The Joe Rogan Experience - #333 - David Lee Roth

Episode Date: March 6, 2013

David Lee Roth is the lead singer of multi-platnium hard rock band from Southern California, Van Halen. Roth also has spent time on the radio, as an actor, and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007. He currently hosts the The Roth Show.

Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out! The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night! All day! Two things I don't like. One, I don't like... I don't like you fucking with Nick Diaz's voice. You gotta stop doing that.

Stop doing that. I was gonna say, is that a remix or is that a... Fucking with Nick Diaz's voice. Electrotypo, digital cyber something. You gotta stop doing that. Actually, I thought you were doing it. Number two, you got to bring back the English voice. I missed that chick.

Oh. Did you have a chick with a British accent? It was a robot chick with a British accent. Oh, that's kind of kinky. Even a robot chick with a British accent. I like that. There's nothing about it, man. And was it another chick pretending to be a British chick but sounding like a robot?

Something along those lines. I think I know her. Oh, that one. That one. David Lee Roth, ladies and gentlemen. So we've started off talking about girls with no last names, and I have three. Yeah, I had to pull that off.

Is that a real name? Yes. David Lee Roth's your real name? That is my real name. That's the way to rock it, right? Make it to superstar status on your real name. Well, I started using the middle name because I thought it sounded more like Southern, which it kind of does. Right.

Why Southern? Why would you want to sound more Southern? I don't know. Will you be a Leonard Skinner fan? Well, yeah. See, there you go. Who would ever thought that Leonard Skinner would be a name? That's like a Baltic, Euros.

Who would be a Mr. Skinner? That's like a Mr. Giebler. Well, how about Van Halen? Van Halen's a pretty odd name for a band as well. It was my idea, too. Was it really? I said on the heels of like Santana. Right.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It sounds kind of dramatic. Maybe it's the name of a sailing ship or the name of a sailing captain or the name of the wind. That's what I always thought Santana was. It's the name of the guitar player, but you say it the same. And much like Leonard Skinner, all it has to do is be awesome. It doesn't really matter what the name you call it is. Skinner proved that, right?

Well, maybe they proved that the more colorful it is like schwarzenegger whoever thought that if you saw that in print you know originally an old hollywood style you would look and go no way but maybe that's part of the reason it's so well known i wonder how many people arnold schwarzenegger called up and was like see i told you you didn't know shit you fuck with my life and you don't know shit. I would have been one who would have thought, no, you can't go with that long last name. You can though.

Even the way Skinner spelled their name was like L-Y-N-R-D-S-K-Y-N-R-D. I want to know. You got to get a name like a verb, like share or stay. Usher. But Skinner pulled it off. You can pull it off.

It's not the right way to do it, but you can just make a fucking goofy spelling of something, and it actually can work. There's always names like Engelbert Humperdinck. Right. Are anybody else in this room old enough to remember that name? He was like a lounge singer. Kind of, you know, in the I did it my way kind of a fella. I think it's a real name, too.

Where did you guys start out? What state did you guys start out? We started off in the usual state of confusion, but really mostly down the street bicycle distance. That's a good question, because it is only bicycle distance in Pasadena and coming out of high school. You know, it was time, you know, you're playing backyard parties and the occasional wedding and whatnot because you're not quite old enough to play in the bars. And when Van Halen was playing in the bars around here, nobody had any money for a sound system. We don't blink now. When you see some big boom speakers, you know, in the corners, and there's a guy with a, you know, he's got his own, well, now you can take your iPod and plug it in, but, you know,

a couple of turntables and some people with some cool headgear. We don't blink when we see that. But coming up, all the way up until the late 70s, nobody had that. You had to have a live band. And we played five 45-minute sets a night usually five and six nights a week at ever this could have been a club right here all right this right here could

have easily done it as long as a stage meant something that you tripped your toe over sometimes it was just marked off and you know well the stage used to be there so technically it's always there or the stage is in your heart son so you would like basically perform on a dance floor an auditorium many many times face to face with the rest of the human race and we got used to doing that at parties backyard parties where we would rent the light you know would get pull up one of the cars and get a a little mini trooperette spotlight for 55 bucks for the weekend and put it up on top of the gardening shack or the room that you know when somebody has a swimming pool you got to have the little shed that uh all the pool equipment fits in well that's perfect for putting somebody

up there it's like out of a movie you know a rock and roll movie yeah but you put the you know character up there and give him enough six-pack you know that he stays up there for the whole show but he gets progressively drunker or he brings his girlfriends up there and then the roof caves in you guys right mr. you got to write this down we got a recording recording. We're recording the whole thing. We'll go back later with the translator. It'll take notes. Check it for veracity. Yeah.

So around Pasadena, huh? Yep. Wow. There's a lot of great bands came from California. It's funny how you see states and some states is like great bands will blossom out of. And then you see there's a ton of states where you hardly ever see any bands come from. And then you see there's a ton of states where you hardly ever see any bands come from. I'm going to wonder if it's because of where showbiz is located, because the opportunities are always here, whether you're trying to play television or get into the movies, singing and dancing in the background, or you want to be in rock and roll. You know, well, you got to be discovered by the record company at,

you know, for 20, 30, 40 years. It was that now, maybe it's another method. Maybe now you email back and forth and, you know,

you're intercepted somehow. And now it probably, there's a novelty to not being from Hollywood. It's probably a novelty. These guys are bad-ass and they live in South Dakota. Like, whoa, they live in a place that fucking sucks and they're awesome.

That might be the band. Straight up Utah. Yeah. They're from Utah. They love Utah. They're Mormons, but they have a guitar. They were raised Mormon. They technically, they still wear the underwear, but they're confused.

Confused underwear. I think that's their name. But their band is badass. All that strife and confusion is in their music, man. You always want something from far away, the rarity, right? You know, if it comes from out on the tundra somewhere, you know. You told us before the show that you've been living in Tokyo for the last 10 months? Yeah, maybe a little bit longer, actually.

How did that come about? for the last 10 months? Yeah, maybe a little bit longer, actually. How did that come about? Well, like all the best wandering stories, it started out a bit unexpectedly. We were going to play in the Van Halen band. And Ed took sick, and we had to postpone everything.

And I was already going to show up a month or two early, kind of get my feet wet, see what it's like being there, as opposed to just visiting. If you go for a week or two or three, okay, you can eat pretty much whatever you want. And you don't really have a legit schedule that you're keeping every day. You're probably not shopping for yourself. You're probably not cooking for yourself and that kind of thing. And once Ed took sick i said you know what i'm going to stick with the schedule and uh i'm going to get there a few months early for the gig that didn't happen and uh how long is it going to be before uh you know he's feeling well and

ready to play and they said oh about 10 and a half months i said well i'll be busting a groove in nihongo then you know what's what isihongo then. What's wrong with him? Oh, he had some stomach issues and some stomach ailments, but he's healed up just fine. And we're going to be playing in Australia coming up in about— That's a serious thing, though, something that takes you out for 10 and a half months. Like, wow, that's a—

No, he got well. You're pretty astute there. He got well a lot sooner, but they couldn't position the gigs any closer. Oh, to make room for baseball season I see and a lot of seasons in Tokyo so no when you decide to just pack up and go to Tokyo do you know people there are you traveling with people like how did you rock it I didn't know anybody when I went there I, you know, classic old Jack London, you know, let's

just sign up for something. Fuck, I love that you did that. Go and set up shop and I'll find an apartment and I'll use my smile like a ray gun. There, you see? We're friends right away. I learned right away

how to say, you know, 15 self-effacing, make fun of myself things. In Japanese. In Japanese. When I was a Japanese guy, right away, my Japanese is bad. Please excuse me. And if I make the right funny face, instantly anybody in any room exhales and goes,

okay, he's not that dangerous. Did you try, like, to use rosetta stone like how'd you uh how'd you learn how to speak japanese no i go to school a couple hours a day i go every day over the week yep you go and take japanese lessons i do and then uh i always wanted to you know just being around the martial arts you know you always think someday wow if i if i'm uh kung fu then someday i'm gonna go to the temple and i'm gonna fly through the air and you know you always think someday wow if i if i'm uh kung fu then someday i'm gonna go to the temple and i'm gonna fly through the air and you know someday if i'm in uh professional wrestling then i'm gonna go to vince vince's mcmahon's place and i'm gonna train and i'm gonna be called

diamond somebody and i'll do that and if i throw the ball, I'm going to go to the NFL. So your idea was just like, fuck it, I'm just going to live in Japan for a while. Yeah, I've always wanted to go to Japan and train with that sword and learn it from the real guys, the real people. So was the idea that you guys were going to do an extended tour in Japan? Is that what the idea was? Extended in Japan means two weeks. It was only two weeks, really?

Yeah, we live in an iPod society now. Everything is kind of condensed. Koshire, it means, but it actually means crushed. And everything's kind of condensed there. So when you go to Japan just touring, you're like racehorse. And I admit it. Hey, when it's time for a touring, you want the very best show out of me possible. So that's Eat, Sleep, Race, Win.

Eat, Sleep, Race, Win. And what you're going to see through the window is, come on, think if you were going to be in the Olympics and you had two weeks to do it, would you be going out to eat at night? No. Would you be going to the movies and out dancing and carrying on? You're there for two weeks to do it. Would you be going out to eat at night? No. Would you be going to the movies and out dancing and carrying on? You're there for two weeks for the Olympics. So when we play with the band, then you really kind of get your face, stay very focused there.

But I actually go back and live somewhere. Wow. I actually will return and go and, you know, spend, we say 18 months. That's kind of metric for a year and a half, two years, if we're really, you know, having a decent time of it there. And I don't require much at all. You know, the size of my apartment is probably as big as that little coffee room back there. Really? Oh, yeah.

You know, I grew up around National Geographic magazines, you know, where there's the guy sitting in the back of the boat, you know, and he's going around the world and he can reach everything. It's like at the desk right here, like in the Brine and everybody, you know, everybody is surrounded by gear and stuff and you only have to kind of stretch a little bit to reach every there's the coffee cup there's the tiller i don't know what a tiller is but you can reach it and over here is the uh electro compass and over here's the camera and i always kind of dug that tour buses are the same thing so you like just living in this small apartment it's like you're you're going back to your roots. You're like roughing it almost. Oh, yeah. You bet.

And my teachers are very unforgiving. You know, they're very you know, what do you call it? Do you have any idea who you are? Oh, sure. Kiyoshi No Tande Nohoto. Nice try. What did you just look up? Hot for teacher.

What is that it's from gangster movies it means who do you think you uh do you still train in martial arts yes well that's part of the reason i'm there is i train in kenjutsu i do the long sword the katana you know the samurai sword and the katana, you know, the samurai sword. And I have a teacher there that I go to three times a week. And I got to do the homework. And it's, you know, I've worked my way up to that. At the end of the last Van Halen tour, I was in the shape of my life, or as best a shape as my own life will now allow. And I said, wow, I can keep up with pretty much anybody at this point. Let's not waste it.

And I went, you know, Ed took ill and I said, yeah, I'll still come. I'm going to move in. And I got going. So you train like sword fighting. You put like gear on and stuff. Is it similar to kendo? Like where you whack each other with fake swords? Yep, we have that. We have used real swords, these steel swords for doing forms and fast draw, slow draw. A lot of times what you see in yaido, which is kind of a kata, it's slow. Think of it like tai chi for those of you who are listening It's slow. Think of it like Tai Chi. For those of you who are listening to this who are unfamiliar with it.

But you do it with swords. Fast draw is exactly what it says it is. It's, you know, keep the art form alive. It's all the same stuff that you would do with a billy club. It's all the same stuff you would do with one of those. Are you preparing for the apocalypse? I am, actually. When people run out of bullets and you have to samurai sword the fuck out of people?

Well, I'll be teaching people how to do that. That's what you do when the apocalypse hits? Well, I'll be accredited by then. We'll go to the Diamond Dave Camp. Diamond Dave Camp for survival in dark days. That's a good name for it. Are you concerned with the food? I would wear that shirt, actually.

It's not a bad idea. Somebody print it. Are you concerned with the food toxins and stuff like that in Japan? Like the nuclear shit that's going on with the earthquake? Of course I am. And I am super consumed with that everywhere I go. consumed with that everywhere I go. The only rationalization that I can use, and I do use the rationalization, is that I gave up a lot of my personal rights, just me, Dave Roth, personal rights to complain about 1,200,000 Marlboro cigarettes ago. And that about 780,000

gallons of Schlitz malt liquor, the bowl that came in the tall can. Schlitz is your shit? The blue and yellow, blue and white can. About 12,000 cans of that ago, I gave up a lot of my rights to whine about what I'm ingesting. Do you still smoke? Occasionally, I do. Well, you get that baritone. Does that help you?

Is that the justification? That's why I do it. I do it for the fame. I do it for the kids. I smoke for the kids. Let them know it's still hip. How many do you do a day? Maybe two.

Two a day? Yeah. And I got to pull the plug on that. It's hard. I've watched this guy. I've watched him struggle. He quit once and then went back on it because his cat hurt his foot. And you stressed over the cat?

He was like, that's it. I can't take this shit anymore. Where's the cigarette? Oh, my poor kitty. She's kind of lipping a little. And you had like a moment, right? Well, there was other things around it. It just was the breaking point was when my cat injured itself. The breaking point.

My fiance left me and all this other shit at the same time. Pathetic, like psychoanalytical, clinical moment noise thing, triggers that you're associating with things that are not that big, right? Exactly. You're getting to the root of the problem. Dave Preach. All this talking cigarettes, I don't know what I want with it. Like they used to say to me, I don't know what's wrong with you,

but I'm sure it's hard to smell. Have you ever tried electronic cigarettes? Electronic cigarettes? What do they do? You've never seen it? It's this right here. It looks like a cigarette. Even it comes with something.

And it gives you the tobacco, but mist comes out. There's no smoke, and it's not bad for your lungs. Check this out. Watch this. I see. Yeah. And it's just the nicotine. It gives you the fix. And you can smoke anywhere.

Yeah. Haven't you seen this Steven Dorff commercial? No, I'm familiar with this to some degree, but it's not a lot like lap dancing. Jimmy, can you tighten his thing? This is moving around on me. Is it like lap dance? No, it's definitely different. The idea behind it is it gives you all the nicotine but it does you're not smoking any burning chemicals

it's like it's like a vaporizer that delivers nicotine okay well i'm not going to make fun of nicotine because um if you look back in all of our favorite authors and all of our favorite jazz musicians and a whole lot of other folks involved. Nicotine plays a huge part in what they did. Sigmund Freud used to smoke, what, two boxes of cigars a day? Mark Twain, same thing. The list is long. Winston Churchill, two boxes a day? Yeah, there was, I forget forget what intellectual very famous guy englishman uh he

would he wouldn't fly unless he could get a seat in the back so he could smoke his pipe like back that was back in the day when you were allowed to smoke on cigarettes i'm gonna but i'm i'm gonna wonder what the main connection is there's a big connection between nicotine and people who are the real cerebral players of our culture. Because it relaxes you. Well, it's a good – it's not bad. The real issue with nicotine is the delivery method. Where it's really toxic is in all the different chemicals that our lovely government has allowed cigarette companies to put into these fucking things to,

to make them more addictive. That was the Russell Crowe movie insider. Did you ever see that movie? Great movie. Russell Crowe plays a scientist who works for the tobacco companies. Who's formulated various chemicals that make you addicted to cigarettes. Your, your addiction to cigarettes is so intense and so extreme because they've

allowed the cigarette companies to engineer their cigarettes to have the maximum amount of addiction. It plays on several key factors in your biological system, and it was all detailed in this movie. So it's not the cigarettes. It's not the tobacco, rather. It's all the other shit.

It's 590 different chemicals. It's not just tobacco. If you buy American Spirits, that's just tobacco90 different chemicals. It's not just tobacco. If you buy American Spirits, that's just tobacco, right? Yeah, that's just tobacco. Or if you buy that stuff where you roll your own, that's actually tobacco. It's supposedly way better for you. The real issue is all the other shit in it. It's never going to be great for you.

You're smoking, burning plant matter, but it's definitely way better. But you know what? Japanese energy drinks have nicotine in them. Are you serious? Yeah. I had one of the translators relate that to me because I had one that was like really mean looking and it made me feel mean. I was like, you know, I was yelling at people and I was angry at inanimate objects and stuff. Wow. Accusatory, you know, and this kind of thing. yelling at people and I was angry at inanimate objects and stuff.

Wow. Accusatory, you know, and this kind of thing. And I thought, wow, this is great. I wonder if I can get this in the States. That's a good idea. That's hilarious. We should bring that out. Yeah, why don't, well, it's probably illegal. They probably wouldn't allow them.

Yeah, and I had her translate and I wonder, can you put nicotine in drinks here? You must be able to. Well, you can get nicotine gum and just chew that shit. I know a lot of writers actually advocate that. For people who aren't even addicted to nicotine, not for trying to kick it, just for a stimulant for the mind. Yeah. Yeah.

That's kind of in a circular way what we were just starting to talk about there. Yeah. Cigars, too. I love a cigar buzz cigar buzz is great buzz and there's a connection to world power there see probably right although i mean all those guys when they're done killing and fucking dropping bombs on people at a big fat exactly pulled it off and i don't i don't think any of my favorite jazz music could have been made or composed or played in a smoke-free

environment yeah well you came from a time where clubs like the nightclubs were all smoke-filled right completely smoke-filled and every movie was smoke-filled as well yeah yeah you look at all the old black and white movies it's astonishing how much tobacco is consumed james bond movies are particularly specifically why I smoke. There's nothing weirder, though, than going back and watching those TV shows where a doctor is talking to a patient while smoking a cigarette. Have you ever seen that? Yeah. That is a trip.

That's one of the weirdest things you could ever see in your life. But those 1950 shows, that was fairly common. Like the doctors would be reviewing your chart with a cigarette. People didn't know. No, they really didn't. That's amazing, isn't it? How could you not know? Does James Bond smoke now?

It's so funny. I watched Skyfall today. Does he? I don't remember him having. I don't think he does anymore. He drinks and fucks still, though. Thank God for that. We're pussifying all of our fucking heroes, man.

Well, Sean Connery was smoking Rothman's Kingsize Size in Goldfinger, and that's where I saw it. And I went out and I got a pack of Rothman's King Size, the blue ones. Mine was from watching you. That's how I started. Well, what brand did you start smoking from watching me? I got it from watching you. Lucky Strike Unfiltered. No, really.

That's a telling thing, man. When somebody says they're a Dave Roth fan or a Van Halen fan more appropriately, it says a lot about your sense of humor and your fighting spirit. And my love for strippers. That's fighting spirit. Let's keep it alive. That's subgroup a what is the name of this uh nicotine beverage do you remember does it have an american name i think it's in a lot of them anything that has an exclamation point or a black label on the front

of it you guys have been to uh tokyo you've been to japan what was your experience just shopping for the easy like chewing gum did you what did you try any of that no we were only there for a couple days but we did and what was your experience it was really easy you just because they all barely knew a little bit enough english that that you could just go in like hi how are you doing and And then they tell you how much. It was easy to do that. It was hard for me to find certain things like, you know, like soapies or like hotels and stuff like that. Like I got lost on foot trying to find my way back to the hotel. And, you know, it was impossible for me to do that. So I had to go to one of those little police stations that are on every corner. And he to draw me a map and it was weird not unusual not unusual it's like going to jupiter people say you know okay uh

there is a lot of english spoken but you know what it's like learning spanish in the school system it really is like an alien world when you go to tokyo it really is it's the culture so different it's so different everything is different yeah virtually everything just shopping for dental floss is a whole different experience and the way that you uh approach people you know bad back and forth the respect issue you know even though it may just be sugar coating or a really sharp new york city sense of business and purpose, you know, underneath all of the old fashioned, those all, you know, and so forth is every bit as savvy, right? Every modern cop thriller that's on the movie screens today is, you know, is right behind

that guy's sunglasses. You know, there's modern as can possibly be there. So, yeah, but that sense of tradition still stays. It's very, very strong and important. You do take your shoes off. When you walk into a person's place or when you walk into a decent restaurant or whatever, you do take your shoes off. And there are a lot of little P's and Q's, you bet.

Now, are you living with people that you're friends with from back home or you just go by yourself you just totally went solo yeah my dog wow so you put the dog in like a ship for like yeah there's a way you ship him around and uh he goes he goes through the european way so that he doesn't have to do uh 14 hours you know in a row there but but people do it all the time. There's not a lot of gaijin, which is Japanese for foreigner. There's not a lot of gaijin faces there, which I enjoy. I ride

my bicycle everywhere. I'm up and down. Like in New York City, I'm kind of uptown as well as the downtown. Look at the parking lot for a Van Halen gig. You've got a Mercedes-Benz parked next to a Harley-Davidson. And nobody blinks.

Wow, I think that would be such a trip. You know, that same audience are the neighborhoods that I'm afforded access to. Do you follow? What kind of a neighborhood do you live in in Tokyo? I live in a pretty classic little place. It's an apartment building. Everything's vertical.

Vertical communities there. I live up over a shopping mall that has a 24-hour grocery store underneath. That's in the basement. Do you follow? mall that has a 24-hour grocery store underneath, all right? And that's in the basement, you follow? Right. And then there's restaurants and shopping and then all the coffee shops and everything that we have here.

It's really international where I am. Just 10 minutes away by bicycle is way downtown. And that looks like the Star Wars, you know, the bar scene. Right. Where everybody's kind of mixing and matching, you know, 15 different styles of, you know, one person, you know, outer space meets surf 1970s times Ninja Warrior times Dreadlock Holiday meets. They go on and on because they don't have neighborhoods.

They're just picking and choosing from different stores, from different websites. They don't have neighborhoods like here we have, say, North Hollywood for the artists. You have Silver Lake for if you're an artist or whatever. If you are an up-and-coming student in some sense of the word,

you'll stand down near USC or whatever. They don't have places like that. Well, no. Everybody's kind of mishmashed together. So you're not – you can be even more creative. It's not like you're growing up around a whole group of people who are all doing the same thing you're doing. You kind of create yourself in the mirror differently every single day. Now, did you find it hard to make friends there, to have people to have conversations with in English?

I mean, I would think that that would wear on me after a while. Well, yeah, but I don't do a lot of listening anyway. that that would wear on me after a while. Well, yeah, but I don't do a lot of listening anyway. So it's cool to just talk to people that barely speak English and rattle off at them? Oh, yeah. Past tense, who needs it, really, Joe? That's hilarious.

So as I learn, you know. It's almost kind of a hermit-like existence in a certain sense. You can't have it be that very, very easily. I like it because I'm in constant contact with people. I do class with a variety of different teachers, and out of that comes my friends, and this is where we're going to go tonight, and why don't you come visit over here, et cetera. and why don't you come visit over here, et cetera. And that being said, conversation with folks is as fast as you can learn it from their language teacher.

Japanese is heavy lifting. I've learned pretty fair in Spanish. I can get us in trouble and halfway out in Spanish under duress, under spotlights. in Spanish. I can get us in trouble and halfway out in Spanish. Under duress. Under spotlights. But in Japanese, I can get everything done that

I need to do. I can get shopping done. I can go down and do the dry cleaning. I can do the taxi. I can get my way through the movies and the restaurants. So you're fairly fluent now. Enough that I can get my way through the movies and the restaurants. So you're fairly fluent now. Enough that I can translate for me. I'm not quite at the point where I can translate for you.

Can you translate for you if you're watching something on television? Yeah, well, I can tell you the story. I can tell you the plot line of what's going on, who's doing what, and what each guy is and what he represents. When you're watching that, is it like an instantaneous thing or is it like translating after you hear something like are you like recognizing what he's saying like are you thinking about it in japanese if that makes sense it's kind of like listening to somebody who is your own age that you know is a compulsive liar so you're trying to pick pick out exact words that may or may not make sense.

You turn to your friend and go, okay, Bobby, what happened? Well, there's somebody who came over the last night late. Late, okay, and you print that one word. Where's he come from? He's from New York. He's doing two checks.

Two checks, and you print that one. Six pack of beer. Six pack of beer and you print that one. And now you're getting the real story and you're comprising it of all of the other white noise that your friend Bobby may be discerning, you know, dispensing. That's where I'm at in Japanese television now. If I'm watching a sitcom or if I'm watching a movie, then I can tell you what's going on and who's saying what to who, but I can't get it exactly, you know, word for word what's going there. Are you doing some sort of a web show from there?

I've been doing the Roth Show show for the last three four months i think we're on our 10th show and uh we finally just started talking about it that's part of the reason that i'm coming around through the past here i love broadcasting and i love just you know as we're doing now just right shooting the shit on the air beautiful i missed that yeah well what you can do now is probably so much freer than you could do when you were doing terrestrial radio. You did that for a while after Howard Stern, right? A while. He means four and a half months.

It's a while. Yeah, that was a trial. That was heavy lifted. I had said to them initially, folks, let's try some new things here. You know, to just go back into the already set mode of, okay, you're going to need a traffic girl. You're going to need a sports block. You're going to need, you know, morning team kind of approach. I'm really not interested in doing that.

I guess they thought I would get under the wing and then we would progressively reach that point. We never really got under the wing. I love broadcasting. I love talking. But when I got fired, I can see the look over here. My general tone when somebody said to me in Japan, Dave Sonson, you got fired from a big job in radio. I said, would you ever get fired from McDonald's? Was that like a sore spot for you when you got fired?

No. No, are you kidding? What did you ever get fired from? You got to compare notes. Like in high school, dude, that's nothing. I got fired from Burger King and McDonald's. No, their reasoning was that my humor was good, but it was not early morning humor. What does that even mean?

Well, I was doodling around with adult concepts. My thoughts are to replace Stern like that, what they should have done is just with no explanation whatsoever, put a Mexican show on. Full Spanish and not say a word. Fuck you. Who cares? This is what we have on leave it on for a month and let everybody get all their complaining out of the way and then after a month you throw the diamond david lee raw show on and everybody's so happy to hear someone speak english again and they're like listen we got through this with this dark period of turning into a crazy Mexican station in New York City.

You're making clear sense. It didn't make any sense to try to replace Stern. My point is no one could have done it. It was impossible. Even if your show was amazing, they would have never allowed you to replace Stern. You're replacing the greatest guy in the history of radio by far. So anyone who went on after him was sort of like a, you were a,

you were a sacrifice. I looked to try and do something completely different. I had said to them, for example, after a life of danger and intrigue, why would I stop now? We can install a IS lines in a hotel room. We can go up on a roof.

We can go from a basement basement i don't mind waking up at two in the morning and interviewing somebody who just finished his show in las vegas and you know etc why would we why can't we at least start there yeah and that was a big hurdle so you're going to do things through skype as well as do things with people that are in tokyo if you yes exactly and i'm sure there's a lot of people in Tokyo as well, right? Broadcast from different recording studios because everybody's got super modern. Everybody wants to be part of what's happening right now, you know, especially in the economy.

Everybody understands a little more of that promotion, you know, get involved. You might not make a penny right now, but you got your face out there. You got your name, your brand, your studio, your whatever. So people are a lot more flexible to that. And you know what? We crashed and burned. They just couldn't see it. The idea of, you know, that I wasn't going to be in the exact same studio every morning,

that became a real trudge. same studio every morning that became a real trudge and you know getting up at 4 30 in the morning that's bullshit that's the roughest job in all of show business especially for a rock star i mean most of your shows are at night you probably sleep till noon most days wake up feeling great to get up at four instead of that to get up eight hours earlier than that oh just stay awake the whole night well yeah you're you're backing into the truth it's not the getting up it's the having to go to bed at what time the extra four hours that's like some buddhist stuff i just did right there if it wasn't if it wasn't like that you had to be on for four hours, I would say you're better off staying up. Yeah.

You know? Or going to broadcast from Hawaii, guys. Yeah. You get yourself a suite at the Marriott something. Right. And I think you start at midnight or something like that. Yeah. So, you know, you can kind of, you know. That's a good move.

Balance out your thing. And you can do pre-taped stuff for half of it. Yeah, Midnight from Hawaii. Dude, I just figured it all out. The new studio. David Lee Roth just nailed it. The new studio will now be on the big island. I'm going to buy Terrence McKenna's place in Kona.

And you go high speed, low drag. You go with mobile and lethal so that you can put everything in some Pelican cases. And then you can move and you get a – We need to buy Death Squad West-West. West-West. Death Squad West-West. This is Death Squad West right now, but Death Squad West-West will be – You can get yourself with a balcony.

You can tune the room so you can hear things outside. Dude, midnight, man. Come on. Let's just go to Japan. Let's even go west. That's too west. We'll never get a show on the air that way. But traveling, though, even if you hate, especially if you hate where you are,

going boo is way more fun than going yay. If you hate where you are, so you had a particularly bad day of somewhere new, was my thinking, then it's part travel. There's part, you get a little bit of reality, get to live the life of when we go on the road, when we go and travel. Do you know what a great, by the way, what a great travel channel type show it would be? David Lee Roth living in Japan. Do you know how many people would watch that? Do you know how badass that would be? It's pretty colorful.

It's a fucking great idea for a show. Someone should jump on that. Would you do it? Would you do a show showing people what it's like to live in Japan? To be a superstar rock star all of a sudden living in Tokyo, an apartment, taking fucking sword fighting classes? I mean, it's pretty awesome. Yeah, actually. It's a lot better than fucking storage wars, watching people bid on things.

On fake things. The fuck is that? Watching people bid on things. On fake things. The fuck is that? Yeah. You know who my closest friend there, who's my senpai, who's kind of my teacher and mentor there, is? Konishiki.

One of the greatest sumo fighters of all time. Wow. He was, if you get on the Google web here, you'll find him. Konishiki. Konishiki. Kanishiki. He was one of the first outsized Hawaiian to come in and start fighting. This was about 20 summers ago. And his fighting weight was 600 pounds.

Jesus. Yeah. Wait till you see some pictures of him. He's a national hero. He does all kinds of ads for everything, you know, for airplanes and, you know, the 7-Eleven and kids stuff. He has his own show, a television show. Yeah, I remember hearing about him. There you go. How much does he weigh now that he's retired?

Does he lose a lot of weight? He looks like he's about 300. Wow. Yeah. He's still a big, giant dude. Oh, he's the winningest guy ever he stayed when he first got on the plate you know these guys are never supposed to win and uh he went 23 times in a row how crazy is it that you could lose 300 pounds i mean how crazy is it that you could eat like that? That would be glorious, man. Can you imagine anything you want, basically, for breakfast?

Well, they go for like that heaviest, most high-calorie shit they can get in their bodies, right? Well, you not only took me down to the tournament, okay, which is called the Basho, the huge tournament which takes place in the sports arena. This is where we play, the rock and roll bands play. But we went to the gym where all the beginners are working you follow all of all of these farm kids who are like in their early 20s it's think of it like uh special forces live together as a fraternity kind of a thing and that's how these uh they're called rickshe the the wrestlers, start off on that. Even the referees start when they're 15, 16 years old.

And we went and had what they eat. And you know what the trick is to gaining weight, if you really want to be 300, 400, 500 pounds, is don't eat breakfast. Don't eat breakfast. Really? Yep, because your body, after about three days, will figure this out, and it'll slow its metabolism down. So that when you finally do eat lunch, you'll get real tired.

You've got to take a nap. And your body is working real slow. You follow? Uh-huh. So it doesn't burn the food. It doesn't burn it off super quick. And you'll gain weight a lot, lot faster. That's the ticket to growing up like a sumo player.

So they have a strategy to when they eat. They have a strategy to slowing their metabolism down. Correct. They have like an anti-athlete strategy. Yes. I've been on that diet my whole life, by the way. Yes. No, that is their way.

That is the technique. They don't eat until about 12 o'clock. And they eat about 10,000 calories in that one meal. And then they go to sleep. And then they wake up again. And then later on at dinner, about another 10,000 calorie meal. How much health repercussions do those guys suffer from? Huge, huge.

Yeah, you can't escape the cheeseburger, man. But that is the weight gain ticket. If you want to start gaining weight quickly, skip breakfast. Wait until about noon, and then you can eat all that you want. If you want to be a sumo. Yeah, you want to get huge. And some of those cats are huge. Oh, my God.

It's like a wall, a piece of wall. Do you enjoy watching? Is it fun to watch? Oh, man. Well, once you get to know some of the guys, because they're like the wrestlers we would know here. You know, some guys are, for example, when they throw the salt, you dig? That's like to purify the grounds. But there's showbiz involved.

One guy takes it and he throws it, but he doesn't look. It's kind of like a way of saying, screw you to the other wrestler like that, which you're not supposed to do. There's another guy who takes a whole scoop full of salt in his hand and he throws it up in the air and he stares up into it like Walt Disney, staring into the future. And kind of a thing that he does.

And then there's another cat who takes two little pinches. He throws it, walks away, then takes another and he throws it. And then he throws the whole fucking box. And it goes, that's like almost about two pounds of salt. And the referees act really angry and they get really pissed. And the audience is full of ecstatic glee, you know, because he broke the rules, you know. That's hilarious. Oh, yeah.

And there are some guys who are technicians, you know, in terms of fighters. Okay. You know, think like judo. There are other guys who like, like Konischke here was describing, he knew it all from football. He'd been playing football for Hawaiian coaches in Hawaii since he was in grade school. Clearly, you know, clearly a, uh, a kid built like that was playing defensive tackle, defensive guard, defensive, everything from the time he was a toddler, they put him in a football uniform, you know, in grade school.

And, uh, so he learned all of his balance. He learned all of his agility, you know moving side to side lateral movement responding to a coach's you know cue and you know learning plays how to work with a team and etc etc and so you know when he stepped into the ring so to speak he was using football on these guys and he didn't even use with the basic where you put both hands on the ground. You well know that sumo position. The idea in that is that you want to get bulldog low so that you dip down and come up under. Like in a scrum, like in rugby or jiu-jitsu, you want to be the one who gets up under, right? You know, you get to the knees first.

You want to come in as low as you possibly can. And he never bothered to do that, which infuriated everybody. It caused a big stir. Is it legal to start without both hands in the dirt? We don't know. Nobody's ever tried it. And there was crazy. That's so crazy.

Oh, yeah. And there's placards outside and demonstrations about we can't allow outsiders into our national sport, you know, but the national sport is going to pass away unless we have outsiders. You know, it's great show business. So what is his stance? How does he enter? If he doesn't have two hands touching the ground. What does he do? Like a defensive tackle or a guard where you just kind of get down low and you get your wrist on one knee and the middle of your forearm on the other like you're going to come up under with that shoulder.

It's pretty familiar. You know, basic football posture kind of a thing. But in the sumo world, well, is that legal? Aren't you supposed to touch the ground well he did touch the ground but now he's doing the hawaiian lean and now you have kids more importantly all over the country imitating an outsider yeah oh my goodness you know they're doing the hawaiian lean it's sort of like tebow when he gets down on one knee and then these kids in high school, they're imitating a virgin.

It's really similar, right? It's like you don't want your kid. You're like, hey, cut that out, you fucks. Not that guy. Exactly. Exactly. That's not your hero, goddammit. That's a kneeling virgin.

And he was not slated to win right away, which he started doing. Because a lot of these kids who start off in sumo, they're farm kids. And they don't have any real sporting skills. They've seen it on TV. They're just strong. Yeah, big strong. And they'll come down and they'll start living at the stables, like boxing stables. That's what it's called.

Did you ever see a mixed martial arts event in Japan? No, I never have. I've seen a thousand of them, you know, on television. There was a huge one last weekend. Vanderlei Silva just fought this guy Brian Stan last weekend in Japan. You know what? I saw it on the cover of Metropole Magazine, which is one of the magazines that is English spoken. I saw them on the cover. How long were they there? Just for one weekend?

Yeah, it was just one night of fights. But the audience is so interesting. Brian, you've experienced that when you went to the UFC there. They clap. They're so polite. They're very quiet while the fights are going on. And anything technical that happens, like reversal, escape, like anything where a lot of people wouldn't cheer, they're like anything where you progress, like you pass the half guard, he's in the mouth, oh, they get – they're very polite. It's really interesting. Only people yelling, I would like look back to see who was yelling

because there was like only a couple, and you would see, oh, it's just U.S. military dudes. Yeah. A lot of them. You can get us anywhere. We're like, kick his fucking ass! Woo! Japanese people next to him are like, what the fuck, man? Totally.

You're not observing. No, you're describing something that is absolutely accurate. Yeah. Okay? Absolutely accurate. something that is absolutely accurate. Absolutely accurate. I was just on the phone

with Alex Van Halen and talking to him about we're going to be playing at the Tokyo Dome. We're playing at the big arenas there in Japan. I wanted to remind him of exactly what you just described. That in the United States and in

Europe, you have what's like an idling cheer, a scream. Always. It's like a car idling. Yeah. But it idles like a drag racer. Like you depend on it. Yeah. The way you do your spiel, your talk, your punctuation.

Bill Cosby eating pudding. You let him go. You know, when do you now say the next thing that you're going to say, you know? So you're listening with that. And when Americans cheer, it's like a car, I think it's called

blower whine. Right, you hear it. Right. And it goes for a long time. It's called blower whine. Right, you hear it. Right. And it goes for a long time. And if you're waiting to say something next or whatever, you're listening for that. And you're listening for it to hit a certain point volume-wise or duration-wise that you now interrupt now. It's a little bit like a dance.

You follow? Absolutely. And if people are making the long noise, they enjoy themselves. Now. It's a little bit like a dance. You follow? Absolutely. Otherwise, and if people are making the long noise, they enjoy themselves. Great. Let them enjoy themselves. They love hearing their own power. Yes, we are strong. We're wonderful. We're young and skinny.

Whatever the fucking thing is that night. Right. But in Japan, you don't get that. Correct. You get the... Silence. Yes. Yes.

It's sort of like cheering for the ball getting spiked in a volleyball tournament. Wow. And it's quick. Very quick. And I said to Al, you've got to remember, think back, how fast the cheer is here. That we can't depend on that idling scream in the comedy show. That's got to be weird. Where we get it laughing like, I call it Rat Pack style, but it's just where you've made a connection with the audience,

and pretty much no matter what you say, as long as it's delivered in the right tone with the right mood, you're a host. The worst that I can be is you're a host right the worst that i can be on stage is a host the best is a really funny host right or a really smart host they're there to have fun you're there you're there to help them exactly so the worst that the least i can do is be a good host and And that means keep the spirit. Especially if something goes wrong.

Oh my God, the plumbing just exploded. Great! Then everybody's instantly, okay, great, it's an adventure. You know, as opposed to, oh shit! Oh no, that's horrible. Oh my God, I don't want to be here.

This isn't fun. This is now turning into something other. That's up to the host. On a good night, if you get everybody kind of humming and bubbling and well-fed and watered, then pretty much anything you say can be, yeah, it's a little bit funny. And every now and then I hit a moment

when I'm just Sammy Davis Lee Roth. Did you ever do stand-up at all? Have you ever done just straight stand-up? Have you ever tried to do that? Never have. Have you thought of it at all? I don't think I have. I haven't.

I ain't got the nards for it. That's crazy because you kind of do it a little on stage. Yes, just a tiny bit. Enough to sneak up and tap the door and run back. And then immediately hit the music, boys. Hot for teacher. I always have those trap doors built everywhere. Like Felix the freaking cat.

I can draw that door anywhere on thin air and go, look, a song. Forget about that fucking brick I just laid out there. Yeah, you guys don't have that door, see. So all of my greatest respects to the job you have chosen. For me, there's always, it doesn't even have to wind up funny. For me, it doesn't even have to wind up funny right for me it doesn't even have to wind up clever or anything just shut up dave be the host when i first met you at the comedy store was when um you weren't with van halen anymore you were you were on your own then and uh being back is it's got to be a trip i mean you guys were separate for so long they

tried two different lead singers you know i mean the sammy hagar thing a lot of people like that but to me it wasn't van halen it was like this is just a whole nother band that eddie van halen's playing guitar in you can't call this van halen that's crazy because the sound was so different the songs were so different the tone was so different it was like all of a sudden it was like overweight drunk girls music it was like i didn't i didn't like it it was it was you know what i'm saying it it seemed to me to be like a completely different kind of a band. And then they tried it with the extreme guy. What's his name? I'm taking, is that a point you're making?

What is that dude's name? No, his name was the guy that was singing from Extreme. Right? Remember? Yes. Continue. I'll think of it in a second. And then they go from that.

Then somehow or another, you guys get back together again. Well, that's, you know, it's like a football movie. Right, it is. It's kind of crazy. But that's got to be a really weird feeling to see them have this great success with Sammy Hagar, go out into the world, continue touring, and then that doesn't work out, or they stop that,

and then this other guy, and they stop that, and then all of a sudden you're on fucking stage again, and you're Van Halen again, the real Van Halen. Not Van Hagar, the real Van Halen. And the band is booming. Everybody is lucid. Not sober, but lucid. That's all you need, right? In a court of law, I'll settle is lucid not sober but lucid that's all you need right

in a court of law i'll settle for lucid for van halen i myself am lucid for real van halen fans like me when i heard that you were back with them it made me so happy because i enjoy your solo stuff and i i i enjoy some of their music even with with Sammy Hagar but it wasn't the same together you guys were like this crazy mixture of all the right ingredients you know those ingredients are from right around the corner we started

talking about you know I was in the busing program which was all black and Spanish speaking classes for junior high and high school and more importantly the youth club dance every Friday night all black and Spanish-speaking classes for junior high, high school, and more importantly, the youth club dance every Friday night or one Friday per month, and all the celebration, you know, the homecoming class dance, et cetera, for me and my sisters was all black and Spanish-speaking.

When we got graduation, they played Santana on a loop, Samba Patee, over and over and over. The Van Halens went to a school, Pasadena High School, which was walking distance from me, but I had to get on that bus. And there was Gl all Ridgemont High. That was Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin. That was the movie, Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Exactly, exactly that neighborhood.

White people. Exactly. So when we got together, you know, first off, they'd say, look at him. He sparkles like a diamond because, you know, I had suspenders and two-tone shoes and as much brill cream in my hair as I could get to hold, you know. And that's where the Diamond Dave came from, you know. And so when we got together, I said to him, the reason that we're having trouble getting club gigs is it's not girl-friendly. You can't dance to the material, you know.

You can't play Highway Star by Deep Purple. That's not dance music. Anything over about 128 beats a minute, you start spilling out of your drink. Yeah, you ding. So if you look back now, jump ahead to all the Van Halen familiars, the Big 15 or whatever we want to call it. Jump, You Really Got Me, Running with the Devil, Dancing. They're all about 100 to 128 beats a minute.

Coincidence? Perhaps. So you orchestrated it correctly is what you're saying. It was the perfect combination of you getting together with these white people and saying listen there's a lot of folks like to dance hello yes it was a perfect collision course of this it wasn't just that it was it was uh your voice with his music it was perfect you know it's like you guys were an amazing band for a long time when i was in high school my sister's boyfriend had van halen as his license plate i forget how he had it to bring it down to the right number like V and H Y L yeah you know I

don't know how he did it but everybody was a huge Van Halen freak in my high school they were always writing those the VH well you know like a political logo yeah that logo was people would draw that on the back of desks you would find it on lockers. You've lived a crazy, crazy life, man. Well, we have a crazy, crazy audience, and I've used this crazy band as a passport to go out and visit with and to come and be part of. My pop spent the last 25 years of his career, he was a surgeon,

working in the prison system, like San Quentin and Folsom and Pelican Bay and Ivy League, he called it. And he used to joke, and he'd say that if you carry a gun to work regularly, then they know Van Halen. And he meant that on both sides of the bars. and he meant that on both sides of the bars. When a new Van Halen record came out, it was celebrated on both sides of the tier. What was it like to be a superstar before the internet too? Well, that's an interesting case because probably the biggest prayer

before you go on stage these days would be God grant us the powers and the drive and the focus that compelled those before us who did all of this before there was a microphone, before there was a camera taking a picture of what we do. Think about broadcasting. What would have been broadcasting? I would have been on a stage with a guitar, but no microphones, no lights, no candles and no PA system, right? And not so long ago, during Uncle Manny's life, he's still with us. And I'm sure, you know, back in the 1920s and 1930s, you know, they didn't have microphones

and stuff. They didn't have guitar amps etc etc that's a lot of folks don't understand about the the phrase upstage when you say stand up stage of them that means that in modern stages are flat but they used to go they used to like ramp up and he used to have to project out into the audience because you weren't wearing a microphone everybody had to be super quiet and the actor how to talk like this so the whole house could hear them and that's where that fake style of acting came from it's like you had to over project or no one can understand you the upside of not having pa systems you caused me to to remember some good story.

You've heard the term barrel house voice? Yes. Do you never wonder what it's from? It's from a beer hall. It's full of beer barrels and everybody. Somebody's having to stand at the end of that hall and sing over the top of that without a PA system. You get the big barrel house voices, like Tina Turner maybe has a barrel house voice.

Who do we know that has a barrel house voice these days? Anybody particular? You see, that we're not even throwing name after name into the circle here. R. Kelly, perhaps? This guy had barrel house stories. This guy in Barrel House stories. Yeah, you must be proud of that, coming up through these little clubs and making your way that way and having these stories about back in the day when you had no stage and no PA system. Oh, yeah. It's the golden years.

And you would read about that growing up. I didn't make it up. I read about the Beatles moving together and having to live in broom closets in the Reeperbahn, in the red light district of Germany. All right, sold. Did you explain this? Did you have to explain this to the rest of the band? Were they all aware of it as well? I don't recollect if this was one of my sell jobs. There were some things that i had to sell to

the band but uh i i think they were aware that this was part of it their father was a traveling professional musician as well so they'd grown up seeing photos of him in the in the uh in a on a steamship you know with a porthole the circular porthole in the background, and he's having a drink, and he's sitting at the piano, you know. I had grown up seeing, for example, pictures of my pop in the Air Force, you know, with what is that in the background? That's Casablanca. Good enough for me, you know. Wow.

So when you grow up with that kind of a thing, then you sort of know the story. The story is you've got to start off in the beer bars. grow up with that kind of a thing, then you sort of know the story. The story is you got to start off in the beer bars. You got to start off in the basements or whatever. One of the best was right around the corner from here on Van Nuys was the Van Nuys Cruise. And throughout the 70s, and I'm going to say at least half of the 60 was, the cruise was probably four miles long and it would take you over an hour to get from one end of it to the other, okay? And all the bike clubs would park on the, where the gas stations were closed, okay? And it was the classic cruise. It went past a place called the Rock Corporation, which looked a lot like where we're inside

here with kind of a brick facing inside. A lot of bikers and et cetera used it. And this fellow, Ricky Ratchman, who was a VJ for many years with Headbangers Ball. I remember that guy. Yeah. Well, his father owned the bar at the time, okay, and his mother, and they were both in a bike club. And this was a biker's bar, okay, and it was where they had the first wet t-shirt contest. And this was when they were being tried downtown in the L.A. court systems, you know, if you got busted for running wet t-shirt contests, whether it was lewd, public exposure, you

know, the usual collision course of, you know, the mayor versus, you know, whatever. It's probably where the dispensary system is today in terms of the legal collision. Well, it's in a gray zone. Well, it isn't. Well, we have a card. Well, it's the wrong card. It's the right card, but wrong jurisdiction is my same old what episode is this you know um it was in that and we played those wet t-shirt contests and uh you want me to describe fuck yeah okay it was all bikers and um uh but i mean the place held approximately

i'm going to say 400 people it was you know we could pack them in there and they served schlitz malt liquor uh the bowl by the uh pole uh handle do you follow they had it by the draft yeah draft style style yep they would have it draft style. It was the only place that served it like that, okay? And they would say, okay, we're going to have wet t-shirt night tonight. And they would get everybody in there, and then they would illegally lock the doors, okay, throw the bolts on the doors, and pull in a kiddie pool. And with the kids' pool, you know, like where you inflate it you know the big giant donuts like this put it in front of the band the band's stage was about as tall as i'm gonna say a little bit

taller than about four feet waist high i'll say okay and um i would i would uh roll my pants up and stand in the pool and uh interview the girls. And the girls would get into the pool, and everybody was real woozy. These were the days of Quaaludes and Disco Biscuits and whatever else everybody was doing. Nobody knew what rehab was. Rehab was something that Uncle Dwayne got sent to if he was up to a quart and a half a day somewhere in ohio rehab or knew who knew betty ford you heard about betty ford not even we're talking

1975 wow no betty ford clement barely if there was i mean who knew she barely had pubes yeah you know this was 1974 five and six in these this area here area here. And nobody knew that Jesus did that. Everybody thought that everything done in moderation was not a problem. And so everybody did everything at twice the amount of moderation and figured we'd handle the problem later. And it made for really noisy carrying on. We would run the girls through, How are you? My name's Tina. how are you my name is tina where

are you from tina i'm from the valley wow they like to party in the valley don't they hey everybody plays what song would you like to hear well um i'd like to hear free ride al holly from the valley wants to take a free ride and the band would start to play, you know, the song or whatever. And the fellas would step up from behind and they'd pull her T-shirt really tight and then, you know, dump big pitchers of ice cold water on her. And she'd giggle and dance and, you know, carry on and slip and fall in the pool. And there'd be water everywhere, et cetera. And we'd run them through and there would be easily 20 girls. It was never less than just a total line of hot babes wanting to go through. You would think, who would want to do this?

The answer, everybody. It was the cool thing to do. And all the girls would go through and then there'd be a huddle over at the side of the stage, and there'd be some secretive talking and some gesturing and some looking around and then some further gesturing. And then I would make the obligatory announcement that, ladies and gentlemen, the judges are a little intoxicated. Some of the voting slips have been misplaced or mislabeled

and then misplaced, as have several of the judges. And we're going to have to have them all go through one more time! And the band would start playing Smoke on the Water. So we're going to take a break. Don't go away, we'll chase you. That sounds like a hell of a show. And what kind of bars are you doing this in? Well, this was a specific bar.

This was called the Rock Corporation. And it was off of Van Nuys Boulevard, which is kind of right around the corner from where we're broadcasting. Have you been there lately? It's now just car dealerships and they don't have that drive anymore. It's a little more dangerous. I'm sure. Well, I'm sure.

This is a township where we tear out all the trees and name the street after them. So you only did this wet concert at one – you only did this wet t-shirt thing at this one particular location? This was the test zone. Okay. This is where the cops were – this was the Lenny Bruce place. You follow? Right. The cops were. This was the Lenny Bruce place. You follow? The cops were showing up.

They were doing undercover. They were getting the inside view on this and eyewitnessing. And then the whole thing was being tested based on what happened here at that one place. Wow. You follow? I think that would be a hell of a show. Can you imagine if you were there when Van Halen first started out doing fucking wet T-shirt contests? Can you imagine what stories you have?

Oh, it was great stuff. And backstage is when all of our colorful habits started happening. Man, how many times I had to hitchhike home. Went and tried to remember who had gotten the car. to hitchhike home. Try and remember who had gotten the car. When you see yourself and you see all these different guys that have been contemporaries, rock stars before you, but you're still living like you're a single man.

You pack up and go to Japan if you want. You've never sort of reformulated yourself and brought yourself back into mainstream society. You continued just being David Lee Roth. Well, I live in my own little world, but leave a message. You know, I mean, it's kind of interesting how you pulled it off. You know, I mean, it's kind of interesting how you've pulled it off. You know, like you telling the story about moving to Japan, like how many guys get to the point when they're your age that are so unsaddled down and so free that they can just pack up and go to Japan for a year. I got lucky. Yeah. I got lucky in that respect.

It's because it is a commitment. In that respect, it's – because it is a commitment. It's a lot like – I talk about having read early books about – well, then I – first I joined the Merchant Marines and I worked my way up to Alaska and then I had the accident. And so I had to go to work in this bar. And I was working in this bar when this guy comes in with a treasure map and says, does anybody speak Swahili? He didn't know that I was half Swahili. So that's how I wound up in Africa two weeks later. And I just thought it would be fun to be one of those guys. Right.

But have you always been able to do that? You've always been, like, the type of guy that would just pack up and bolt? Or is this something you've sort of cultivated? I think it's something you have to cultivate. Again, that's pretty astute. You got a pretty clear eye there, Joe, is that you can't just be impulsive. Yeah. Because you'll spend your whole time just getting drunk and, you know, waking up.

But you have an eye for the romantic, though. Exactly. You want to paint a more colorful picture. If you're going to be sordid, let's be really sordid. Well, I wouldn't say sordid at all. I would say fascinating. Yes. You know, the idea of packing up and abandoning everything behind and going somewhere, that sounds very appealing to me.

I don't know if I would enjoy it the way you're enjoying it, but the way you're enjoying it sounds really interesting. I try to not just wander. I guess that's what I'm pointing at. I try to make it a full experience so that it's a good story, if nothing else, at the end of the day. You're on an adventure. Yeah. And one of the best things to do is hook up with a team. Get in with a group of people who come from a bunch of different backgrounds and see where that leads you.

Because they're going to have to eat dinner sooner or later. Guaranteed, one of them's an alcoholic. Don't look. I guarantee it. And then just reintegrate yourself into this new social circle. There's a womanizer in there somewhere. Don't look. We'll know.

We'll know. He'll be the one that we ask, where do you go from that? And et cetera, et cetera. And I've had great luck with that. Does that help your songwriting too? Oh, you bet. It must, right? Oh, yeah.

You bet. If the old answer told new is somebody asked me on a show, how long he was making fun of me? How long does it really take to write a song for Van Halen? You know, it can't take that long, really. You know, Dave, how long it really take to write a song for Van Halen? You know, it can't take that long, really. You know, Dave, how long does it take to write a song? And I thought out loud, and I said, you know what? You might have a point. Let's back into the truth here a little bit. If you watch, I'm going to say, 1,500 movies, legitimate movies from beginning to end, and you discuss them.

If you have read, I'm going to say 3,000 magazines. Let's say 3,000 magazines from cover to cover, any kind of magazines. Good. If you've sat in front of television, just generalized television, for another 6,000 hours, it'll take you about 22 minutes. What, you got a pencil? Where's the paper? If you've done all that. Set the clock.

I can do that. I can beat that. I can beat that. How funny is it saying how hard could it be to write a Van Halen song? Like what a silly bitch that guy is. Because the idea that anything just because it has a small amount of words, because it has easily rememberable beat or whatever, the idea that it wouldn't be really hard to fucking create that. And if it wasn't really hard to create that,

wouldn't there be a lot more Van Halens out there? There are a number of sub-Van Halens out there. There's a number of almost Van Halens out there. Who do you think was influenced by you guys the most? Like what band? Oh, I can't go there. It's nothing wrong being influenced you know i don't know it's what is uh what does dave mammett say that uh uh imitation is the sincerest form of stealing is that what he says that's funny that's funny yeah it's um i don't know i i know what fan what influenced van halen the most

and that's a whole cross-section of different kinds of music and different kinds of theater and different kinds of uh show business you know starting long long long ago you can't just imitate one kind of band you can't just imitate one kind of band. You can't just imitate one kind of music. Or it becomes, not even professional wrestlers do that. They update. Look at the way Batman looks, for example, compared to 10 years ago. He looks different. He's updated.

You know it's Batman from across the room. But there's got to be, I'm updating, we'll call it. I don't even call it improvement. You're not going to really improve Batman. You're just going to kind of, you know, change the silhouette a little bit. Sort of like a lot of people feel like Led Zeppelin did, but like a lot of older blues music and, you know, add it to their shit. I don't know what they did to their blues music. I think that's the great battle.

Is that plagiarism? Well, people are saying, is it plagiarism? But it sounds so different. Most of what they did. Some of it does. Some of it sounds like plagiarism. Bill Burr. Let's see.

The Jew in him just came rocking again. My friend Bill Burr sent me a clip. He goes, this broke my heart. He sends me this clip showing Led Zeppelin songs and then all these other people that the Led Zeppelin band apparently got the original music from. Sort of just ganked it, like took chunks of it. got the original music from sort of just ganked it like took chunks of it and well it's interesting when you listen to it back to back because you'll hear um i'm gonna try and think of some lyrics you know uh you'll see it says a blues song and then all they really got from the blues song was a couple of lyrics i am a little red rooster and uh i lay the golden egg and uh that's what the

little red rooster said right and then they'll repeat that a couple of times and they'll say well that's the little red rooster blue song he changed all the music he went and created something else that was very different musically so now you have that question of is that the whole blue song is that a tribute is that a tribute? Is that a tribute? Well, I think he owes some money. If he used the lyrics, if he used the words, great. Pay him some words money. If he changed the music, he changed the music.

He changed Left Behind the Music. Well, you were there for the beginning of that debate. You were there in music for the beginning of the sampling debate. When it all started happening, when rap artists started like mc hammer oh sure and you know vanilla ice used that whole beginning part for under pressure i mean there's so many so many different bands were getting sampled like what was your thought on that when that was all going on i think if you're gonna if you're gonna uh use it uh i don't even think you have to acknowledge. Acknowledge behind the scenes, you can pay me for it.

It doesn't have to have it worn right up on the sleeve that you used my material. Because it's a lot like cooking in the kitchen. There are only so many ingredients. If you're going to mix, you want to try and create something that's unfamiliar, you understand? So if you're going to take a sample of my voice and mix it with a sample of some other people's voices, great. Then you're going to pay us for that. But I don't think there's anything musically wrong with that. But you just think that it's a financial issue.

They owe you a little bit of money from it, but it doesn't bother you. It bothers me from the sense that the songwriting is suffering. When you lit that cigarette, this motherfucker was waiting with his lighter by his cancer stick, waiting like, yes, the green light from Diamond Dave. Come on, cancer.

Suck it. I am the son of Satan, though my duties now are largely ceremonial. I am the son of Satan, though my duties now are largely ceremonial. So back to that. Yeah, I agree with you. I find mashups when they take songs. Like there's 99 Voodoo Child, 99 Problems, and Jimi Hendrix's Voodoo Child.

Sure. It's a great mashup. It sounds really awesome. I think it's great if you're using older, familiar music, and I hear it in hip-hop a lot, and it's cool. Yeah. I'm hearing good stuff. They're picking good little pieces of music. Great.

I'm all for it, because otherwise you're going to just have to learn it on an instrument and serve it back up some way anyways. When you have a song like uh like mc hammer with the the what was it super freak super freak from rick james where he took that how much does that guy have to give up how much does he give up does he give up a flat fee does he have a give a percentage of his sales how many ways to skin the cat it depends it's some people make it a flat fee and say okay i'll give it to you for whatever ten dollars other people say i want a piece of the action and you're taking a chance because who's in charge of monitoring the action

you know the record company is you know is going to remit you go oh i want a little piece of that because that's going to be a popular song but uh somewhere in between you know there's going to be a licensing fee it usually comes in terms of just, you know, you got a, uh, one check for doing the thing. So it's a great way for you having,

uh, older music reinterpreted. I'm all for that. Van Halen music has been reinterpreted 35 different ways, you know, and I'm all for that. Um, I,

I dig all the floor mixes too. I've heard all kinds of dance remixes and stuff as well. So, you know, and I'm all for that. I dig all the floor mixes, too. I've heard all kinds of dance remixes and stuff as well. So, you know, new audiences, new shoes, new cowboy hats. Yeah, nothing wrong with that, right? Oh, no. It's, well, Van Halen's kind of the spiritual guidance, too. Van Halen goes beyond just the musical. We're the patron saints of everything that allegedly happens after midnight.

You know that. Yeah. Allegedly. That's the whole projection, right? You were also around to see the music business radically change because of the internet. That had to be quite a bit of a mindfuck. Because when you guys started, they were selling cassettes. You know, I mean, you guys were albums,

were vinyl albums and cassettes, and the vinyl albums were badass, because you had all the artwork, and then that shrunk to CDs, and then the CDs went away. And can we say how awesome 1984 was on CD and stereo blasting as loud, that beginning sound, like, bam, bam, like... That was amazing. That was one of my first CDs.

What was it like to see this music business really fucking change radically where you can't really sell records anymore? You sell a few off of iTunes, but the numbers, the percentage drop is just staggering.

I think what we're also seeing more than just in terms of numbers, Joe, is that we're seeing how high people are reaching for quality. Because if it's result-oriented, we always say, well, we're just here for the music, we're just here for the labor of love, etc. here for the labor of love, et cetera. But there is a reality behind the scenes that if there's that multi-million dollar ability to sell 20 million records like Saturday Night Fever or one of those Fleetwood Mac records or one of those Eagles records, you know, one of those huge multi-billion selling. Jesus, I just wrote Dark Side of the Moon. huge multi-billion selling jesus i i just i just wrote dark side of the moon i think i'm gonna buy kalua with some of the profits and really go on vacation forever yeah one of those kinds of fortunes you know hey guys i just wrote a song called

stairway to heaven. And I think... Not anymore, right? You know, we're going to have to put in a year and a half, two years of our time doing this. You know, that's what happens. You want to do The Wall. You want to do Tommy. You want to do, you know, one of those kinds of records. Then you go, that's like a three-year commitment.

From the time you go, hey, you want to write some songs? Then you go, that's like a three-year commitment from the time you go, hey, you want to write some songs? To the time you're standing around uncomfortably in a suit and tie collecting, well, I wouldn't be up here for the ninth time tonight with one of these little statues if it wasn't for a lot of other people. That space of time, it's about three years. And it means commit yourself like a blue uniform type of commitment, like ruin your family life more often than not. Like you're a soldier for that song. Completely. You become a soldier in that band.

I'm sure Springsteen's acolytes would tell you that. You know, and all those early, you know, Born to Run and Jungle Land and all those epic things are not born of, you know, yeah, we marched up to the gate and we stormed the gate and won. No, no, no. We had to slog our way for months. Then we camped for months. Then we decided, wrong month. So that kind of a thing is like, and families take a beating and you know well this so why would you do it well first of course the nobility of song and second of course because

you have an opportunity to win the super trisacta trifecta whatever it is race times a $400 million lotto that will generate forever if you create a bridge over troubled water but if you're going to be in that studio it's like going in to a submarine you may well be there really in mind

if not body for three full years and that's before the tour and when that all sort of stopped what was the feeling like in the music business? When it's like all of a sudden electronic downloads are completely taking over. Your companies are getting stripped by illegal downloads. Just stripped. Albums are out instantaneously on BitTorrent the moment they're released.

And more downloads by in terms of how many people are downloading it to how many people are buying it. Far more, far more downloads, right? Well, you're bringing up interesting thoughts and you're causing me to have interesting feelings, ambivalent feelings about all of this because i feel like uh you've come break you've now broken into the bottom of the boat where they're keeping me and you've torn open the door and you have a sword in your hand come rough let us fight for freedom because they discovered i was a traitor

some time ago um you know uh i'm coming also from a time it's a it's a little bit of uh not a prisoner of zenda but uh whatever that that other one is where he's on the island. Coming from a time when Count of Monte Cristo, coming from a time when musicians were either loved or not so loved. Van Halen was not so loved. So today, by the record companies. What? Yep.

And today, if you buy a $10 Van Halen record, I'll make six cents royalty. Oh, my God. Yes. The producer makes more of those first two records than I do. And actually, let me be fair. The subsequent four Van Halen records, I do make eight cents royalty. Wow. Out of a $10 record album there. So when you're telling me the boat is sinking...

So you're like, go fuck yourself. You've killed most of my staff. Really? You're like, I'll be fine. Including the big guy with the wristwatch? The big guy with the wristwatch. You killed him, right? Yeah, okay, okay. I'm prepared to talk was it a dark business was it a dark business of course it was dark business are you kidding it was as

noisy and corrupt as you would ever want it to be but walking into uh negotiations for anybody i don't know that it's any easier today than it ever would be for somebody new. Come on. I write poems for a living and I sing and dance the poems. It's that simple. But you will spend your whole time trying to perfect that craft if you're going to live off of it. market-bearing bonds that equal to prime lending rate of, no, no, it's all carefully hidden away from you anyways. Just the idea that you're going to want to sign your own checks is alien to most people in this business, you know. So we had to learn the hard way and when we talk about how the record business has changed i do miss the epic efforts people used to make a herculean effort when you go into the studio to

really make a contribution to really take the music past where you found it and to really make a million bucks that's a powerful uh that's a powerful energy drink, man. Nicotine-fueled. Ambition and greed times musical whatever. Wow. Do you think that it'll balance out eventually where the bands will now be able to get free promotion on the Internet and then they'll reap most of the profits that come from touring and do you think that eventually that kind of balances out and that what gets distributed on the internet even though

you're not getting profit from it like cds with new bands they'll be able it'll be able to change the sort of the atmosphere and they'll be able to get promotion where they would never be able to get the promotion before just through viral marketing, just through viral friends spreading things that they enjoy. I'm a perfect example of it. I couldn't get a job today in regular terrestrial radio if my life depended on it. I'm difficult to work with. I can't imagine that you'd be difficult to work with. How are you difficult to work with?

We're back. How are you difficult to work with. How are you difficult to work with? We're back. How are you difficult to work with? Well, you're self-describing yourself as difficult. How would you be difficult to work with? This is how I've been labeled. Getting in and out of regular radio is because I don't fit in. Because I had a black sidekick.

Because I play ethnic music loops. I play the opening from Superfly over and over again. Howard Stern has had Robin Quivers forever. It's different. You having a black sidekick was criticized? Oh, yeah. That was a big issue. What?

Who was your sidekick? His name was Animal. He was one of my... He'd done security for Dre and Snoop and all kinds of good characters. He's from Montgomery, Alabama. And we discussed all kinds of pertinent data. There was no stone unturned. We discussed every subject in the news today.

You love talking so much. This seems like a perfect thing for you. Well, what they wanted was, hey, by the time we're at the top of the hour, I'm here for the live. Hey, Tina, what's going on? Well, they're getting sucked out of the cards. I'm here for the top of the hour. I'm here for the live. Hey, Tina, what's going on?

Well, they're getting sucked out of the cars. If I was a smart executive, and I know that's an oxymoron. It's like if I was military intelligence, what I would do is I would say, Dave, what do you want to do? Let me get you a microphone and ready, go. We're going to have to throw some commercials in every now and then. Is that okay? Okay. Other than that, it's on you.

Just completely leave it up to you but if someone tries to change your personality and try to twist around your you know your energy and get you to do something you don't want to do it's going to be a disaster like how they could not see that that would be a disaster like right away is uh that's that's puzzling to me yeah i think they uh they were feeling imperious we had a tony soprano it's who is that what it was they just wanted to get you to listen yeah they had in the corolla was part of this as well he was one of the other faces that had been hired and uh we were all put under the thumb pretty readily. It happened quick. And I don't think anybody survived it, which is telling, out of some 14 different faces and personalities across the country. It was so overmanaged. I mean, Carolla obviously has shown that all he has to do is just be himself.

Now that he's running his own show, it's much more successful than his radio show ever was. Hello. Yeah, it's boom. It's like, let him be him. So now you're doing exactly the same thing. Let you be you. I'm doing the Roth Show. Whatever you want.

And it's all the same stuff. It's, you know, ethnic music, off-cumulatory, left of center humor. And I don't know a whole lot of guests. So it's kind of a monologue, kind of a Mark Twain thing. Listen, Bill Burr, again, my friend Bill, he has money. He calls it the Monday morning podcast. He's a stand-up comedian. He just basically rants about shit.

He just, like, pick up the newspaper and just – and it's fucking great. It's great. It's an hour of just him talking shit, almost no guests. You could do that easily. Well, it also – we're getting to a level now where talking becomes an art form. And art is something as simple as it wasn't created before,

but now that it exists, it forces you to think, forces you to argue, forces you to have some kind of action and re-action kind of thinking. And a lot of folks, when they get to talking on the radio, are afraid of being criticized. They're afraid of losing a constituency, especially when you have morning team radio

and you're doing traditional radio. You don't want to say anything that's going to cause people to argue. And I think that's the first thing that you want to reach for. If you're going to make any kind of contribution, if you say, what is art? Something that forces them to think like, what do you mean? Like that soup can, like that Andy Warhol soup can from a bazillion years ago. Is that art or is that BS? Is that a sales job or is that right? We're going to be here a while. Is that a sales job or is that we're going to be here a while? Get some more of that coffee.

And that's when it becomes art. And what we're doing here, every now and then we hit a moment where the people are listening and people get hooked. And can I even hear that? Am I supposed to hear that? Am I encouraged to think about that? And I think that's a whole new art form happening out there now. that am I supposed to hear that am I encouraged to think about that and I think that that's a whole new art form happening out there now yeah I think one of the interesting things about letting a person be themselves on a television show or on a you know spark up again you fuck look at me you get in the green

light it's uh it's seeing someone you know be able to be themselves for the first time, be able to express themselves with no one's direction, with no one telling you what to say or what to do. That's a rare moment. You don't get that on The Tonight Show. When you talk to David Letterman, I get to see David Lee Roth in these five- to seven-minute bursts where it's so hard to get to know you like for real legit. They're going to get to know you though.

If they listen to your radio show, they listen to the Roth show and they listen to that over and over again for several months. They'll know the real you, which it's pretty sprawling so far. We've covered a variety of subjects. I like campfire telling, you know,

just enough. Like I can share some things probably you didn't know. Like, why does jockeys on FM radio speak like heroin addicts? They don't do that anymore. They gave up. That guy doesn't exist anymore. Remember those guys? Yes.

You know, that was the alternative to hopping and popping and bobbing with the best bet for the boss. Beat at the top of the pop. Smash. Gold. You know, you know. Timely top 40 boss jock hit bound. Yeah, and then there was the strip club DJ type character. All right, we got Nickelback coming up next.

To the stage, Kenny, Kenny. $14 kamikazes. Try to get as many syllables out of it. Lexus to the main stage. Yeah, there's a bunch of those voices that they just use, like the sportscaster voice or the small-town news guy voice. Can you do the sportcaster voice? The sportscaster voice would be like that,

like something from The Simpsons. Mike Tyson enters the ring, 16-0, 206 pounds, 6'3". I've always wondered what it would be like to announce a fight. Does that come by easily for you? It's easy now, yeah, because I've been doing it for so long. It's second nature. But in the beginning, it was a little odd.

It was strange. And so you have to know when to talk, when not to talk, when you're talking too much. You know, and you've got to be really focused on what's happening. How did you learn those things? Did you go back and look at tapes of your call and listen and get critiqued? Yeah, I try to be observant while I'm doing it, but definitely had to go back and listen in the early days. And I'd listen to myself, like, oh, I need to shut the fuck up.

Like, I'm talking too much, you know. Or I was talking too much about one fighter and not enough about another. Or I was missing something. Or, you know, you can get on tangents sometimes. You can get stuck. It really is like sort of a skill. You learn how to do it as time goes on i'll bet it is and are you watching on the tv screen mostly or are you

depends on what the angle is like sometimes i prefer to see it live like right in front of me but sometimes like especially in ground battles like when they're fighting on the ground i have to see an overhead i don't know where the guy's arm. I don't know if he's in jeopardy or if he's defending correctly. I could say what he's doing wrong or what he's doing right. I need to see it on the camera sometimes. Or if the guy's backs are to us. If their backs are to us, I can't see what's happening in front of him. I can't see where he's hitting him.

So I'll look down at a monitor sometimes. It all depends. How many fights have you called? More than a thousand. Really called? More than a thousand. Really? Definitely more than a thousand. Yeah, I've been calling. I started doing post-fight interviews in 1997 for the UFC, but I started doing the commentary in 2002.

So from 2002, 11 years so far. That's amazing. And what one fight really sticks out in your mind? what one fight really sticks out in your mind? What one night really sticks out in your mind? There's no one that really sticks out because so many of them have been insane. The UFC is so fucking exciting. There's so many exciting fights. There's not one that really sticks out.

There's so many of them. It's so many highs, so many tens. What makes a ten? What makes a ten evening? Like when you walk out at the end of the night and you go, wow, that just all gelled. What are the three main ingredients, for example? The holy shit moments. The holy shit moments.

Like when Anderson Silva front kicked Vitor Belfort in the face and knocked him unconscious. You were just like, holy shit. No one had ever landed a front kick to the face ever in a mixed martial arts fight. Like you never saw that. It wasn't a technique. I spent a lot of my childhood trying. Well, it's a staple technique of karate, of taekwondo, of a lot of martial arts incorporate the front kick. It's a very basic kick.

incorporate the front kick it's a very like basic kick but before then we never saw anybody knock a guy out in the ufc with a front kick to the face it never happened there's only been one wheel kick knockout before the ultimate fighter now there's two but before then there had only been one edson barbosa knocked out terry adam with a wheel kick to the face that had never happened in the ufc before but the one that landed was unbelievable. Knocked him unconscious. He fell down like he got shot with a sniper rifle. It was craziness. It was so devastating that now people are throwing wheel kicks left and right.

Like everybody's trying to land them because they realize how deadly they are once they land. So now everybody, people pick up the ball and they're going to start to imitate. Exactly. And you'll start to see the copycat killers in the ring. Yeah. Well, you start to see success with these unorthodox techniques that are really not unorthodox techniques. They're just traditional mixed martial arts techniques that people hadn't incorporated into the octagon yet. What most of the stuff that got by in the early morphing of mixed martial arts was wrestling and the ability to punch on the feet. But then Maury Smith came around and

started showing people high-level kickboxing, and he started leg-kicking guys and knocking guys out. So then they started incorporating kicks, but Maury was a Muay Thai guy, so everybody was throwing these roundhouse kicks, and that's basically it. Then Anderson sort of evolved things even further, and a lot of other fighters did as well. And now you're starting to see, like with Lyoto Machida and a lot of these other karate stylists, you're starting to see all sorts of different karate techniques inside the octagon as well because these guys know all the other stuff, like wrestling. They know how to stand up with wrestling. They know how to get back up to their feet, and they know how to avoid takedowns so now you're seeing all these other

traditional mixed martial arts techniques or traditional martial arts techniques rather that we didn't see for 10 plus years and are these familiar techniques that uh are we going to continue seeing them or are they particular to one guy well there's a few that we haven't seen yet one of them is the axe kick guys have tried it but no one's ever knocked anybody out Are we going to continue seeing them? Or are they particular to one guy? Well, there's a few that we haven't seen yet. One of them is the axe kick. Guys have tried it, but no one's ever knocked anybody out. In kickboxing and in Taekwondo tournaments, there's a lot of knockouts with axe kicks. I've never seen one in the UFC.

An axe kick with a guy with your kind of flexibility, when you used to throw those wild kicks, when you would basically do a split standing up and throw a kick like right over your head, you know the axe kick is you throw the leg up like that and then you come down with the heel. It's a devastating technique if you're flexible enough and you're fast enough. It's like getting hit in the head with a giant bone hammer. I mean it's really a brutal technique. But we haven't seen it in the octagon yet. How come we haven't seen it in the octagon?

The same reason why Anderson Silva's front kick to Vitor Belfort's face was the first time we ever saw it. We just need to see someone pull it off. If one person pulled it off, one guy who really knows how to do it and has confidence in it, we'll see it left and right. It's sort of like the four-minute mile. Once it's broken, then other people will break it. What about the biggest, biggest guys? Who are the two biggest guys now that are fighting in there? Well, that's the funny thing about heavyweights. It doesn't seem that the biggest guys are the two biggest guys now that are fighting in there well the that's a funny thing

about heavyweights it doesn't seem that the biggest guys are the most effective in heavyweights once you get up to 265 pounds that's the heavyweight limit the most effective guys seem to be about 240 like kane velasquez junior dos santos those guys are around 240 when you get bigger than that you just move a little too slow and you don't make up in horsepower what you lose with your having too much muscle mass, having your body have to pump blood through too much body mass, too many cells to feed with oxygen. It seems like there's a point of diminishing returns. And they move slower. It's not as much fun to watch the fight. Yeah. Well, they move slower. They're not as much fun to watch the fight. Yeah.

Well, they move slower. They're easier to hit as well. They're easier to hit. And they can't keep up the pace. Like, a 155-pound fighter, like you see a lightweight in the UFC, they can blitz for five five-minute rounds. Like Benson Henderson, the lightweight champ, that dude can go full clip for five five-minute rounds. He's got that cardio. No heavyweight does.

They just don't. They just don't. They just don't have it. Even Cain Velasquez, who's the most conditioned heavyweight, he'll get more tired in a five-round fight, like when he just won the title back against Junior Dos Santos. He's known for his cardio, but he got noticeably tired in that fight. Even though he dominated and won his title back, he got way more tired than you would ever see like Benson Henderson get.

And it's just a matter of physics. It's just a matter of you have to pump oxygen and blood through. You're dealing with 90 more pounds of tissue than Benson has to deal with. We're talking endurance is probably how much percentage of the winning combination. It's enormous. For every fight that gets out of the round. 80%? For every fight that gets out of the first round, it becomes a bigger and bigger part of the equation.

You don't see any fighters that are successful in the top 10 under 265 pounds that have stamina issues. They never make it. You just can't make it. You can't make it at 170 with stamina issues. George St. Pierre is a cardio machine. 155, Benson Henderson is a cardio machine. 185, Anderson Silva never gets tired.

Anderson Silva got throttled by Chael Sonnen for four and a half rounds and still pulled off a triangle off of his back in the fifth round. I mean, you're talking about a guy with supreme conditioning. And those are the only guys that survive in this day. The field is far too competitive. There's no way to make it unless you have all the bases covered. You'll get a certain distance with just power. If you're like a really explosive guy who can just blitz guys and run after them and crack them,

you'll get a certain distance. But you'll never beat the very best guys because the very best guys will know. All they have to do is run you, just sprint you for the first 45 minutes and if or 45 seconds rather and if you don't if you don't catch them with a shot then your your gas tanks are already empty you're i remember when this was all just starting off and it was all very iffy as to where it could be shown and what cities would allow it to happen and And now what? We've got two women who are fighting? Yeah. And how did this just go?

It was great. It was a great fight, too. It wasn't like she went in there and kicked the girl's ass. Like, the girl almost got her. Liz Karmouche was the opponent. And Liz Karmouche took her back. And, you know, she's a Marine and a lesbian. You know, you're talking about a badass bitch. And she wasn't there to lose.

She was there to win. And she took Ronda Rousey's back and had her in a standing rear naked choke. It was bad. Her face was twisted. Ronda's face was bright purple. A female marine lesbian with a standing rear naked choke. I have that video. You can't travel with that one.

If you go overseas, they arrest you. It sounds great, frankly. It was a wild fight. And how long did the fight go on? You can't travel with that one. If you go overseas, they arrest you. It sounds great, frankly. It was a wild fight. And how long did the fight go on? First round. And Ronda got out of the rear naked choke, got her to the ground, and got her in an armbar. So she's won seven fights, seven first round armbars.

She's a badass bitch, too. It was a great fight. It was incredible. It was beautiful to watch. And where did they have this show? Anaheim. This was in Anaheim. And was it pretty well attended? Oh, yeah. It was sold out. It was craz. It was beautiful to watch. Where did they have this show? This was in Anaheim. And was it pretty well attended? Oh, yeah.

People showed up. It was craziness. Yeah. Excellent. What's this say about the economy? That the economy has fallen apart, but that this is thriving. This is an element of sports and showbiz that is just thriving. Even if the economy is in the toilet, which it most certainly is, there's so many people.

I mean, we're dealing with 20 million people. Only 15,000 can go to this thing. You know, even in a downed economy, you're going to find 15,000 people who can scrape together the cash for such an epic event, especially women who are like really into the UFC. And now all of a sudden they have someone who's like a role model for them. Like, you know how many girls are going to start doing martial arts now because of Ronda Rousey and Liz Karmouche? I'm sure of it.

Fuck yeah. I'm sure of it. It's going to be amazing. You'll start seeing the placards in the storefront windows. Yeah. Starting now, women's classes, women's only classes. Yeah, yeah, no doubt about it. There's going to be a lot more of that.

And now that they realize also you can make a legit living. Like Ronda Rousey, if she's not rich already from that fight, which I'm pretty sure she is. I don't know how much she makes off of pay-per-view and all that jazz. But I'm sure she probably has more money than her wildest dreams right now. And that's the beginning. That girl is a superstar in athletics now. She's doing every possible talk show. She's doing every possible talk show. She's doing every possible magazine interview.

Five years from now, she'll be able to retire and buy herself a fucking country somewhere and have a bunch of little brown dudes wash her feet. She'll be able to do whatever she wants. She can't do any wrong. She's a beast.

Are these gals tested for steroids and whatnot? How far has that come reaching in a Lance Armstrong kind of world? Well, that's a very good point. Her main threat out there is a chick that calls herself Cyborg, and she got popped for steroids. And she looks like a man. She's built like – pull up a picture of Cyborg so you can see a picture of her. Chris Cyborg. She also says that she can't drop down to 135 pounds, which is where Ronda's the champ.

She wants Ronda to come up and fight her at 145 because she weighs even more than that. She cuts weight to get down there. And a lot of people speculate that she just wants to stay on the juice and stay as thick and meaty as possible. Look at the size of this beast. And she's a serious, that's that's cyborg there's a picture of her in the inside the cage it's even scarier um there's a picture of her beating up a chick and she's just swole like a dude and she's very skilled as well it's not just that she's you know uh really physically strong she's also i think she won the physically strong. She's also, I think she won the world championships as a brown belt

in jiu-jitsu. She's a devastating stand-up fighter. Really good kickboxing skill. But are the athletes tested for steroids? Yeah, she didn't pass. She got an F. She looks like a dude and she got

an F. Whoopsies. You know, I don't know how politically incorrect or correct I can be here, but that's kind of how I like it. Yeah. You know? Do you? You like a little chaos in the mix? Yeah, there's some dirt under the fingernails happening. Look at her there. Yeah.

That is some masculine characteristics. That's somebody who's been doing heavy lifting. Yeah, with a dick growing in their panties. I'm spotting penis. I have a good friend who's also a doctor, and he specializes in hormones and hormone therapy and the reactions that people have to certain hormones. and the reactions that people have to certain hormones. And he got on our show and said, there is not a way in the world that a woman gets built like that unless she's taking male hormones.

It just doesn't happen. Yeah, it's got to be. It would have to be. You're talking about ridiculously thick musculature in strange places like the traps and the neck and the shoulders and the arms. You're talking about literally man-sized athlete, a good, strong male athlete's body. Well, this brings up another question then, and this goes into normal boxing. Do they test for steroids, et cetera, in traditional boxing?

Oh, yes, they do. Yeah, people have been caught. Absolutely. Because somebody was just talking about it on the air recently, that if athletes are buffing up all the more and still throwing punches at each other's heads, then the injuries and the damage is going to be considerably more just because everybody's stronger. Everybody's got more wallop. Yeah. Yeah.

That is the big that's the big debate. Also, the ability to keep punching and not get tired. There's other things that are just as dangerous as steroids like EPO. EPO is what Lance Armstrong was using, what all those cyclists use. And what it does is it gives your body an extraordinary amount of red blood cells. It allows you to carry oxygen in a really unnatural manner. And what these guys are doing is they – if they're taking EPO and they're fighting someone, they put a pace on a guy. Like they can go.

They have way more endurance than is like normally physically possible. And they'll put a pace on a guy and then wind up beating the shit out of the guy because the guy can't keep up with their pace. Well, is it because they've trained harder or is it because they're on EPO? Well, it could be both. But the EPO most certainly is a dangerous aspect of fighting. What is EPO exactly? I don't know. Let me pull up what it stands for.

But what it is is, and I have a friend who has used this stuff because he was a former professional cycler. And he said that when he was on a big cycling team, he said they were on the bus, they were on tour. You would hear guys get up in the middle of the night and grab their bike and hear them pull their bike off the bus and go for a ride. They had to because the blood was pooling up in their body. Their body is producing so much red blood cells, you literally have to go out and burn some of it off. He said it was pretty crazy and dangerous stuff.

It's called erythropoietin. Erythropoietin. I'll spell it. E-R-Y-T-H-R-O-P-O-I-E-T-I-N. Erythropoietin. Erythropoietin. Irregardless. So what do they do?

This is something you just take as an injectable and then it creates red blood cells. Yes. I'll leave you. Okay. It's a glycoprotein hormone that controls erythropoiesis or red blood cell production. It's a cytokine protein signaling molecule. The precursors in the bone marrow, and human EPO is a molecular weight of 34,000.

But is this legal for any sport at all? No, it is not. But it wasn't, as far as really recently, tested for in fighting in the UFC. They weren't testing it for the Nevada State Athletic Commission. They weren't testing it for boxers. But then some boxer, I believe it was Sugar Shane Mosley, got caught for it. He got caught for something else, too. It's a stellar crew.

Well, you know, look, these guys, their health is on the line when they're fighting. I mean, you've got to think, if you have a little more endurance, if you have a little more strength, it could keep you from getting knocked out. It could keep you from getting beaten. It could certainly make your odds of success much higher. And so a lot of guys, I think, even though it is cheating, they look at it pragmatically and then they look at the fact that, look, most of these guys are taking things, including Floyd Mayweather, who always is going off about people being on drugs and all these different things. who always is going off about people being on drugs and all these different things. But it turns out he had accidentally ingested some performance-enhancing substance and made some sort of a deal to keep all that quiet. He accidentally ingested that, huh?

Yeah, I'll tell you exactly if you want to know. In a cold medicine, clearly. Well, there's accidental consumption through supplements that you buy like GNC. Sure. A lot of times they actually have supplements that you're buying that actually have steroids in them. Like Brian, on this show, he's reviewed all these dick pills. You know those dick pills that you get at a gas station? Sure.

You see them. A lot of them, a good percentage of them, are actually like either Cialis or Viagra. They buy it in bulk form, and it's actually cheap to sell. And you mix it up with some fucking wacky herbs, and you sell it over the counter in these gas stations that do not give a fuck. These 24-hour gas stations in the middle of nowhere, they'll sell these things, and it's profitable and really effective because they actually do work. Well, they do do that with steroids. Like there have been many supplement companies that have been caught, and it turns out that like athletes took their stuff and then tested positive for steroids,

and then they'll take that stuff and they'll bring it to a lab and they go, yeah, there's steroids in there. Like they have illegally poured steroids into their supplements to make them effective. So Floyd Mayweather, performance-enhancing drug test. Well, that used to happen all the time with Sudafed and this sort of thing, yeah? Yeah, it used to happen with Sudafed. Yeah, Floyd Mayweather got caught. What did he get?

He tested positive three times for PEDs. They don't have listed what he took, but it's hilarious. A lot of those guys are on things, a good high percentage. And if they're not on that, you know what they are on? Almost everyone is taking supplements, whether it's creatine or protein or vitamins or whatever, beta-alanine, whatever like legal stuff, amino acids. And do you see that making a big difference in the ring, for example? Maybe not a big difference, but a difference.

And certainly there's stuff that you can take. Cordyceps mushrooms has a very profound effect on endurance. That's real. That's legit. I've taken that stuff. There's a product called Shroom Tech Sport that my company actually sells that is – it's based on the cordyceps mushroom. There's stuff that you can take that does work.

And how much – how does it register for you? How can you tell that you get a little burst of energy or – Yeah, just tell. Like I normally will be at a certain level of exhaustion to work out, but I'll feel like I have extra energy because of taking this stuff. There's also B12 in it, which has definitely been shown to be effective. So you factor all that stuff in, like B12, which a lot of athletes will take in injectable form before performance because it enhances your energy and your ability to sustain energy. But B12 is legal. So all these things, it becomes a matter of, like,

if you throw in a cocktail of all these legal things that can enhance performance that you're allowed to do, how much of a bump does it give you? Does it give you a 5% bump? It might be a 10% bump. It might. I mean, at what point is it performance enhancing? Well, when you take a steroid and it gets to 50%, is that where everybody draws the line? I don't know. It's going to be a strange day when a regular person is more fit and more capable than professional athletes who are natural because a regular person is going fit and more capable than professional athletes who are natural

because a regular person is going to have gone in for gene therapy the way a girl goes in for a nose job today because that's going to happen. It's just going to. If the human race stays alive, if we don't get hit in the head by a meteor, if we don't blow ourselves up, there's going to come a point in time within the next couple of decades where you're going to be able to change the molecular structure of your body. You're going to be able to reformulate how your body is shaped.

You're going to change your genetics. You're going to change all sorts of aspects of the way your body performs. And regular people are going to be able to get it. People are going to be able to get it just like a regular person now has in their pocket in the cell phone a computer processor that's greater than the computer processor that they used in the Apollo 11 moon launch. We have now. It's like we have nuttiness in our pocket. And we use it for what? Whatever the fuck you want. Like in that 50 years, you know, from 1960, whenever it was, to now, imagine that amount of time going by from now into the future.

I can't imagine a time where we're not doing some sort of crazy genetic experiment. Not particularly from this moment on. Yeah. I can't imagine it. It's got to be happening in secret, too. Yeah. Behind closed doors. There's a conspiracy. Some Planet of the Apes type shit. That's what It's got to be happening in secret too. Yeah. Behind closed doors. There's a conspiracy somewhere. Some Planet of the Apes type shit.

That's what we got to look out for. To make some hybrid human chimpanzee murderers. Like some soylent green shit. Just drop them off in Russia. You know? Yeah, it's possible. Crazy fucks. I mean, you think about what we do if we send troops to another country.

What you're doing is you're guaranteeing that someone over there is going to die, right? You're definitely doing that. If you could train some sort of a chimpanzee that you've created in a laboratory and teach them how to shoot a gun and send them over there and tell them to eat babies and shoot people, you don't think they would do it? Joe, what do you think about that tranny that's trying to fight in the MMA? I was going to bring that up. How did you get from a baby-eating cannibal monkey? When I say babies, I think penis. Well, she calls herself a woman, but I tend to disagree.

And she used to be a man but now she has had she's a transgender which is a official term that means you've gone through it right and uh she wants to be able to fight women in uh in mma i say no fucking way i say if you had a dick at one point in time you also have all the bone structure that comes with having a dick you have bigger hands you have bigger shoulder joints you're a fucking man and there that's her right there that's a man okay you can't have that's i don't care if you don't have a dick yeah that looks like that looks like a guy's carriage there right yeah you can't fight women that's fucking crazy i don't know why she thinks that she's going to be able to do that. If you want to be a woman in the bedroom and you want to play house and all that other shit

and you feel like your body is really a woman's body trapped inside a man's frame and so you've got an operation, that's all good in the hood. But you can't fight chicks. Get the fuck out of here. You're out of your mind. You need to fight men, period. You need to fight men your size because you're a man. You're a man without a dick.

And I don't know what that dude next to you on the left, I don't know what the fuck he's trying to convince himself of. I don't know what he's saying right now. I don't need to hear it. I'm looking at a man with a dress. And you could act as a woman. I will call you a her. I will, uh, but treat, I will call you ma'am. I'll be respectful, but you can't fight women when you have a man's frame period. Women aren't that wide that generates to increase punching power women don't have that sort of muscle structure

i don't know what you're doing i don't know you mean obviously if you're trans operational it means you remove your testicles so your body's not producing testosterone anymore i don't know if you're supplementing testosterone why if you haven't if your body's not producing testosterone why your arm so big what's going on here you know You know, there's a lot of shit going on there. And you can't fight women. No fucking way. Yeah, I agree with that. Apparently she's fighting women. Yeah, that looks like a guy.

That's a guy's carriage there. Well, not only that, she's won two fights by brutal knockout. So she's fighting women. And whose divisions, whose fight game is she participating in? Exactly. There's a variety, isn't there? There's a variety of small companies that are willing to allow a person like this to fight. I say it's fucked up.

You can't fight women. You can't. And just to look at her record, she's crushed two women inside the first round. I mean, she's crushing these girls. What is her weight? 145. She knocked out this chick in 39 seconds with a vicious knee to the head. She looks like she's really in shape there.

Look, she's huge. She's not just huge. She's got a fucking man's face. I mean, you can wear all the lipstick you want. You want to be a woman and you want to take female hormones. want to get a boob job that's all fine i i support your life to live your right to live as a woman what about her fighting uh guys and fight guys yes she has to fight guy it's not first of all she's not really a she she's a transgender uh post-op person so she's supposedly after the operation.

Yeah. The operation doesn't shave down your bone density. It doesn't change. You look at a man's hands and you look at a woman's hands, and they're built different. They're just thicker. They're stronger. Your wrists are thicker.

Your elbows are thicker. Your joints are thicker. Just the mechanical function of punching, a man can do it much harder than a woman can, period. Well, he looks also like he's been doing athletics since he was nothing years old. You don't just start boxing and then that's what you look like. And I got to imagine there's a lot of female fighters out there

who are relatively new to the game within the last five summers. And I support 100 anyone's right to be transgender this is not where it lies with me like i'm not a prejudiced person i don't know what you feel in your body i don't know if you really are a woman trapped in a man's body i support your right to do whatever you want to do go for. If that's what makes you happy, I would not try to stop that at all and I support it 100%. The real issue comes with violent competition with women and the reality of the physical structure of your body. The reality of the physical structure is not fair. You can't say that a 145-pound woman and a 145-pound man are even. That's like saying, uh,

you know, a 30 pound poodle and a 30 pound pit bull are just two dogs. Cause they're not. One of them is distributed. It's mass in a, quite a different way. It's built for quite a different purpose. And men are built for smashing shit.

Women, women are built for getting held down and by the stronger male monkey. And, you know, Women are built for getting held down by the stronger male monkey and women are built for carrying babies and doing work and whatever other non-hyper explosive physical things you would want to do with your body. But they're not built for hyper explosive physical violence. They're just not. They have more dainty frames. Their hands are smaller. And even if they are big, they're not big like a big man is. It's not fair.

And I'm not trying to discriminate against women in any way, shape, or form. And I'm a big supporter of women's fighting. I loved watching that Ronda Rousey-Liz Karmouche fight. But those are actual women. Those are actual women. And as strong as Ronda Rousey looks, she still looks to me like a pretty girl. She's a beautiful girl who happens to be strong. She's a girl.

This is not a girl. Okay? This is a transgender woman. It's a totally different specification. This invites right away some of the usual stuff that haunts this kind of thing, like women's bodybuilding. Right. Or women's boxing, women's fighting, whatever. Or how about some crazy dude who wants to beat the fuck out of chicks so he gets his

dick chopped off? I mean, that's not outside the realm of possibility. There's a lot of suicidal fucks out there. There's a lot of people that are like on the edge anyway. Like getting your dick chopped off, you know you're going to pay attention to me? Okay, I'll chop my dick off. I'll be a girl for a while. There's people out there that are fucking crazy and you can't let them fight girls.

You just can't. I agree. You just can't. I agree. And is she trying to get into the real fight game? Well, yes. She's in the CFA, which is a smaller but legit organization. I've heard of this organization. And I think they actually broadcast on – sometimes they broadcast on cable television.

So you can watch this fight. The CFA is a – they're a legit farm organization, I would say, or a bee organization that has talented fighters, guys that are coming up. And it's a good organization. I just don't agree with the Athletic Commission letting this happen. Is the Athletic Commission letting something happen? I don't know. Either is that or they're doing these things on Indian grounds. If they do them in Indian reservations, which we used to do all the old MMA fights, like the King of the Cage, we used to have to go to watch those at Indian reservation.

We used to go way out in the middle of nowhere. A lot of them even took place outdoors. And those days, you still can see in places that don't have sanctioning, you still can see MMA fights at Indian Reservations that go by really wacky rules. Like you wear shoes and this guy hasn't trained at all and this guy has had 45 fights. Those mismatches and stuff, those can still take place because they don't have athletic commissions. Gotcha. They might have athletic commissions. They also might have a bunch of people that are on steroids and nobody testing.

You don't really know what you're going to get because they're their own sort of sovereign nation. When you're on Indian land, if you're on Native American land, when you're on a reservation, they essentially can make their own athletic commission. Even if it's illegal in California, they were still holding fights on King of the Cage all throughout that illegal time. All of it was being done on Indian reservations. Why on Indian reservations? Just because it's a sovereign state? Yeah. They can do whatever the fuck they want.

That's how they have casinos. Why isn't prostitution legal then on that? I don't think they want that. I don't think they want that. There's not one crazy Indian out there that has a boner? He's got his own hookers. He's got his own stable. Those guys have so much money too.

I mean, but basically what happened was the United States or the founding humans that traveled across the United States when they essentially caused genocide on the North American or Native American Indian population, what they did was they granted them some patches of land, these reservations. They fucked them over. They got smaller and smaller over the years, but some of them still remained into the 20th century, and that's when these guys said,

well, this is our land. We have our own little nation. What about a casino? And yeah, I i guess you could do whatever you want so boom foxwoods all these different places where it was illegal to have casinos got tremendous success just putting casinos on these indian lands i remember yeah so if this chick fights on indian land i guess she can do they could do whatever you want i don't see the Nevada State Athletic Commission allowing a woman to fight a man though even the transgender transgender woman No, well, it's it's so well known that no she's not going to there's a 50 year old guy that is in high school or

In college rather playing women's basketball. He's 50 50 he's like six foot fucking something or another this guy's uh he's six foot six okay and he's 230 pounds he's a giant motherfucker and he's playing competitive basketball in these 18 to 20 year old women so he he's in college. He's 50. He's got a dick hacked off. So he's a woman now. Oh, really? Yes. So he's a transgender woman competing against 18 to 20 year old college girls, actual normal

college girls. And is he beating them? Of course he is. He's fucking enormous. These chicks are like five foot one and shit. He's 6'6", 230 pounds. Is there anything that anybody can say? I don't know.

I don't understand it. I don't know why anybody would ever allow that. When it comes to competitive athletics, that's where you've got to draw the line. You're allowed to wear makeup. You're allowed to say your name is Shirley. You're allowed to do whatever. This is the guy. Look at it.

See? I mean, what the fuck, man? Look at the giant hands on this woman. That's not a woman. That's a nightmare. You sort of sober up and you realize this guy is in your kitchen going, come on, let's go in the bedroom. And you're like, wait a minute. What?

How did I get here? Put your penis inside of my penis. You're like, what's going on? That's a nightmare. And there's another photo of her actually playing basketball with the women. and it's so scary because she's so much bigger than the women that's where there's a reason why women play basketball yeah look at that man that's ridiculous beyond ridiculous there's a reason why women play with women it's because it's a fucking sport and they're the same size. And no woman would ever get this tattoo of

barbed fence with a, what is that, a wolf? It's like a lightning bolt with a shrunken head. What is that? It's like a shrunken head. That barbed wire thing. Yeah, what is that monster face? It looks like a wolf. It's a wolf! It is a wolf, isn't it? No chick's gonna get a wolf and barbed wire right now. What a crazy fuck.

On both arms, it looks like. Yeah, well, two wolves. The third one's on her tits. Yeah. Does she have fake tits? Who allows that? Why would they allow that? Someone at Mission College, you know?

The Mission College is in Fremont, California. I don't know how this is allowed. I don't know how it happened. They call her Gabby. I don't know. And is Gabby winning? Because know how it happened. They call her Gabby. I don't know. And is Gabby winning? Because if Gabby's winning, then you got an issue. It's easier if they're not winning.

Well, before she was Gabby, her name was Robert John Ludwig. Jesus Christ. What the fuck? And not only that, he's fucking 50. Wow. I mean, what a crazy old fuck. Yeah, what's he doing in college? Well, he probably always wanted to be a girl

and always wanted to relive his life as a girl, so he's going back to college. And I don't know if there's like age restrictions for competitive sports in all colleges. I mean, I think it's... Clearly there isn't. I guess not. Clearly there isn't. This school, however this school rocks...

At the age of 50 come on yeah they don't care if you can keep up with the team you used to train at uh benny the jet center in california yes didn't you yeah a number of years ago how do you know that i just started out there when i first came to california but they closed the place down because of the uh i came right after the earthquakes but when the earthquakes after everything settled, there was so much roof damage that that place, when it rained in the winter, just got fucked. And so they had to get out of there. So I was only there for as many months as it took before it started raining around here again. And they realized how bad the damage really was in the roof.

And then they moved to North Hollywood. And I trained there for a little while but it's just outside of my uh my distance where do you train now are you still training yeah I have a disc issue in my back so I haven't been doing any jiu-jitsu for a few months I've just been doing kickboxing I have a bulging disc sure enough and what does that bother you most time more times than not more in jiu-jitsu than anything else I'm able to kick and punch and lift weights do a lot of things but getting my neck yanked on that's when it becomes a problem like when someone is trying to submit me or pull down on my neck it places a lot of pressure and it can pinch the nerves sure enough painful yeah that disc is always the jujitsu key out of there huh that's

the that's what always uh catches up from that art form there discs definitely yeah a lot of guys have disc issues ricardo laborio scared the shit out of me he's a famous jujitsu guy he told me he has seven herniated discs i was like seven how many of them are there yeah and seven of them that are bulging out and pinching against nerves yeah they're pinching and he's walking yep is he in pain is he always in Is he in pain? Is he always in pain? Always in pain. Yeah, he's always in pain. And he doesn't compete anymore either.

He's a trainer. He still rolls with guys, but he's not competing anymore. He was a very high-level Brazilian jiu-jitsu competitor at one point in time and then became the coach, one of the head coaches at American Top Team. But, like, his back is fucked. This guy's – Yeah, how do you even get that fixed? That many discs? I don't think you can. You can, slowly but surely.

There's ways to do it. And one of the things that they're doing now is they're actually replacing the discs with an artificial disc. And they screw it in place. It's like a plastic spacer. I've seen them in person because one of the first guys to ever get it done

to start competing again was a guy named Nate Quarry. And Nate has these spacers where they take out your disc and they screw this thing into the bone. And it's like rigid in place where your disc used to be. And it kind of gives a little. It's made out of like this plastic substance. And is he able to roll? Is he still able to fight? He fought four times with an artificial disc.

Yeah. He's had one artificial disc and I think he has two of his discs in his neck fused. Yeah, it's craziness, man. That's a high price to pay. It's not one guy either. What's scaring the shit out of me is that before I was having back problems, I heard about guys getting injured. I heard about guys getting surgery.

I know Tito Ortiz had two surgeries like that. He has a spacer in his back as well as a fused disc in his neck. But I didn't think about it in terms of like the overall sport until I got my own injury. And then I started asking all sorts of people, like trainers. Do you have any problems with your back? Yeah, I got three herniated discs. Like what? Like everybody has them.

You know, the disc issue is a real issue. It's scary stuff. It is. Numb arms and stuff sure and it's the one ticket that uh very few people do talk about huh yeah it's a problem i think it's a career changer is it you know when your back gets involved yeah i have lower back issues for many years yeah you bet do you do yoga Yeah, but usually that's not the ticket to, you know. Helping you? No?

No. It's usually a matter of strengthening that whole area, that whole wrap around where your hips are and getting good strong muscle and all of that, you know, sit-ups and backups and all in that area there because stretching it is kind of what pops them out. Well, yes and no. The strengthening is very important. You're absolutely right about that. But one thing you can do by stretching and by a lot of yoga exercise is you're sort of

elongating your spine. You can actually help relieve some of the compression that just comes from gravity and poor posture. And you can actually strengthen good posture with a lot of the yoga poses. Yoga has been very helpful for me while I've been going through this. And a good, strong yoga session alleviates a lot of stress in my back. I feel like a lot of tension relaxed. It feels much, much better.

What kind of yoga are you doing? I do a little of that hot yoga. Yeah? Yeah, a little Bikrams. I do a bunch of different kinds. In the room where they turn the heat up a lot? I like that. I do it at home by myself, too.

I have some DVDs that I follow. Very cool. Yeah, stretching is very, very important. You're probably the most flexible rock star in the history of the world. What do you say? Well, I do a lot of it. Before it was yoga, we used to call it stretching. Yeah, who else can throw those crazy kicks?

We used to call it stretching. Yeah, who else can throw those crazy kicks? As a way of life, you know, staring at a little piece of floor and holding the position. Well, when I was a Taekwondo competitor in my high school years and I was a huge Van Halen fan, I always took pride in the fact that David Lee Roth can throw some fucking kicks. There you go. You can throw some legit shit. And then I was like, oh, shit, he trains at the Jet Center.

Like the Jet Center for kickboxers was like back in the day, it was Mecca. Benny Urquidez, at one point in time, was the man when it came to kickboxing in America. I got really lucky in that I always used my celebrity as a passport. To meet people, to get involved in school and learn from those folks. And all the stuff, the people that you're mentioning, I still use their warm-up tips. I still use those training ideas and how I eat and everything. Really, it's been the balance for me. Are you, like, really careful with your diet?

You're obviously fit. I call it a crocodile, like a crocodile. It's mostly birds and whatever kind of greenery comes with it. Occasionally a fish gets in there. But mostly it's chickens and turkeys. A wounded antelope that fucks up and gets too close to the waterhole. Chickens and turkeys and greenery

and whatever falls in with it. Not a meat fan? I love it, but not so much anymore. Got to really watch out. Do you find health-wise there's repercussions to eating meat? Oh, yeah. You bet, man. You can't outrun that cheeseburger.

Okay, cheeseburgers, right. What about grass-fed beef or anything like that? You have to be so careful because the mistake that most of us make is, oh, well, my pants size hasn't changed since junior college, so I'll just continue with the diet. But then your metabolism slows down, and you've got to watch out because you'll be eating a lot of red meat or things that are like whatever, French fries, et cetera, and thinking that because your pant size hasn't changed that you're in front of it, and that ain't the case. You can't outrun it. You've got to balance out what you eat with how much you actually train. Do you ever talk to a nutritionist?

Do you, like, read books on any of that stuff? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I've been through many nutritionists. My sister was a nutritionist for many years. You don't really have to worry too much about red meat. You know, with red meat, worry too much about red meat. With red meat, the real issue with red meat is people that are fat and people that are not exercising and people that are – especially if you're eating a lot of corn-fed meat. There's a lot of fat in corn-fed meat.

But meat itself, as long as it's in moderation, especially grass-fed meat, is actually pretty good for you. I love red meat. Game, especially wild game. The issue with grass-fed meat, like people, well, what's the big deal with grass-fed meat, is actually pretty good for you. I love red meat. Game, especially, wild game. The issue with grass-fed meat, like people, well, what's the big deal with grass-fed? It tastes different. Well, it doesn't just taste different. It's a healthier animal. First of all, animals are not supposed to be eating corn.

Cows are not naturally designed to eat corn. In fact, watch the movie Food, Inc. if you're curious about that. Oh, I think I've seen that. It's terrible. It's terrible for their bodies. And that's what makes them so fucking fat and delicious when you slap them bitches down on a grill. And it's that ribeye I've seen that. performance is far superior to corn-fed meat. You're eating a healthy animal as opposed to a sick animal and it's just gonna be just more nutritious. There's more vitamins in it, there's more nutrients, it's far better for you and it tastes different. It's less fatty so

it's not quite as tender but I like it. I like it more. I prefer like the taste of grass-fed meat and the taste of wild game to fatty corn-fed beef because I know what's going on. That said, every now and then, a little in and out, three by three with some fries. Yeah, but what about like – Double, double. I go three by three. I figure if I'm going to eat in a burger, I'm going to have three patties.

Fuck it. What about though like cholesterol though? Cholesterol is only an issue again. If you're not monitoring it, if you're not watching your diet, if you have some hereditary issues. And if you're not exercising on a regular basis, you've got to create a nuclear blast furnace that everything gets tossed into. And the only way to do that is to put your body in this constant state of recovery. You're constantly breaking it down and constantly recovering it. So your body is constantly in this state where it knows it has to perform athletically.

It has to burn off flesh. It's not going to waste any effort. It's not going to waste any energy, rather. You're going to make sure that when you're taking in nutrients, they get absorbed. As soon as you get sedentary, and then you're eating massive amounts of animal protein, and then your body's just pooling up with fats.

And what's even worse for you honestly is fucking carbohydrates carbohydrates in massive quantities like most people eat them especially like sugars like you're talking about like ice cream and cake and so that stuff is just clogging you it's terrible for you it's it's in fact sugar is like really like a mild toxin it's not good for you in any way, shape, or form. It's not so mild. Yeah. A good wallop of sugar, are you kidding, and some caffeine, and you can get a lot done. But it tastes yummy.

Yeah. I mean, it's hard to get past that. How do we turn it to a nutrition conversation with David Lee Roth? Because I wanted to know, because you're fit and you're energetic, and I wanted to know if you're like, but you're still smoking Marlboros. Yeah. On occasion. Contradiction. What to do? What to do?

Do you find that in Japan it's easier to maintain a healthy diet? Because they have a much less fatty diet over there than we do in America. It's so easy to Stevie wonder it. You don't have to we do in America. It's so easy to Stevie Wonder it. You don't have to look around at all. It's insensitive, I know.

But you put your hand over your eyes and just point. We will be pointing somewhere that is reasonable to eat. Like I said, my diet is basically birds and fish and rice and beans and the clean stuff. In Japan, there's 3,000 variations of that. 3,000 variations of noodle soup. There's 3,000 variations of chicken on a stick. I remember something you said to me at the comedy store. I never forgot. I thought it was so funny.

You were talking about chicks, about groupies, like really hot chicks that were fans, and about how we're living in the Stairmaster era. You're like, these gals are in their 40s, and they look sensational. Nobody ever saw this before. You were like, this ain't your mom's 40. It's true, right? Yes, it is true. It's a different era.

Oh, it's a hugely different era. And in Japan, you know, we were talking about yoga, and women think nothing of going to a Bikram yoga session in the hot box with complete face makeup and complete hairdo, et cetera. In Japan they do that? Totally. The gyms are full. The women get dressed up like they're going to a fashion place.

Wow. 100% of the time. Seems like heaven. Is they trying to hook up? Is that what it is? Trying to put out the signal? I think, first off, in a country where virtually everybody has the same color hair, it's probably a little more difficult, you know, to stand out. Right.

Oh, yeah, that's right. Think about it. Virtually everybody's got a black haircut in there so you know right away you got your work cut out for you a little bit their face paint goes a long way oh hell yeah what if you found out that that's not common practice they're only doing it because they found out david lee ross was taking yoga there well these bitches are like this is the hookup this is this haunts me this is not the the first that I've had to examine this idea. Is it weird being that famous for so long? You're such an easygoing guy.

It's one of the things that impressed me the most when I met you at the comedy store. You are the most normal, regular, down-to-earth guy. If someone didn't know you, they would never know that you're one of the biggest rock stars in the history of music you're a regular guy like the way you're here you didn't come with an entourage you just showed up by yourself like hey what's up you're like you're normal you know that's how the fuck did you maintain that i get the balance the balance is uh you know a lot of what we're talking, like in the martial arts and travel and whatnot, is I'm a beginner. I'm not the boss. I'm not the alpha male.

You follow? When I go to train in a class, I'm not the shot caller at all. And I've always had that. I like people in a general sense being conversant, being able to have conversation, to tell stories and carry on. It's a big part of what I do for a living. You've got to be a people watcher. And if the world is constantly watching you, then everybody alters their behavior. You've got to be able to kind of fit in the way a good reporter might.

You know, thinking like if you were a wartime reporter, you don't want to wear bright colors. You want to just sort of fit in, blend right in, and always be there just a couple inches behind going, you know, I got a couple of questions. If you got a second here, can I ask you about that tank over there? That's a remarkable balance that you've been able to pull that off because most rock stars, when you meet them, they're just so removed from the general public. It makes the conversations a little awkward. It would make it really awkward, I would think, in terms of what do you have that's mutual? What do you know in your life that's mutual?

What are the fascinations? What are your interests? Because that can be pretty uh pretty diverse you gotta have a pretty diverse taste in things yeah but your your whole personality is such a different sort of take on things like i don't know a lot of people that would just go to japan for 10 months like that and how old are you 58 58 years old boom you just fly to to Japan for a fucking year. That's not a lot of dude learning how to sword fight. I mean, it's fucking crazy.

Yeah. It's eccentric to a degree. Single. Not tied down at all. Do whatever the fuck you want to do. Yep. You're like a goddamn Leonard Skinner song. You're like the breeze.

You don't give a fuck. You're just out there. I'm as free as a bird. I mean, like legitimately, man. That's admirable. And you're loving it. Look at you. You can't be happier.

It's not possible to be happier than you. I idle somewhere between not too pissed and somewhat pissed. That's how you idle? No, you're bullshit. You said that earlier. It's like you saying that you're hard to work with. I don't think I'm hard to work with, frankly. No, I'm not hard to work with.

I bet you're hard to change. I bet you fight against someone trying to manipulate or direct you. I remember when we were picking for a jury recently about a year ago, and they were picking for a murder trial over in the Pasadena courthouse. And the fellow says, is there anybody here who isn't going to get themselves disqualified? Is there anybody here who's qualified to try this case? And I was the only one who raised his hand. Really?

Yeah. So, you know, I'm willing to listen. And the guy says, okay, sir. He says, I think I know who you are. He says, would you listen to everybody else's idea behind while you're deliberating on this trial? I said, certainly. He said, but you would try to convince them they were wrong if you had another idea, right? And I said, yes, that's accurate.

And he dismissed me because of that. You're too charismatic. You're too charismatic. You'd manipulate it in your favor. You're the lever. You're the lever on the bench. Certainly not my first time in the Pasadena Courthouse. You know when our first time was?

Alex Van Halen and I had to sue the Mayfield School of the Holy Child of Jesus Incorporated for $125. This was in 1975, I think, 1976. 125. What was that about? Well, it was in a contract. We had played a, a dance and in the one page contract, it said there will be no smoking backstage.

There will be no marijuana consumed. There will be no drinking, et cetera, et cetera. And one of the sisters was nuns at the time claimed that she smelled pot smoke backstage and refused to pass our $125 for the band.

Angry bitch. Was she right? Well, no. There was no pot smoke backstage. So she just made it up? She may have smelled Marlboros. Actually, those were camel filters. But Alex and I went and we bought clip-on ties so we could fool the judge. And we tied our

hair back and we went to small claims court and filed. Did you win? Well, what happened was sat in front of the judge. We sat on one side and on the other side, two sisters, two nuns came in and a family, a father, a mother, and three of the daughters in school uniforms. You know, they played it up hard. And the judge says, who filed here? I said, sir, I did. He said, that's $125. And there was no smoking of anything illegal backstage, whatever.

And he had one of the nuns stand up and she said i refused to pay him because i smelled marijuana smoke and uh the judge says what is your answer to that sir and i stood up and i said sister how do you know what marijuana smoke smells like 125 later paid for the t-shirt yeah how would she know silly bitch did you know that that's what they used to have in those incense things when the That's great. Pay for the t-shirt. Yeah, how would she know? Silly bitch. Did you know that that's what they used to have in those incense things when the priest walks down the aisle? Yes. No.

Yes, absolutely. Yeah, they burn cannabis. Yeah. They used to use cannabis oil. They used to use cannabis oil underneath their religious hats. Yeah, it's common practice. I did not know that. Cannabis was used as a sacrament for a lot of common practice. I did not know that. Cannabis was used as a sacrament for a lot of different religions.

I did not know that. I thought it was like incense or something. Yeah, it is now. Yeah, but there's a lot of evidence that cannabis was used in that way. Calm everybody down. Has Dave Grohl ever contacted you about – there was a rumor going back a couple months ago that if they ever put together Nirvana, that they would want you as the lead singer. Whoa. Did you even hear about this or did they ever even contact you about that?

Well, there's a whole lot of noise backstage going on at these affairs, okay? And what started it was there was a picture of me with the Jonas Brothers at a Christmas party. The rumor got started that I was actually going to be in the Jonas Brothers. I helped to fuel that rumor. Did you? Yes, I did. Did you ever meet Kurt? Were you a fan of Nirvana?

Let's stick with the Jonas Brothers. Oh, snap. No, I did not know the fellas at the time. I've since met Dave, but I don't know the grunge movement so well. But the rumors started backstage at the Henson Recording Studio at a Christmas party, and then a number of people started getting involved in it. Did you spread that rumor at all as well?

I did. I put that on the internet. Who am I to get in the way of a good rumor? Now, if someone wants to watch your show, what is the best way to – is it on iTunes? Yeah, iTunes.com, The Roth Show, DavidLeeRoth.com, the website. You can find us pretty easily here. Yeah, so I'm on DavidLeeRoth.com. What is this?

This photograph, what is that of? It's just the latest photo. That's something from New York City. What is that thing you're standing in? It's actually a table. Somebody built a table by the water it's kind of odd looking it's a dope picture um and your show is also on youtube as well yep so you can how many episodes have you done so far we're up to i think number 11 and

we just passed uh two and a half million downloads so it's time to talk about it powerful beautiful it's off and running yep well uh we'll get some people on it, man. Go now, ladies and gentlemen. Go. Check out DavidLeeRoth.com. Go. Go on iTunes. Subscribe.

Go on YouTube. Subscribe. Listen. Watch. Learn. Take it all in, bitches. You've been blessed. We need to go to Japan and visit.

Okay. Well, you know what? I'll probably go if they have a uh ufc pay-per-view there again the ufc is doing very well in japan so if we do we'll party man i'll bring you down there we'll get some sushi together we'll have a fucking vegetable shindig we'll have a great time eat like crocodiles watch some dudes kick some ass hopefully no dudes with no dicks with beat-up chicks i'll have to eat words. Imagine if I have to call a transgender versus a woman. Just meeting these people

they're going to be pissed. Well, listen, man. I told them I support your right to be that person. I have no problem with you and your choices, but you can't be knocking out chicks 20 seconds. That sounds like what it would be if a guy was fighting a chick. When I hear about a 20 second knockout, yeah, that sounds about right.

You're beating up girls, you fuck. Anyway, powerful David Lee Roth. Thank you very much, sir. Joe, thank you. It's been an honor. This was a blast. We were looking forward to this for weeks. We're so psyched about today,

and it was as good as we could have possibly asked for. Thank you. If you ever want to do it again, man, please, anytime. You tell me. We'll start this bitch up in the middle of the night for you. We'll come down here and crank it over standing david lee roth on twitter david lee roth.com go take it all in you fucks uh thanks to hover for uh sponsoring our show go to hover.com forward slash rogan and get 10 off your domain name registrations. Thanks also to Squarespace.

If you go to squarespace.com forward slash Joe, you can check it all out. And if you use the offer code Joe2, you can get 10% off your first purchase on new accounts. Remember, if you can go there, you try it out. You don't even have to pay for it when you try it out. You can start building a website. If you like it, you decide to purchase, use the offer code Joe2 and get 10% off.

All right. We will see you guys back to – no, this Friday night. Friday. This Friday night with theoretical physicist Dr. Amit Goswami. I hope I'm saying his name right. But he is a fascinating, fascinating man. Goswami, I hope I'm saying his name right, but he is a fascinating, fascinating man. And he's going to talk to us about the nature of reality and matter and string theory. And you're going to want to take notes and you're going to want to be high as fuck.

Okay? We'll see you guys Friday. God bless. And jihad to you all. Thank you.