music on, Jamie.

Look up the Berry Brothers cane routine. But look at this guy's movement. That's amazing. Yep. And this is the stuff that I was positioned in when I was a little kid. That is not something you do with meniscus tears. There you go. Watch. They're going to really start sliding around too. These are the uptown fellas. Okay. And they go in class. They're always wearing tuxedos. Look at that. Look at that.

That is amazing. And when you combine this spirit with rock and roll, no, you don't do these moves in rock and roll. No, that looks like Diamond Dave. I mean, the dropping down to the splits and everything. See how the floor is all slipped up and everything? That's incredible. Oh, my God. Okay. It is in this spirit that I've always carried out what I do for a living. everything look see how the floor is all slipped up and everything that's incredible oh my god okay

it is in this spirit that i've always carried out what i do for a living i knew about these guys before i was a teenager can you dig it look at that and it's all done with a smile it's all done with finesse and there's no taps on the bottoms of those shoes huh See that? See the slide? Boom. I mean, where does one even go to learn that? I can take you exactly where to go to learn it. I learned it from the short one on the left, his protege, Jimmy Z. Can you still do the splits?

I can. Wow. That's awesome. Put up the Barry Brothers cane routine. Now is the downtown hip-hop version of what those guys were doing. And these aren't moves that you do on stage. This is the savvy. This, see, these guys are more ghetto.

These guys are more a little bit rough around the edges. Yo, bam! Bam, homie! Bam! Whack, whack, whack. Look familiar? Soon. Oh, yeah.

Look at that shit. Savvy. Smoking. It's got nunchucks. This is the Mike Tyson version of tap dancing. Yo. See how it's got knees and elbows to it? It's not so specific. Like life, dog.

Bop. Boom. Ah. Yeah. Wow. Now, which one are you, Joe? Are you the Nicholas Brothers or the Berry Brothers? I'm neither one of those.

Oh, what is this? What year is this? 1940s? Yeah, 30s and 40s. These are flash teams, they're called. Flash teams. Yeah. That's what they were called, dancing teams like this?

Yeah. What's weird is that this doesn't exist anymore. Not like this. Yeah, right? And it is in their spirit. You see the difference now between the Berry brothers and Nicholas. Nicholas brothers were educated. They have their elbows up, classy.

They're putting that bandana. These guys, these are street corner, dog. Yeah, fuck it. Who cares? It's the spirits that drive. Laugh to win, homie. Whoa! Whoa, that guy did a flying triangle.

Oh, you just saw that in your last fight. Oh, down goes. Look at that. Yeah. That is wild. Yeah. See, you just saw that in your last fight. That's insane. Oh, down goes one of the... That is wild. Yeah, see, that's that street corner. And in that spirit is Van Halen.

In this very spirit is Laugh to Win. In this very spirit is Lead With Your Face and I've been places with mine, you wouldn't go with a loaded pistol. Nothing but yeah. It is amazing that that... you see how that was non-specific doesn't exist same kind of a thing and you wonder where does the drive come from the spirit is I want to learn that I still do still do yeah how are your

knees great really oh yeah from years of stretch and stretch. Stretch and stretch. I can still do all of my stuff, just not as much of it. Oh. You bet. Now, I am not a healthy guy, okay? The best part of yoga is when you're done. You're not healthy? The best part of Pilates is when it's over.

The best part of the weight stack is finishing. What do you mean by you're not a healthy guy, though? By nature, no. By nature, I was not raised to healthy food. I was not raised to healthy practices. But I would imagine you eat healthy food now. Yes. So you're healthy.

I eat a croco diet. What a crocodile would have, you know, catch a bird, some foliage. What'd you have today, Ray? I caught a chicken. That sounds like a crocodile, right? I would imagine a crocodile would have a similar sounding voice. Yes. But I was raised when McDonald's was special. Going to McDonald's was a special night. That wasn't convenience food.

It was like. A rare treat. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Like, what do you eat now? Do you just meat and vegetables? No, I try to stay away from the meat first things probably about four days out of the week. Okay.

And it's oatmeal, rice, beans, you know, the usual veg. But I can't go too long without eating meat. About every four days. Why do you try to stay away from it? I got to keep my weight down. I do everything a little better. You seem slim. Well, I have that gene that Labrador retrievers had where I'm always hungry and I'll eat until I'm sick.

That's why Labradors train so well. They've got that C4 gene or whatever it is where they're always hungry. So if you've got a treat, he's going to learn real quick. If I do this, I get another treat. You're working his appetite. I have the same thing. A lot of people do where I learned from my parents, try everything. And most of it's going to be pretty good with an open mind so there's really no kind of food that i have ever had that i haven't enjoyed and but is it meat that makes you put on weight primarily it's meat that puts yeah absolutely it's the fat from the meats and dairy that really sock it to me carbs the beans the the beans, the rest of it, no, the weight just comes right off.

But the meat really socks it to me. That's interesting. And the fat content is the big deal. I always say that you can't outrun the French fry, okay? You may stay real skinny, but you're still running all that fat through your heart valves. Okay? The same thing with red meats of whatever kind. And if we sit down, I'll always be the last one at dinner.

I'll always eat the slowest and I'll eat more than anybody twice my weight. It's just the way I'm wired. So I've really had to buckle into that and be real careful because what I do, I do better if I'm staying light, tight, and ready for flight. I'm still the same size as I was in college. What do you do for exercise? Just riding your bike or other stuff? Depends on what we're doing and where. Do you still do martial arts?

Oh, yeah. Every day. Every day. Some element of it. Okay? Like what kind of stuff? Forms have come in real, real handy. Yeah.

All right? And especially forms with the different swords. Okay? Kendo is one division of this. Aido. You can draw that. Aido. A- that i don't a ideal it's a drawing way okay is easily half the battle here and that uh we do with wooden swords do without a sword do it with a live blade as well and um oh you what? On my Instagram, I believe there is a picture in my stories,

Instagram stories, David Lee Roth, there's a picture of me with a sword on the stories. You can dial that up. It's forms done with a live blade in this case. And, you know, somebody my age, I'm not taking impact. You're not going to hit me ever again. I'm not throwing punches. I just had an operation on one of my thumbs. You know, that finally gave up on me. My big toe, just had an operation on my big toe. And this is from all, this is all from contact.

What's wrong with your big toe? Kicking the heavy bag for how many years? Yeah. Yeah, that started it. And then, and then. The toe joint? Uh-huh. Corrosion of the joint or something? Yeah. Yeah, that started it. And then, and then. The toe joint? Uh-huh. The corrosion of the joint or something?

Yeah. What they have done? We call it wearing out the brake pads. Yeah, what do they do? What do they do for that? Clean it out, scrape, scrape and clean. If it's real bad, then you can put in an artificial joint. In your toe.

Oh, yeah. Well, you know how important the big toe is. Big. In your toe. Oh, yeah. You know how important the big toe is. It's big. But after how many years of hitting heavy bag and or light pad work, et cetera, it's impact.

And it may well be impact that you're not designed for like walking and running and even walking and running competitively. Did God build us to go, okay, now he's ready to run 100 miles? No, I think not. He built us to, you know, there you go. Oh, that's my teacher. Is it? Yep. And this is Ido?

That's, no, no, he's... What is he doing with that stick? What form is this, a form of martial art? He's, let me no, he's, uh... What is he doing with that stick? What form is this? Form of martial art? Um, he's... Let me see what he's actually doing. This is Ido? Okay, this is all the same kind of stuff that you're going to do with your sword. And this is, uh, you know...

Yeah, see, he's doing all the same stuff that he's doing with his sword. And the idea behind all these flowery movements is what? Just to get more competent? Cross training. There you are. Cross training. Isometrics, plyometrics. Look at you.

You follow? Yeah. Anyways, it's everything that you would do recuperating, for example. Lunges are all included in that. Everything that you might do in your yoga class and in all of that that takes place in the gym is in forms. But forms are something that you're going to get a little better at. All right? If you spend all of your time simply making impact,

then you've developed one branch of the martial arts. Actual combat, actual fighting is part of it. Are you going to be doing that when you're 80? I plan on turning 96 like my uncle. There is a slow version of it is Tai Chi, and it's slow because they charge by the hour. The faster it moves, sure. But think of it as cross-tra it actual fighting no no i'm more aware but it is uh like with uh if you have shoulder or you know that kind of a thing it may be because of a repetitive motion and forms are way more fun to do, way more entertaining and engaging than just let's do 20 more lunges.

Let's do 50 burpees. All of your burpees are included in the forms, but a form is something that you can get better and better at. And you can do it in a very small space without a class, without a teacher, without a bag, without gloves, without anything. So do you do any striking anymore do you hit bags or anything like that anymore you're done no the closest i get to that is with uh you know bow training a sword wooden sword okay but uh i'm a result of impact you know my, my thumbs, my feet, my back, et cetera, I started in 1966 hitting the heavy bag and kicking the heavy bag and getting, you know, hitting and making contact. And I loved it. And I miss it dearly. Frankly, I'd love to get back out on the mats. Kills me that, you know, I've reached that point now where I can't do it anymore.

Yeah, I'm scared to reach that point. That's one of the reasons why I train so hard, to make sure my body is resilient enough so that I can keep training. Yeah. And maybe— A lot of maintenance stuff, you know. It's really maintenance. Yeah. And you start—it's like taking care of a boat.

Mm-hmm. Most of it isn't going anywhere. Like that big giant boat with the helicopter? This, taking care of the boat before it goes anywhere. Right? Two hours of maintenance versus one hour of sailing, I think. Probably, yeah. Yeah.

And then, so why keep the weight down? It's easier on my back. Right. Why do I go on the bike? It's easier on my back. Right. Why do I go on the bike? It's easier on me than the weight stack. Why, you know. But you're still jamming, you're still doing music, and you just released a song. Well, I got a song out.

Why put out a record in these days if you're going to have 14 songs unless you have devout fans? That's great. And when you're a flavor of the week for the first two, three times, great. Your fans are devout. You become – it's like a Bible. Oh, my God. I'm a Drake fan. I'm going to buy everything that Drake buys, puts out, and consume it as if it were nutrition, right?

At my point, geez, Paul McCartney puts out 14 songs. The human thing is to pick your favorite and your worst and skip the rest because there's nine other records available right here in my shoe phone. I don't have to go to Canterbury Records anymore, buy one record at a time, go home, sit and listen just to that record. Your wristwatch contains all of the music ever recorded. The new one. The new Series 12 wristwatch contains your iPod. You follow my reasoning.

The human condition is, get it forget it that's like monkey how do you consume music now short bursts short dose if i'm listening to a specific artist you do it digitally like how do you do it most of what i do is SiriusXM, okay? And that has a wild diversity to it. So you just pick a channel and just... Oh, yeah. My favorite channels are, yeah, just about this order. The Bluegrass Channel, Outlaw Country, Hip Hop Nation, Rock the Bells, Groove Channel, then the two, BPM and Aria, and then I listen to Fox and MSNBC.

You listen to Fox and MSNBC just to get a balanced perspective? Oh, yeah. Propaganda? Oh, you bet. From both sides of the polls? Oh, I've been on Cavuto's show a couple of times, and I agree with Rachel. I'm a concern well i think that's probably healthy oh yeah i think i get concerned with people that are on one side of the ideology 100 that's just i don't think that's realistic and i think it's more in line with tribal thinking than it is with like real objective discerned reasoning

like reasoning someone who's like really looked at the issues and thought about it from a balanced perspective and really looked at the pros and cons of each individual aspect of whatever problem we're trying to address as a culture pop used to say to me, I don't choose my patients, whoever walks through the door. And we used that in Van Halen. We played to every different kind of neighborhood. There's four kinds of Mexican. You have Tejano. You have Lowrider.

You have progressive UCLA. In the 70s, and they all required a different kind of music. Okay? The Van Halens listened to Pomp and Circumstance at their graduation. At my graduation, they played Samba Patti by Santana on something called a loop in 1972. Hey, that shit's repeating. Somebody better fix the record. No, no, it's supposed to do that essay.

A loop was real back then on purpose oh yeah on a record player how would you do that on a loop oh they just put it on a tape with reel to reel and uh and played it but the van halen audience is all across the board. It's combat hippie. You've got half of the audience is just camo on the dance floor. Okay. It includes police, fire, paramedic, military, cowboy, right-wing Republican, and it's Harleys and Ferraris. You've got the whole left-wing contingent of the arts and letters community. What's happening in terms of liberal arts, because you can tell we put a lot of work into everything we did. The genius in Van Halen is in the composition.

We did our 10,000 hours before we made our first record. That's old school training. It's closer to martial arts. we never took around a demo tape we made the assertion that if we're as good as we think we are we'll get discovered and if we don't get discovered it's because we suck but were there demo tapes back then people have demo tapes oh sure yeah oh you bet and that was a big thing oh yeah everybody but you made them on a reel to reel on a t-ac when didel on a T-ACC. When did you guys realize it was happening?

Like, when did you really realize, like, holy shit, it's taken off? Right away. Right away? Oh, yeah. There was no development period for us. The only thing that remains exactly the same from the beginning of its life, from the beginning to the very end, is a sea urchin. It looks exactly the same. And maybe Bruce Springsteen.

You know what? I was listening to Bruce Springsteen the other day. But in terms of our music. I was listening to I'm On Fire. Imagine playing that song today. Hey, little girl, is your daddy home? Did he go and leave you all alone? Mm-hmm.

I got a bad desire. I know. And she's 16. She's sweet 16. And she's mine. But that song in particular, that is a crazy song. I heard a cover of it by some country music star. I was singing a cover of that, like a recent cover.

I'm like, hey, man, you probably might not want to sing that fucking song anymore. Senses of humor change. Well, that's not a sense of humor. That's not about humor. It's a weird song. Hey, little girl, is your daddy home? Did he go and leave you all alone? Mm-hmm.

I got a bad desire. Okay, is that a teenage kid singing to a teenage kid? Because Bruce will tell you I'm a liar. He says it right in the first pages of his autobiography. I don't know what it is. He goes on, I was never a cowboy. I never worked in the steam yards. Oh, of course.

Of course. So if that's a teenager singing to a teenager, that's the way you think as a teenager. A teenager doesn't call other teenagers little girl i'm being alan dershowitz on behalf of mr springsteen here i wonder what it was simply emulating the thinking of a mutually aged individual but you're looking at him as a 70 year old looking at your daughter and i would concur what the fuck yeah i'm looking at it's like a creepy 40 year old i'm sorry i looking at it's like a creepy 40 year old i'm sorry i'm looking at it like a creepy 40 year old exactly talking to an 11 year old or something

exactly yeah so maybe you know i'm looking at the worst possible charitable example you gotta get back to where your streets are full of uh heroes on a last chance power slide i'd love that too but i'm just i, I'm always curious as to why someone writes what they write and like where it's coming from and what, what,

you know, what, what they're trying to channel. Hold on. He's got some amazing fucking songs. He becomes the character. Yeah.

I don't do that. He becomes the character. He becomes the soldier who sings Born in the USA. Right, right. He becomes the kid on his, sitting next to his dad in my brand new used car.

I think he might have been the guy singing Brilliant Disguise, though. Because that was right after he got out of a bad divorce. Okay. I think that might have been him. Okay, but it's a character. For example, in contrast, my songs, lyrically, I wrote all of the lyrics

in anything that you sing. To be perfectly honest, it was all run through Alex Van Halen's brain seven times before it was approved. So you have a mutuality here. I saw it coming from professional orchestral training. Professional orchestral training. All right. Two of my mentors on Reeds, I played saxophone, were Peter and Pearl Zukofsky, first and second chair clarinet in the L.A. Philharmonic. These are my cousins. And I learned a great deal from them in terms of formative music.

All right. Emotional content can be utilized lyrically or melodically if you even know it exists so for example we can sing about jumping I ran down the street and I jumped and my tennis shoes hit the street first

and I'm wearing Converse or we can create somehow lyrically the feeling of jumping so when we jump unless it's in slow motion, jump. That's drinking that purple scissor or whatever. Scissor? If you're drinking scissor, that may be what it feels like to jump.

But in fact, no, in your world of MMA, you jump. And that's how we sing it now when we dance we want to dance all night so we dance and you don't have to speak English to understand the subtext of how this works what is it like to make a song like that and know that it affected millions of people? Millions of people would hear Dance the Night Away. Well, children, what did we do today that's going to benefit the rest of us? We're going to jump, Dad.

We're going to dance. And what else are we going to do? These are all verbs, by the way. That's not a coincidence either. Now, in retrospect, I can look back, but we don't jog, we run. And who are we running with? The devil. Do you follow? So what is the sound of jogging? Have you ever done road work to accommodate fighting and so forth? It sounds like this.

That's endless. So many miles. I remember years and years I ran and ran and ran. But we need a mean part to that. And it started off mean. And I was thinking, what does it sound like to run? What does it feel like to run? What will you remember if you've run the marathon?

You know what you're going to remember? Running with the devil. I swear to God. Fat, fat, fat, fat, fat, fat, fat, fat. If you're going to Panama, who even fucking knows where that is? But it sounds a lot like orale. And I've said that 10 million times. Debbie Sierra took me to the prom, put $20 in my pocket,

and said, we're going to the prom at a high school. Orale. Can you dig? And it was right in your head. you follow so how do you feel like panama what's tropical what's exotic what's a little bit dangerous i understand what you're trying to convey in your songs but i'm saying what does it feel like to know that your songs have impacted millions and millions of people like is it a satisfying feeling do you feel like you a life well lived like what does it feel like?

I feel like we've made a contribution. I think we added. I feel like, ah, yeah. Contribution is my word. If you have to choose a word, pick a word. What is your word? If we have to put one on your gravestone, what's your word? I don't know. Pick one. I have to think about that for a while. You're on your gravestone what's your word i don't know pick one i have

to think about that you're on the spot now mine's contribution yeah i don't think i would uh pick a spot i'd have to think contribution what's yours what is your law do you have one um on thermopylae where the spartans gave it up. And remember, they lost that last fight. Yeah. Well, let's not rub that in. There's one of the most famous poems in history. It's only two sentences long.

And it's a little sarcastic. It was carved into the wall right after the battle. It says, tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, here obedient to their laws we lie. It means that's the law. We're forever. And when you have a law or a word, it doesn't matter if you win or lose. This is what I mean by the Jamaican bobsled team they came in dead last flipped the sled and almost killed themselves and it's the most valuable t-shirt of the entire Olympics

why? same spirit it's not novelty because they came back three times and won the nationals again well it was novelty because holy shit Jamaica has a bobsled team everybody was fascinated because everybody knows there's no ice in Jamaica. Yes, but they took it dead serious. I interviewed the coach.

Of course they did. They're in the Olympics. I interviewed Devin, the coach. He was British SAS. Their strength and training coach was British SAS. He was a no fuck around guy. Serious. I was in radio for four and a half months when Stern went. I remember. I remember. What have you been fired from? How fucked was that? What have you ever been fired from?

Walmart? Was that devastating, getting fired from that gig? Are you kidding? What have you been fired from mcdonald's i got fired from i got fired for playing too much ethnic music i got fired for having too much of a view like we're doing right now okay because well the problem was you were taking over a time slot that had been clearly established by arguably the greatest radio broadcaster in the history of the world. I agree with that, and I still agree with it.

I listen to Howard regularly. Really do. But when you take over that time slot, you can't win. No, no. No one wins. You can't win if they expect you to be the same thing. Exactly. You should have taken over it after somebody else got fired.

My shit, my ratings were going up. The arbitrons, everything was zooming, man. We were booming. And what they wanted was a repeat of what Howard was doing and I just refused to do that.

But wait a minute. If your ratings were going up, I thought that's all they care about. Nope. I was untenable. My God. So it was a successful show. I was playing black music in the background. I was bringing in guests that had nothing to do with rock and roll. What were you supposed to do? When they hired you, what did they say to you? Well, what they said was be yourself, but I think what they expected

was a duplication of a hero and I'm not a duplication I even when I try to duplicate but did you have these conversations with them where you said listen I'm just going to be free I want to play my own music I want to do like what did they expect did they expect you were going to do all talking yes they think that you're going to go that I was going to duplicate what would have come before because that it seems to be a tradition okay but you had done stern a few times you knew you knew what it was like nevertheless when you put me in charge we're going to be it's a lot closer to what we're doing here right and the kind of do you know

the term wabasabi it means yeah which is a little roughed up at the edges well you've done a lot of stuff like this right you've done your own version. You were doing your own version of a podcast for a while. Nevertheless, before that show? No, this was 15 years ago. Right, but I mean recently. So you have been able to kind of do your own thing, what you actually enjoy doing.

Yes. But then there was executives involved. There was a bunch of other people that were poking and prodding. And despite the fact that the ratings were going up, they were still not happy with what you were doing. We were changing audience. All right. I have no problem. I would play Bob Marley.

And they would say, you can't play this. You have a rock and roll audience. And I go, this is what rock and rollers listen to on vacation. And they go, no, no, no, no serious quote. And they would say, no, no, we want you to play Nickelback. What? Yes, yes. These were the two.

We want you to play, it was Nickelback and Skinner. And I said, I have news for you. When Leonard Skinner goes to the Bahamas on vacation, they listen to Bob. So was the show music? Bob Marley is the sound of vacation. Was the show music? To rock and rollers. Oh, I was playing background music throughout my talking.

Like right now, I would be having music congruent in the backgrounds to what we would be discussing. What I'm trying to get at is how did this show get established? Did you have test shows that you did where they said, I like what you're doing? Did they just let you wing it live? Did they hit the switch at 6 a.m. Monday morning and say, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome David Lee Roth and let you just go wild? Yeah, and I'd have an intro from a Wilson Pickett tune or I'd loop the musical intro from Cool in the Gang or I'd loop the musical intro from some Arabian night something or other

and no, no, no, no, this is classic rock. We want to stay in the classic rock mode We want to stay a classic rock typecast in the approach So that was because Stern on terrestrial radio before he went over to XM Sirius was a on a classic rock station Yes, so they wanted you to do the same thing in the morning Yeah, but did what if you had just talked with it would they have been okay with that or did they want you to do the same thing in the morning yeah but did what if you had just talked would they would they have been okay with that or did they want you to play music was that established before you started doing it even just talking um i'm i'm not um they didn't even like that hold on there are as many people you either love roth or you hate him i speaking to the third person. You're either entertained or you really have no

taste for me. You follow? It's like sushi. But isn't what's important though in that business, the ratings? That's what's so confusing to me. I don't understand if the ratings were going up. But I was not controllable. My subject matter was not controllable. What was the problem with the subject matter? What exactly what we're talking about here. And I was not afraid to upset people. Right. Like what kind of subject matter was upsetting? Well, for example, uh, nine 11. Okay. The buildings down there, Trade Center, World Trade. What the EPA director, Christy, I think, Whitman, perhaps, I might be wrong with the name.

I'm in error. At the time was declaring, this is 15 summers ago, that it was okay to breathe down there. And I maintained under no circumstances was it okay to breathe down there, having been involved in some version of health care training and so forth. First time I got walked into the hospital, I was 8 years old. I remember my father saying, Sybil, it's time he sees what his father really does for a living, and he showed me everything in that hospital. He was a Massachusetts general when he was a resident.

And I went on record, and they got calls from the mayor's office, shut up, because I was saying, it is under no circumstances. Is it safe to breathe down at that site? Everything was incinerated. It's airborne. Our health care workers are in danger. If you're not masked up and gloved up and eyed up, et cetera, we are endangering our responders. Oh, they didn't want to hear that shit.

And the EPA director, whatever, was online saying, no, no, it's breathable, it's safe. Well, today, I was right. You were dead right. Bad choice of word, but maybe it's right. And I was threatened with getting fired and the mayor's office called and you're going to cause a big problem and big trouble, et cetera, like that. And I refused to back down. A lot of the people that lived in that area. Fuck y'all. That stayed in that area. Okay. Exactly.

They got very, very sick. I called it right away. So this was something that you were calling on the air. Yes. And what did they say to you? Shut up. Knock it off. They really said that to you?

You're causing big time problems. They said knock it off. Don't tell the truth about the You're causing big time problems. They said knock it off. Don't tell the truth about the- It wasn't considered truth. This is just your opinion. You're here for entertainment. You're here to play some music. You're here to talk.

Keep them light and lively, local news, et cetera. Sounds like they owe you an apology. Well, I took your approach, which is it was what I was doing then, and you can tell I'm still irate, is much closer to what you're doing here. And I would bring people on who were extreme right wing and extreme left wing and extreme everything. And you guys decide. I would have, jeez, I had, well, on the lighter side of things, I would have, Jesus, we had an actual pimp call. Really? Yeah.

We had actual prostitutes. I would feel like you want to have the pimp in studio. Call in. You want to see what he's dressed like. No, he's not coming anywhere near us. But. Et cetera. I wouldn't hesitate to engage with law enforcement i put out the call having emt and say david david hasselhoff

got busted i know that you're in within my listening voice down in palm beach florida if you're law enforcement give us a call tell us what happened cop called it yeah yeah he was in here's what happened wait a minute i mean you know you follow even having that connection right was well no this is drum circle it's rock and roll man this is like you know drum circle you follow peace and i'd make the joke which is peace love and heavy weapons what do you think's protecting the drum circle you know and then of course my friends or teachers and what in law enforcement make total fun of our showbiz community yeah of course yeah it's frivolous a bunch of sissies yeah that ain't working so as that's why they call it play time went on tensions built right on that radio show built instantly

instantly yeah and in reading commercials of course i would have fun with that but what else what else was a source of major contention? We would talk about, oh, I would go long. Okay. Kids, when they go to school, there's a big problem with bling. are getting nice tennis shoes and swatch watches and interesting clothes, and the kids who have no money are dressed like I am right now. And there's a problem with that. If they're both in the same classroom, there occurs a division. I said, why don't we take the martial arts approach, and up until, I don't know, maybe eight years old, everybody wear a gi.

So nobody has bling. And everybody shave your head so you're not wearing an $80 haircut. Yeah, I know about that too. There are kids out there with $120 haircuts in Beverly Hills. I can tell the difference. I'm in showbiz. So if you tell the kids this is the way of it, everybody kind of looks the same. You're saying this on the radio? Yes. Is that what you're doing? Oh, yeah. So you're telling people to shave their heads and wear a gi? Yeah.

How about just do whatever the fuck you want to do? Well, because then there's competition because doing whatever you want to do is informed by your parents. And your parents may be putting bling on you. You may be wearing diamonds to grade school. You may be wearing $120 haircut and some brand new new balance, where my kid can barely afford some slaps. My kid might be wearing camo, because that's all I can wear, because I can't afford to wash a fucking thing,

so it doesn't show the dirt like I wore when I was a kid and the bling kid is liable to think they're somehow superior so is this an actual conversation or are you just being poetic now did you have this actual conversation I talked just like this but I was way rougher I respect you Joe and this this show when you were doing it then after the show was over, they would pull you aside? Oh, yeah. You're pissing parents off. We're getting calls. You can't say that about people's children.

They can't deal with these kinds of subjects. The show was obviously live, so they couldn't control you while you were actually on the air. It was great. It was wonderful. Then I suggested there was combat issues. I suggested, you know, there's combat issues. I would go deep. I would, well, for example, what do you think about my kid's idea? I don't like it.

I don't think anybody should be able to tell people they have to shave their head or wear a gi. No, no, no. It's not telling people. I understand what you're saying. It's sort of like going to. I understand what you're saying. But I think there's benefit and disparity in that. It makes kids want to work harder to achieve things.

It makes other kids appreciate that they're fortunate they have things that other kids don't. There's a balance. I think what's more important than anything is compassion. And there's always going to be people that have more and there's always going to be people that have less. The real problem is when that becomes everything, when that becomes your defining characteristic, when that becomes your personality. I agree. When that becomes the thing that everyone's aspiring to. I agree. I guess what this harkens back to is the specific episode of The Little Rascals when the rich kid next door has a very expensive soapbox racer made of metal that's

painted red and Darla mistakenly falls in love with him because of his possessions and Spanky, Buck and Alfalfa have to build their shitty little soapbox racer out of spare parts. I kind of vaguely remember that episode. Now that you're saying that. I kind of vaguely remember that episode. Now that you're saying that, I don't know. But there's competition. The ingenuity, though. There's competition. But they won.

Well, that was by accident because if you remember, Buckwheat tries to hit the stick to do the brakes and it breaks off. And Spanky says to him, hit the brakes. And he goes, brakes is gone. We freewheeling. And they just happen to win. Yeah, but they won. But the whole idea is the overcoming adversity, the ingenuity, the whole creativity.

The whole idea is fuck you and your little friend, your little fire engine. Fuck you and your little store-bought fire engine. Get your mind right. Get it together, Darla. It's all about spirit, drive, personality, whimsicalness, and sense of humor here. Yes. Okay. So do I really think all little kids should shave their heads? No.

Do I think all little kids should be in geese? I had a ball in karate class and then in judo class and then in taekwondo class. And everybody was even. Everybody was the same. I had a ball in karate class and then in judo class and then in taekwondo class. And everybody was even. Everybody was the same. And in the times when my pop was just getting started in medicine and we didn't have money in the house, I was equal to the kids from La Cunada when I was in my geek. gee. And now that I am a millionaire several times over, when I was in kendo class, then the kid who has nothing, I'm no better than him. My gee looks way older. It's a distinction. It's got a lot of miles on it and you got a ways to go kid. That's the subtexttext there's no belt there we're wearing the same thing yeah well i think there's definitely a benefit in kids learning martial arts for sure

and learning martial arts in the same uniform there's a real benefit in that too because you realize it's not about the uniform it's not about what you look like it's about getting things done then as you learn and grow and become more accomplished, then you receive these belts. And so then you have goal attainment. And goal attainment is an amazing thing for kids, an amazing thing for adults. There's a real benefit in knowing that you put in the hard work and now there's something that signifies it. Oh my God, I have a blue belt. And they tie that blue belt around your waist and you're not a white belt anymore. And you feel proud. You put that thing on and you feel like I have done work. And then it elevates your perspective in terms of the way you look at

yourself and you look at your abilities. It gives you more confidence. And it also gives you this goal. One day I want to be a black belt. And you just think about it. Like one day I'm going to attain a rank of proficiency where i'm going to be someone who's actually to whatever level mastered a very specific style of martial art that's incredibly difficult to learn that's good for everybody that now to the arts that we do for a living mccartney can't get through an interview without telling you about his six years in the red light district in Germany. He wears it like a general's badge. Can you dig it?

He's proud of it. Alex Van Eelen and I, same thing. We put in five years compared to year three. The average is two and a half, maybe. Just constantly jamming, doing multiple shows constantly isn't that that's there's it's detailed in the book the outliers right is it the outliers i think it is there's a book outliers yeah that they talk about how when the beatles emerged people don't realize they had so many hours of playing and it's one of the reasons why they're so good. They were playing so often,

constantly. It is really hardcore training. And that's when you build who you are. That's where you develop your ingredients. When I was coming up in music, that was the regular because there were bands at every club, every bar had to have a live band to afford the speakers and the turntable and the music. You had to have a live band and you would tear off the left-hand side of the billboard chart and learn it. Alex and I went through a list just recently that we found of 120 songs that we could play at the drop of a hat by everybody you could imagine

from Smoke on the Water to Get Down Tonight. That's where we learned to sing. Get down tonight. Get down tonight. We didn't have a keyboard, so you better sing. You better sing a cover off that fucking ball. That's why Mike Anthony was so unique.

His bass playing, we could find bass players, but nobody sounds like that. That's Garfunkel. Simon's good, but Simon and Garfunkel. Where do you think you built that? Thousands and thousands of vocal training hours so that when Mike and I sing, you recognize it like Hendrix's guitar. You may never have heard the song before and you go, that's Hendrix. Signature sound. Like Rod Stewart's voice.

You may never have heard the song before. You go, that's Rod. Yeah, it is. And in our backgrounds, like Motown, that only comes from thousands of hours. Where do you learn to have the temetry to stick with that? I learned it at the dojo. I learned it in my first singing lessons. You dig it? My first singing coach, Jesus, that was also my first real experience with tattoos. We started off talking about tattoos. My first singing coach had two tattoos. He had a number right here, and he had another number right there. And he would say at least once a year, this is my camp number, and this is the number why I was still

alive. He played piano, and he sang in Auschwitz. Jesus. He was there for three years. Kurt Blumenthal, okay? And he used to tell me, Mr. Roth, sing as if your life depended on it. Can you imagine a gig where one bad review literally puts you up the chimneys

and that was another expression he would use? It's in the music. It's in my voice. It's in every Van halen song you hear mr van halen taught it to his sons jan van halen and i were very good friends and he would tell his sons about when the bombing would start and they would all move into the subway tunnels and he would play saxophone for everybody hiding during World War II. Every time I sing, I sing as if my life depended on it. Does that make sense? It does. I think there's a good way to wrap this up.

That's a perfect way to wrap it up. Dave, it's always a pleasure, my friend. More than ever, Joe. It is. More than ever. Thank you very much. Bye, everybody..