WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 1034 - David Lee Roth

Episode Date: July 8, 2019

You only need to hear David Lee Roth talk for a few seconds to understand why he is the consummate rock and roll frontman. Diamond Dave takes Marc on a stream of consciousness ride through his past, present, future and whatever else he’s thinking about in the moment. They talk about David’s love of Big Band music, jazz guitar, his Uncle Manny, working as an EMT in the Bronx, and his serendipitous pairing with the Van Halen brothers that created musical perfection and nonstop personal animosity. This episode is sponsored by Present Company with Krista Smith, SimpliSafe, and Stamps.com. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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legalization. It's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative. Lock the gates! and ACAS Creative. What the fuck, buddies? What the fucking ears? What the fucking nuts? What's happening? It's me, Mark Maron. This is my podcast, WTF.

A purveyor of fine podcasts for almost a decade now. That's a large chunk of life right there. A lot of things have happened over the last decade. A lot of things have happened over the last 55 fucking years I've been on this planet, walking in this vessel, doing things with my mouth, talking, you know, hiking. The vessel, the vessel is holding up, doing things with my mouth. That sounds kind of filthy. I meant talking. Been talking for a long time. Making a living at talking.

So, David Lee Roth is on the show today. He came up as a possibility. I said, yes. And then when I bring it up in public and I tweet that David Lee Roth's going to be on the show, it's like, good luck with that. Oh my God. But I was sort of excited. I didn't know what to expect. And I got to be honest with you, I honestly think he's sort of a very brilliant guy. His stream of consciousness, if you kind of keep him moving in the right direction, is kind of inspired. And I was sort of excited. I know that I didn't talk much, and I knew that right at the beginning that this is sort of what he does. But when I dropped things, little pieces

of bait along the way, what sort of unfolded was something that had true moments of brilliance. You don't see that kind of stream of consciousness too often anymore. It's a rare thing in general to watch somebody just go and just kind of just keep following that train, that whatever train their brain is on, just watch it kind of go off. And also, I've been listening to a lot of jazz lately, so there's something that's resonating along those lines with me as well. This sort of pushing the envelope, whatever your creativity is, until you are in a completely different time zone from everybody else. Just to depart, to transcend, to move into the next realm the spiritual realm or whatever realm to find that space for yourself even if people are witnessing it uh it's nice to go out there occasionally if

you're capable of it if you can get out of your vessel apparently uh oh shit oh fuck Oh, fuck. You feel that? Oh, fuck. Haha, kidding. Too soon? Too soon? Oh, God. Oh, no. Oh, God. Sorry. Sorry.

That was making a reference to the earthquakes. Felt like that, though. Didn't it sound like that? Anyways, I wasn't here for them. I was away. I was up north. I do want to tell you that this week, Sword of Trust opens in New York City. The movie I'm in, the Lynn Shelton film, Thursday night in New York City this Thursday the 11th of July there will be a screening and Q&A at the 92nd Street Y in New York City that will be moderated by my dear friend Sam Lipsight starting Friday it's playing at the IFC Center and Landmark 57 with Q&A's Friday and Saturday

night at both theaters and Sunday afternoon at the Landmark. We're still getting those moderators, some exciting people. It's going to be Lynn and me talking with another person in front of you if you come. Next week, the movie opens in Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Berkeley, Washington, D.C., Toronto, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Westchester, New York. Sword of Trust, sweeping the nation. So many S's.

And, of course, you can get my tour dates. I'm going to be in Raleigh soon, I think, is the next big gig. No, actually, I'll be at Just for Laughs in Montreal, Quebec, July 26th. And that's a show, 930 show, the new hour plus. And I'm going to be doing a glow panel the following day up at the festival. And then I'll be at Good Nights in Raleigh, August 1, August 2, August 3. And then heading up to Portland, August 9, August 10. And then Dallas and Austin, Houston, Vancouver, Seattle, Toronto, Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., all to arrive at the Schubert Theater in Boston, Massachusetts on October 12th for my special taping. And then after that peak, I'll down to nashville a little more

relaxed and then over to atlanta very relaxed and then to san francisco completely spent and ready to peel the brain open peel it open fuck it so did you have a good fourth everybody keep their digits everybody eat some good shit some some interesting shit, some pie, some ice cream. To tell your kids not to set things on fire. Did you set anything on fire? Did you decide who you were in relation to explosions? A lot of things happened on the 4th of July. I took a trip up north to Ojai for two nights.

Did not even see fireworks. It wasn't a protest or anything. I don't know. I usually kind of prioritize it somehow. Go over to my buddy Dan's house. Do that. Watch fireworks. It wasn't a protest or anything. I don't know. I usually kind of prioritize it somehow. Go over to my buddy Dan's house, do that, watch fireworks. But this is, you know, I'm in a new world. I'm in new situations.

Like, you know, life has changed since last year. So I went and tried to kind of dig in and do the relaxing, try to enjoy the life thing. You know, that thing, the enjoying the life thing. It was nice. Did some hiking, did some pleasant eating, did some walking around, did some thinking, did some talking, you know, kept it light, kept it relaxing, no fireworks. And I did not feel the earthquakes. The second one I felt a little bit, but not much up there. Fucking earthquakes on top of everything else. Just waiting for the earth to buckle.

Just watching waves of asphalt, waiting for that to happen. I do have it in my past. You know, I don't know if you know this about me, but when I was younger, was younger like 69 71 my dad was in the military and we lived up in Anchorage Alaska and the earth would fucking shake up there and I remember standing in the doorway I never understood that stand in the doorway business like why not just get out of the fucking house but I remember my old man the earth started shaking it wasn't a big one but it was like pretty shaky it happened a couple of times up there we'd stand in the doorway just watching the house rock i don't know what that does to you deep down inside but uh but there is that feeling there's there's one thing you feel

when uh everything around you is shaking and you can hear the deep, the deep grumble of the earth, the shifting plates. One thing you realize is sort of, man, I am small and very vulnerable. The earth can just swallow us up. We're kind of like some sort of, as important as we think we are as a species, we're just kind of a minor rash on the body of the planet Earth. It'll be fine without us. It'll be fine. Most other things will persist. But anyways, David Lee Roth is here.

And, you know, I was in high school. I guess I was a freshman in high school. My freshman year was 77, 78. I remember it, man. I remember being a freshman in high school, I guess I was a freshman in high school. My freshman year was 77, 78. I remember it, man. I remember being a freshman in high school. I remember my sort of shit brown Datsun B210 that I had, a little stick shift car. I remember getting that car. I remember wrecking that car like within a month of having it because I was combing my hair in the rear view mirror. Then I remember wrecking it again because I changed lanes without really paying attention. But I love that car. New Mexico, you could drive when you're 15, so you're out in it.

You're out there driving around with your learner's permit at 14 to nine months, full driver's license at 15, waiting in front of liquor stores to try to get grown people to buy you six packs at 15, and then driving around, going to your McDonald's, going to the other high school's McDonald's, going to that one park we used to hang out, going to see if there's someone else, and maybe people are hanging out the other park. It was just a circle. You just get in your car, get a six pack of beer, drive around to parks and McDonald's parking lots to see if you knew people there. That was the evening. Usually there'd be two to four friends in the car.

And I don't know. Depending on where that night took you, sometimes it would take us to the parking lot of the shopping mall, putting shopping carts in front of my Datsun B210, getting them going about 40 or 50 miles an hour, slamming on the brakes and watch them just destroy themselves and tumble into garbage off a curb. Is there a statute of limitations on that stuff? Because Wenrock Center, I guess I can make a public amends. There might've been a couple of carts. I apologize for that. But that being said, when I'm talking to Dave Lee Roth, I don't have many markers. And as I get older, it seems like these different parts of my life, I believe that I was truly a different person. I don't think I was, but there's some sort of a dissociative thing happening between me and who I was in the past,

even a few years ago. It keeps getting stranger as I get older. But when I really think about high school, you know, and what I was going through in high school and who I was in high school, what I was straddling in high school, you know, I mean, freshman year, that was 78. And that was when Van Halen 1 came out that was also the same year I believe that Dire Straits first album came out and I believe it was probably around that time that Foreigners probably second album came out so we would park in the dirt lot and then we have to walk into the building through the senior lot where they could park and I just remember when van halen one came out like that entire parking lot it seemed

like all the doors were open all the jensen coaxials and triaxles all the the rear dash door planted speakers with power amps everybody was playing eruption into you really got me every it just it changed the entire world, it seemed. But there was no way to avoid Van Halen, man. And not that you necessarily wanted to. You can judge however you want. And oddly, you know, with David Lee, I thought he was kind of a weird, almost too clown-like front man. But you got to love his voice.

There was a spirit to the music, right? And, you know, truth be told, I did go to the Van Halen concert. I believe it was probably at the pit in Albuquerque, the basketball arena. It was the first tour. All I remember about that Van Halen tour, that first tour that I went to go see was during the opening band, a guy who I didn't really like very much, a druggie guy that I knew from one of my classes, came up to me with a pipe and he said, have you ever smoked hash? And I said, nope. I took two big hits of hash. And before Van Yellen even got on the stage, I was passed out on the ground and I think there might've been vomit involved.

Not unlike many high school experiences, there was me, there was some vomit, and then there was the end of the evening. It started out friendly. Hey, we're going to a thing. Next thing I know, I'm being put into a car and someone's like, do you want us to drive you home? I'm being put into a car and someone's like, do you want us to drive you home? So needless to say, I do not remember that Van Halen concert. That did not quite happen for me. Fast forward to another point in my life when I was in New York City, 1989, trying to get a leg up or a leg in or a foot in the door or whatever you want to say doing some stand up and there used to be a club uh one of the the great clubs the village gate great jazz and and

rock venue they did comedy there when i was there was before obviously it closed up but it was a classic venue run by the delugoff family raffy delLugoff was the son of Art DeLugoff, who ran open the place. And Rafi was doing the comedy nights there. And there used to be a guy that used to hang around. This old dude, probably in his 70s or 80s at that time, always with a younger woman, always had, remember, an ascot on. And his name was Manny Roth. And he used to talk about how he was Richard Pryor's first manager and that he had started the Cafe Wah and that he was David Lee Roth's uncle.

Manny Roth, classic old showbiz guy, West Village dude. One of the one of the founders of the scene, the Cafe Wah was David Lee Roth's uncle. Cafe Wah was David Lee Roth's uncle. You know, I walked away from this conversation with David Lee Roth feeling uplifted and feeling like I witnessed some sort of strange, manic, but very sort of focused stream of consciousness work. I walked away from this interview thinking like, that guy's kind of fucking brilliant, man. I mean, not just as a songwriter or a singer, as an entertainer, but as a thinker in some way. So that being said, David Lee Roth is here. He's got a podcast called The Roth Show.

You can get it wherever you get podcasts and it's on YouTube. But this was me having my time. This is me having my time. You know, he has times with other people and he has times on stage. But, you know, once you have somebody like David Lee Roth, who's a river, the rapids, the conversational rapids, you just get on the boat and you see where you go. And this was my ride with David Lee Roth. It's winter and you can get anything you need delivered with Uber Lee Roth. Because that's alcohol, and we deliver that too. Along with your favorite restaurant food, groceries, and other everyday essentials. Order Uber Eats now.

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Yeah, let's go. Travel, for me, is I don't spend my time what used to be the McDonald's salute, where you look into the palm of your hand. Are we on visual here at all? No, no visual. Perfect. We have the flat of the hand, and you look down into your palm, and you point with your index finger, and you move the change around. Then you look at the menu.

Come on, you were a perspiring young artist, too. Then you were a perspiring young artist with a girlfriend, right? And your dinner dates would start moving the change around in your open palm, then looking up at the menu and going, okay, order whatever you want. And then you would change whatever we had according to whatever they got. Yeah, that's right. I thought I was going to get past that, and ultimately I did. Finally, I could show up at McDonald's with any number of people and go,

order anything. Yeah, right. Like this and with impunity. Yeah. But today, we have entire voter blocks of people who are back to the salute, and they use their smartphone. Instead of looking out the window, instead of looking around in the coffee shop, we used to go to the coffee shop.

I used to dream someday I'll be at the left bank of Paris, observing, listening. Go home, put it in prosaic form. Maybe I'll paint a picture. I'll invent a play about it. It'll inform my narrative. Big artistic intent. But you've got to have somebody looking back. There's got to be the interaction, the combustibility.

Yeah. No Eddie, no Dave, no Dave, no Eddie. Right. There's got to be sparks. Well, what about, what does this have to do with travel? You like to travel? Well, yes, I do because I'm plugged in. Yeah.

I'm watching what's going on around me to the point where I'll make the car stop and go, no, the window in back doesn't open. Right. I just went through that in Holland. Really? In Holland? Yes. So you rented a car yes and and and the car back when so modern windows don't open and the stereo is indecipherable

how is holland well holland is a beautiful combination of what's really really old yeah like new york city yeah and what's beyond modern right sure, sure. You know the space between- There's like Ikea buildings there, right? Oh, no, it's beyond that. Yeah. Wait until you see what's beyond Scheffel Airport in Amsterdam. Usually, those spaces in 1960s, 70s airports are as far away as possible. Far away as possible.

Right. Big empty wastelands that you drove through- This one's right in the middle of town? No. You drive from the airport for an hour, there are, it's probably $3 billion worth of the most modern with a sense of humor buildings you have ever seen. Sense of humor how? Oh, big, well, like you've seen the buildings. The cocks, the big cock? No, you've seen the buildings in Midtown. It looks like it's bent, like it has snow on the windows, like somebody twisted the Lego building.

Looks like, well, there's a sense of humor like somebody twisted the Lego building. Looks like blocks. There's a sense of humor that goes into the engineering there. And there's a building that's cracked. It's got to be 30 floors. It's cracked, and there's a building inside. That's funny. Yes. And you start to see this all around Holland because there's a disciplinary sense of humor.

Yeah. I personally grew up with. Now, you came into my house house and you recognize this type of house because I didn't realize it. I think I knew, but you grew up down the street almost. Oh, not almost. What's almost? Metric?

We're back in Holland. Yeah. I could ride my bicycle here and frequently do. Yeah. I make myself, I can go pretty much two and a half hours in any direction, accounting more for coming back in Pasadena in LA. Yeah. Yeah, right. I do you live out here now or do are you in New York? Oh, well, I have a satellite space. We call it a space. Yeah, I think you do you still live in my friend Dove's building?

I did for a while Yeah You're referring to the liberal arts education phase that I never had because I went on the road with Van Halen You never look back Dove Davidoff. Well, it was building right? Tell me his brother. Yeah, tell him where that was liberal arts education phase that I never had because I went on the road with Van Halen. Never looked back. Dove Davidoff. Well, his building, right? Him and his brother. Yeah.

Tell them where that was. New York City. You explained it. Down at Loewy side. Yeah. Love, Loewy and Rivington. So you went through this adolescence late in life after you made a billion dollars and were a rock god.

You're like, I'm going to get gritty. Oh, no. I want to go back to school. I like school. Did you go back to school? I went back. I said, I'm going to be. I said, where can I get the best super emergency med training for a civilian?

My pop always told me emergency fast med. That's the shit. That's where you want to go. What was the first job you ever wanted? First job you ever wanted. Not got, but wanted. That I ever wanted? Yeah.

Astronaut, spaceman. No, i think i wanted to be a photographer well that's interesting because what we do for a living has to resort to the visual a little bit yeah yeah i wanted to be in the peace corps oh really that was the first thing oh yeah because you want to travel you want to help people oh both yeah get her two birds with one arrow sire and we're gonna to feed everybody. Three birds. You're going to save the world. Four. Yeah.

We're going to write some lyrics later when we get home. Five. And then we're going to get free drinks with the story. Six and a half. And then you're going to change careers. Fuck the Peace Corps. I'm singing. Well, they are related.

Yeah. Okay. Sure. If we can illuminate some of the travel everyone together well beyond that i want to be the face of the guy who went out into the territory well what'd you do it where'd you what'd you study study which where when you went in the lower east side uh the lower east side i uh went for emt training and ultimately became badge 327-466 EMT. I was out on probably 200 different calls in the Bronx, North Bronx.

And you were an actual working EMT? Oh, like I said, it's 10 minutes after six in three different languages who saw what happened. How's it going? Are you his brother? Do you speak Chinese it's chinese shit but what what compelled that i mean you didn't need the money you need the experience well do you want to go all the way back well you know i'll go all the way back with you because i knew your uncle kinda which one manny of course and like because I used to do comedy at the Village Gate, and he used to hang out with

his ascot and his younger wife, or a woman that was a lot younger, because he was like 80 when I knew him, or 90. Oh, no, that is still his wife. Manny has just passed over to the other side. Yeah. And he got with that wife. She was some 40 years younger than him, and they were together for almost 40 years yeah but he's sweet guy you know and he you know he used to talk about managing richard prior and that you

were his nephew and that you know and i just like i wonder because he seems to represent sort of older show business i mean what was you what was where'd you start where did you grow up originally before here how'd you were you a new york guy No, Indiana. Pop was Indiana. Mom was Illinois, all right? And when Pop came out of the Air Force, 1950s, 1954. So you're of the Indiana Jews. Yeah, very much rural almost, about an hour and a half north of the Kentucky border. Oh, I know a guy.

My optometrist is a trumpet player, Elliot Kane. Yes. And he's an Indiana guy. That's because there isn't a whole lot of distraction that came out of those eras. You had a whole lot of Europeans that included Jews, but included also Polish and German, you know, so forth. The land was cheap. Norwegian too, right?

Not so much. The land was cheap and education was max. You say that with so much confidence. No Norwegians. Scary, scary smart. And that's why you have the Indiana University and so forth. Sports, pen and sword together. Boom.

Big time reverence for sports that require a lot of strategy. So your dad came out of the Air Force and he moved there? Yeah. And started school, just college on the GI Bill. Not even med school but college started 13 years of warfare in my family yeah and uh the first things that i ever saw warfare well you know my mom thought she was going to marry an optometrist and he was going to be gone for two summers of school right and she was uh loath to find that she came home and her family

she was going to be 13 years of living. He's a doctor? Yeah, he's an eye surgeon. Eye surgeon? Yep. My dad was a bone doctor, orthopedic. Boom. So there's the work ethic.

Yeah, but so you grew up with a doctor. Well, you grew up with somebody who has that heart of the Buddha, hand of the demon, and you need a sense of humor to confuse the two. Now, you know something well has to happen. You may be looking into the face of horror. How do you explain that with that face you have right now? Laugh to win. What do you mean the hand of the devil?

Well, sometimes you have to do something that your patients and your clients may complain about, but you're doing it with the heart of something beatific. I thought he hit you and he smiled when he did it. Well, sometimes that had to happen to me too. Really? So how old were you when you left there? Probably about nine years old. But you remember it.

Oh, vividly. I was everything chasing and being chased. Chasing the cows home and getting chased home by those that possessed the cows and chased off the property by those that own that too. Do you have brothers and sisters? I have two sisters. Are they around? Oh, absolutely.

One of them, they live in Pasadena. Oh, yeah? We're still local there. Uh-huh. That's wild. Okay, so your old man moved. He moved here? Brought the family here.

We moved to Massachusetts, went to the face of family for me was the hospital. What is that? Massachusetts? Mass General. Yeah, Mass General. That's where he did his residency. So you'd go over there and visit him or go make rounds with him? Yeah, and that was dinner.

Yeah. We'd go sit in the station wagon. That's exactly right, because when are we going to see Dad? We've got to go there. Yes. And the sights and sounds of all of that. The smell, dude. Oh, yeah.

The smell of that fucking hospital. This was early 60s, too. It was very different than today. Different smell? Oh, yeah. Like what? We were still Korean War, Vietnam, et cetera. Right.

And technology today, do not take that for granted. Yeah, sure, yeah. And I also learned that strength for skinny little crack wise hyperactive, but without attention deficit syndrome, I have none of that. That the power for me, because I don't have enough to bench press. I can't even say it three times in a row. But you can jump around. You're acrobatic. That's showbiz, man.

I know, dude. And you have to be able to memorize things and you have to have influences and references and be able to deal with emotional content and academic structure and all that horse shit, dude. And you have to be able to memorize things, and you have to have influences and references and be able to deal with emotional content and academic structure and all that horse shit. But you don't need to bench press. I can't. I don't have enough strength to exercise. You don't need to. There's no reason.

Okay. Well, I learned that the real strength in my family was to be able to look into the face of horror when everybody else around you is losing their shiz and go, here's my ambulance voice. Okay, I think you're going to be just fine. I feel better. I believe you. I believe you. That is head.

I'm not going to go all check off on you. Yo! But sometimes all you can do is impart to somebody who doesn't even speak something but Birkenafazo. Yeah. Sort of, I'm from Bamako. Right. What is is that Wolof all you can do is sit close enough that hey whatever happens it's gonna happen to both of us but Mako and Wolof yeah that's well Wolof is the it's the language okay you might you might wind up with

that in the Bronx that's a language well I think you speak it in Niger. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. And where is Burke and Afonso? Turn left. We're there now. It's nice here. Well, in Indiana, you know, in Newcastle at the time, the UR entering was printed on the back of the UR leaving sign. Might have been budgetary. So you're in Massachusetts for how many years? Just his residency?

Yeah, a little bit beyond that. And when it was time for him to start his practice, I was just before Bar Mitzvah. Yeah. Okay. He came and we moved into Altadena, which is, wow, the beginning of the busing program for me. Yeah, it's still the Wild West out there a little bit. Oh, it was the best because I just, you know, we were coming from completely white Anglo-Saxon, I'll call it pale face. That's a polite, funny way of saying white boy.

Yeah. And it was Catholic, and it was really like, think of Niedermeyer and the bad guys in Animal House. Animal House, yeah. That was where you lived in Massachusetts. That's correct, and then that was student housing. We were surrounded. Well, we came out to Alta. Which college?

Jesus. BC or whatever. Don't ask me. All right, you don't know. Okay, moving ahead. Yeah. When she started as, we moved into Alta, dude. Yeah.

And it was black, Spanish-speaking, Chinese, Korean, Armenian. Yeah. It was the best. Yeah. Going over to my pals' and girlfriends' houses was, wow, you never knew what you were going to have for lunch. You never know what accent was going to harass you about your haircut. It was always exciting, though, the lunch. You never knew what accent was going to criticize your shoes.

the lunch you never knew what accent was going to criticize your shoes yeah you never knew what invective and what dialect was going to tell his daughter what are you fucking thinking get out of my house exactly how many times did i hear that in etch a but you didn't get to new york till much later huh oh no we started visiting new york because uncle manny was the one who was putting money for my other uncles to get through medical school. Manny was the breadwinner. Oh, yeah. He hitchhiked, literally drove a bomber over Germany 25 times during World War II, came home. Literally, it's one of those Damon Runyon or Soroyan.

I'm just making the names up too. Flag one if I'm right. And literally hitchhiked himself with a bomber jacket and dungarees. From Indiana? Oh, yeah. To New York City. Yeah. And then borrowed the cash to rent a basement.

That's what the Cafe Wah was. That's what all of the village cafes used to be. On Bleecker Street. Yes. Yeah. No, I think it was McDougal and Minetta. Oh, McDougal, right. Right next to the Comedy Cellar.

It was one. The original Wah is still there, I guess. Oh, it is. Yeah, becauseal and Minetta. Oh, McDougal, right. Right next to the Comedy Cellar. It was one. The original was still there, I guess. Oh, it is. Yeah, because Manny Dorman owns it, right? Didn't he? And they have both. Two Manny's have passed on to the other side. Manny Dwarmer's son now runs the Comedy Cellar.

Sure, yeah. But they have the W.A.W. too, don't they? Oh, keep the legend alive. Yeah, yeah. So, okay, so your uncle, manny roth he rents the the original wah and that was just a basement and he put the floor in on himself okay think of 1950s jazz music non-filter cigarettes yeah yeah it's the 50s so yeah it's the beats and they called themselves the beats i was instructed in this in 1960 yeah by his then wife aunt judy who is still with us she's up north her new name as

of 40 years ago is jai how old is she she's 88 yeah she's probably listening yeah she's a massage very very spiritual yeah oh yeah yeah and prefers purple gauge yeah it's always the lower back it's always the lower back mark It's always the lower back, Mark. That's what they taught me. Yeah, yeah. That's where it's at. Yep. Okay, so he opens that place, and you're going to visit him. Oh, during the summers?

Because when the parents want to get rid of me, I was a noisy, colorful, acoustically. That doesn't add up, David. I was. You were a noisy, colorful, acoustically. But I was applied. I do not have attention deficit syndrome. I'm angry. I had to wear those shoes with the bar between them.

You know, I had the bowed legs, flat feet, whatever. They had shoes with a bar between them? Yeah, yeah. This is very common in the 50s. To straighten them out? Yep. Straighten them out? And you had to sleep with those.

Oh, wow. So, you know, I've seen, I just saw a movie about somebody in French prison and they pulled the bar and undo their feet. And I thought, well, that's familiar. Yeah. Oh, yeah and uh it was the first years of my childhood well I had no real contact with the outside at all except the magazines television why did oh because you couldn't walk yeah so what was the condition well just flat feet rickets something yeah in that area this was not unfamiliar at the time sure wasn. It wasn't polio or anything. Nope. My other sister had cable braces, same thing. Oh, really? Like gum. And once I got out of those,

we decided we will never land. Hover at best. When I sleep, I hover. You can slide a magazine between me and the mattress, but I have no problem sitting and reading a paperback all the way through sure i learned the strength of patience very early on under protest sure because you're locked up yep your feet were bound so you'd go up to new york and see uncle manny yep and you go hang out the wall oh yeah and i would sit in the back and it was no different than what happens at the comedy how old were you oh starting at nine no kidding yeah my Aunt Judy, who was, she wafted. Yeah.

Never walked. Yeah. She flew? Waft. Yeah. Floated. She was gorgeous. Yeah.

I'm doing a gorgeous voice. Yeah. Now I'm going to make a pain in the face. And I always wondered why Woody Allen and Bill Cosby, no shit, I now know since having talked to Manny in his 90s, why Bill and Woody were always fixtures because they were comics. And I would say, who are those guys and why are they always here? And Manny would always whisper to me because of your Aunt Judy and all of her girlfriends.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. There was larceny. Did he run comics? Did Manny have comics on stage? He had everything. He had poetry. He had theater. One act. I'll call it flash theater he's a 50 so it's like crazy right everyone's trying all kinds of shit jimmy hendrick started the why thing he auditioned for uncle

manny who sat in a chair alone in this tiny little floor in front of it and said the same thing that he told bob dylan and these are very well-known stories okay he said the same thing that he told Bob Dylan. And these are very well-known stories. Okay. He said the same thing. I think you're amazing. You may want to think about that last name. Really? Oh, really?

It was Manny who said to Bob. To Bob Zimmerman or Dylan? Zimmerman. Yeah. You may want to think about that. And number two, I know you need a place to stay. And he made an announcement on stage. He said, we have an amazing new folk singer here.

His name's Bob. And he needs a place to stay and hooked him up with his first apartment. No kidding. Oh, yeah. She was, well, she's a grandma now. I'm probably listening. So that must have been an amazing sort of like a mind-blowing thing when you're nine or ten to be taking that shit in. Well, it's an environment that was, quote, bohemian.

And it came on the heels of really extreme formatted music. Yeah. The other side of this is that my mentors, the people who really exemplified and who were the bosses in terms of managed real music, reading, writing, transposing. If you want to go into showbiz, that's what you're going to learn to do. And who are these mentors? Peter and Pearl Zukofsky, again, transferred over the other side not long ago.

First and second chair clarinet, the L.A. Philharmonic. Yeah. Okay. And the first people that... Are you really interested in this? Yeah. Okay. And the first people that, are you really interested in this? Yeah. Okay. It's a little bit shadowy for today's tone, but I'm kind of proud of it.

Do it. And it's a formative training that I have that a lot of folks didn't get. And you may just be relieved, okay. When you were here in Altadena, you got it. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And even prior to that, okay. Yeah. And it comes like this first off if you uh today if your six-year-old wins a race or does well at little league or ballet

you nod up and down okay like that was great yes that was amazing right if they don't do well at something you shake your head no you know they didn't do their homework so they didn't uh get the grade they want you shake your head and go no you didn't do good okay you might do that i grew up with the opposite yeah okay it's if you if you do amazing my instructors would shake their head no and go i don't believe it yeah it's got to be a mistake okay you cheated and if you how'd you do this if you face planted okay literally watching that smile and said did i not fucking tell you yeah did i not the fucking tell you this rock kid's no good how many games do you have to lose before mr chess spectacular genius learns for me and this is in music training oh you bet and what were you playing oh i was playing

saxophone and reeds clarinet yeah and i had to learn to read write transpose play uh play solos etc um my closest to pop heroes were the two fellas of the boys over at disney who wrote all the jungle book yeah this kind of merryary how'd you know them uh just through the movies and more importantly all of the musicians who played in those orchestras and bands were all european immigrants okay and they all shopped at one specific music store which was out in boyle heights philippes and that's where you bought your reeds and your music and your pens and your ink and you're a kid oh well i this point. I had Leonard Bernstein on the wall. And then I had, come on, the chess kid.

Bobby Fischer? Bobby Fischer and Bobby Dillon. Two Bobs and a Lenny. Later on, Jimi Hendrix got up there. And then, you know, there were others that folded in. My first singing, it's curious because when we work, it's like a kitchen. When we work, they play. When they sleep, we play.

So you wanted to be a classical musician. Well, here's what we learned. Yeah. How to really read and write to the point where you go with feeling. I was given the energies to do and learn, be flexible with feeling. I was given the energies, you know, to do and learn, be flexible with everything. But I grew up with fear instead of admonition, right? Instead of support and advancement. I grew up with, you know, the general joke when I was in grade school is the reason Indian kids have the dot on their head is their parents saying someday you will be somebody and you will make this family proud right do your homework yeah and i have a mark on my head

from my parents of them going if you fuck this up you will destroy me you will destroy this family it will embarrass us all it's similar the more, it's almost vicious. My first singing teacher had two numbers on his forearm. One was his camp number and the other was his orchestra number. And as a punk kid, I once asked him in front of the class, I said, so what happens if you didn't sing good? And he was very explicit. He said, if you didn't sing good, you went up the chimneys. I think of that every single time I sing, every single time I get ready to sing, every time my inner child goes, fuck it, you don't need to sing. Don't worry about it. You'll sing fine. I remember that. And I remember, I think it was Ricky Weiss or whatever. Jesus, we were 13, 12 years old.

Sang to him. No, I remember him saying to Weiss or whatever, geez, we were 13, 12 years old, saying to him, no, I remember him saying to me more than once, Mr. Roth, if you can't find it within yourself to sing on behalf of those who went up the chimneys with a song in their hearts, sing so you don't go up the chimneys. Really? Oh, yeah.

And that's where that fire for Run With The Devil, how long are we going to dance? We're going to dance the night away. Hey, how about these words? Let's jump. Okay. They're all verbs. Think about that.

All right. We're going to run with the devil. Are we talking about love? No, we ain't talking about love. And by the way, do you jog? No, I run. Who do you run with? The devil.

So this all falls under the never forget rubric. Well, it's part of. It's the DNA. Okay. This is clearly a cerebral environment. There are some places I go where we open with hush current.

And that's about where far as we go. Right. And here, you want to look under the hood this this is what powers it so it was the the complete uh yeah that does sound more like a harley or a tiger a mixture it was a hybrid yeah well like tiger harley like siegfried said they're right don't forget to feed the tiger but you so come out of that history of sort of Jewish exceptionalism that put a sort of premium on education and working your balls off because you had to work harder. Wow. You bet.

Just like the Beatles. Yeah, yeah. Just like the big band guys. I want to do 19 nights in a row, all crammed onto a bus. I want it to look like a train scene from Some Like It Hot, when the laundry is in between the berths and you're stacked three high like Das Boot. I want it to be like that. And I want people tuning up and I want the brass guys to be arguing and gambling and

telling lies. And I want the manager to be a complete thief. I want to fall in love with one of the dancing girls and you did all of those things multiple times your honor allegedly so so when when when did you move out of the reeds and the sax and the and the reading the music and singing choral pieces into rock and roll. Oh, no. There's a transitional phase there, which was big band noise and not big band like you know it. Who's your big band guys? Who do you like?

Well, let me describe them. Artie Shaw. No, no, no. Because a lot of our audience doesn't really know even who the guy in Zeppelin is anymore. So let's- No, my audiences are middle-aged people that are mildly disgruntled they're they're right on top of this okay but let me i have a poetic go ahead let me use it go ahead all right instead of individuals because you might not know arty's

tone you might not know his compatriots or his colleagues tone and said well what did arty even play okay nevertheless i came up in here, and big band meant battle of the bands. Yeah. That was tough guy shit. Are you kidding? Playing Philharmonic, pronouncing, if you didn't pronounce Schuppen,

you had to do fucking scales for a half an hour. If you didn't pronounce it correctly. Schuppen, Howard? Schuppen. Oh, Schuppen. I want to start hearing scales. You got to pronounce it like a Dutchman. Chopin.

Chopin. Yeah. Okay? Like this. You fuck that up, you do scales, just like people do push-ups. Right. Okay. Big band.

Man, okay. Because we never identified with the pale faces. Yeah. Remember, I lived amongst black, Spanish-speaking, me and Cindy Yamazaki, who was the Japanese girl good at math. Yeah. Here we go. So, Benny Goodman, who looked a lot like our teachers,

with the wire rim glasses and, you know, the suit and the tie and everything, would be big band versus Chick Webb. All black band. Roseland Ballroom. What school was this? What school was this? Hold it on. Racist, racist, racist, racist.

And they'd pick four of the same songs. A lot of people don't know this. Four of the same songs. Yeah. You get to do your arrangement. We get to do ours. Battle of the same songs a lot of people don't know four of the same songs yeah you get to do your arrangement we get to do ours battle of the bands and they'd be doing the stomp out there open till seven in the morning when they are when they serve breakfast new york city and this is in the 30s this is in the 40s yeah okay yeah black band always wins yeah hello yeah right benny would

come out with pale face brothers going going, Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday. Happy birthday. Happy birthday. Happy birthday. And Chick Webb, who was four feet tall, a little guy on the drums. Right. Black. Yeah.

Come out and go, one, two, three, four. Happy birthday. Happy birthday. Happy birthday. Who's having a birthday? You. Happy birthday. All knees and elbows and eyebrows. Yeah. And they win every fucking time and we wanted to

be black yeah still do yeah and where were you going to school where you learned this shit ah geez altadena elementary altadena junior high was elliott then john muir high school yeah we're in the back of outlook magazine yeah and that's where you had the music teacher who was in the camp oh yeah we had tutors and you know we were that music is taught to us as kids not because they expected uh musicians or you know prima ballerinas for the for the kids but it's it's a right of how to learn get stuff done so where was the uh where who gave you the swing education was that manny or just from no no no these were teachers oh they told you i had a whole series of teachers back when barry and grassmuke was before it was the pasadena star news over on colorado boulevard

they had all the piano rooms yeah with european teachers waiting to beat your kids up right musically whatever yeah and you were taking in music lessons. We started off when we didn't have enough money to actually buy a saxophone. We had a rental. So this is where you got all that deep love and the deep core of all that old-timey music that you kind of move through Van Halen every once in a while.

Yep, and it's also the passion. We call it emotional content. Once you've mastered the craft of it, that'll probably take you about 10, 20,000 hours. Then we can begin to create, it's a composite of the things you've heard before. And the guy with the most tricks is going to be the most inventive and last the longest. So start listening, start with A, let me know when you get to Z, see you in decades and you're gonna come and you go i did it and i go what category you'll say country western i go see it folk music in 10 now keep in mind pop told me jim thorpe yeah one of the great arguably one

of the greatest uh athletes ever he was an indian you know and uh he was a put upon indian come from the indian institutes and so forth he kept himself know, and he was a put upon Indian coming from the Indian institutes and so forth. He kept himself tough. Even after he was a success, he slept on the floor once a week. Yeah. I, I think I was 15. I went and I slept on the floor every night for a week. Came back, told pop at dinner. I said, I just slept on the floor for a week. He didn't even look. He said, yeah, use a pillow. Oh a pillow oh tough old man hey we ain't talking about love that'll get you through your 19 nights in a row yeah did you have one nighters when you're doing humor when you're doing stand-up rock and roll rock and roll in between the songs is arguably

as important as the songs let's's ask Mr. Springsteen. Yeah, you know, he's right here, Mark. He just did Broadway. That's all the in-between songs. In fact, if I go see him on Broadway, I'll see the songs at the Garden. Did you see them? I did not, but I saw it on television.

I saw it on the Netflix. Oh, you bet. He's a good guy. You talk to him? I have never, but he talks to me yeah wow through the music mom god apple pie dr duffy says he apple pie kill me now it's mom god and bruce springsteen that's believable so so here you did you get bar mitzvah oh yeah here was one of my first starring roles man i had a nice high falsetto what was the temple like highland park or Altadena?

Altadena. Yeah. Yep. And that was my beginning for Boy Scouts as well. All right? And my Boy Scout troop, all of our outdoor scouts, we had one guy who had been in Korea, like a gunnery sergeant or something like that. Yeah.

That was a whole lot. I talked to the back of his head for years, okay? It was never ended.. I talked to the back of his head for years, okay? It was never ended. All I know is the back of his head. No such thing as bad weather, just bad gear. Shut up, Roth. Really? I now quote him.

And the rest, I remember our average camping trips had six dads. Yeah. And they were all college professors, lawyer dr epstein physicist has a building named after him and nuclear hydraulics or whatever yeah over at caltech yeah dr weissman and dr run etc most boy scout dads around the campfire would discuss field craft not tying and these days perhaps climate change and conservancy and we would discuss how to get into college. Yeah. Well, yeah, there's also, apparently there's a lot of bad shit going on in the Boy Scouts too,

but it doesn't sound like you had that experience. No, I never had that. No, are you kidding? It was almost like college prep. You had to be good at whatever you did. And I was told them early on, I was going to be a pirate and a musician. Now, you took up guitar too, right? Oh, oh yeah i could flat pick my way through two hours of music yeah my uncle man he told me before i was a teenager if you can play two hours of music

on a guitar you'll always be able to get dinner right i can go to any restaurant now and i can play some serious django reinhardt jazz for two hours yeah that's what i specified to my new york city guitar teacher about 15 years ago jeff jeff is probably listening jeff how are you is he around oh i can play uh you know how woody allen always has jango reinhardt kind of music jazz it's a floating gypsy kind of jazz you know and then i said i sit out that's the kind of music i know and then and i said doodling i said that's the kind of music i want to learn like sean penn played in sweet low down i can play almost the entire album i love that movie it's bucky pizzarelli played the guitars on that those big fat body

dreamy kind of almost tropical sound and uh i can do a whole happy hour for you and i'll play for dinner and drinks hold on top shelf drinks okay you, and I'll play for dinner and drinks. Hold on. Top shelf drinks. Okay, you got it. Did you play on Ice Cream Man? Yeah, that's me. Yeah. Flat picking on open tuning, all right? Yeah.

That kind of music was ingrained in our DNA, and we were unaware that we were learning from 75-year-old African-American sharecropper, wanderer, minstrel, traveling musician. Sure. That was just cool stuff. Yeah. African-American sharecropper, wanderer, minstrel, traveling musician. That was just cool stuff. There was a huge blues explosion in the 60s when, yes, Jimi Hendrix and the Grateful Dead and the Doors were all happening, but at the exact same time, B.B. King, Albert King. There were a lot of kings. You had John Hammond downtown, too.

Oh, everybody. John Lee Hooker came back around, and Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters. And all of Keith Richards' current record collection. Yeah. And so he took some of that. He said, now that's a shame, Mark. And everything else he saw it. Yeah.

And I don't know that you may disagree. But you were probably like, what, 10 then? Oh, I don't know. I'm still kind of in that transitional. So when you're out here in Pasadena, when do you start singing? Like with a band with a band oh first time when i think i was well there is a phase yeah in your life when you're going to have all of your friends have either if they're spanish-speaking quinceanera

they're coming out at about 12 13 or they're having bar mitzvah parties. Every bar mitzvah party, every Spanish-speaking anniversary or wedding would have a combo. And this is how Van Halen started. Jesus Christ, we played so many times at Mijares Mexican Restaurant in the parking lot there for every event that happened. As Van Halen? Oh, yeah. We were named something else, but the band was called Mammoth at the time. And you were doing covers? Oh, yeah. Nothing nothing but covers nobody wanted to dance to original essay yeah

i started singing at all of those parties when i was 11 and 12 because there was always a combo and i knew that they could play gloria and they could play hang on sloopy yeah guaranteed so you know plus if you fucked up the lyrics nobody called you on it because who knows what the lyrics are. Better than my street. Better than love before midnight. Just give it a place. How long?

This is where I want to be all night long. So you were just showing up at parties or was with Mammoth? Oh, no. This was before Mammoth. Yeah. You said, where was your first- Just around the neighborhood. Around the neighborhood.

Oh, I made sure I was invited everywhere. Yeah. If there was a combo at the Altadena Country Club for any wedding, bar mitzvah, coming out party, anything at all. Right there when you were just laying that shit down, I mean, who were the singers that you were like, I'm going to be like that guy. I'm going to sing like that guy. Oh, people would frequently go, wait a minute,

you grew up in the 70s. Van Halen was a 70s band, so you must be imitating, quote unquote, poetically, the guy in the Stones, the guy in the Who, the guy in the Queen, the guy in Zeppelin. No, I never sound like that. Exactly. I'm a soul growler.

Right. When I sing to keep me from going up the chimneys. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, does that sound like bar mitzvah music? No. No, that's Wilson Pickett.

Right. Man, that's James Brown. Yeah. You dig? Wilson Pickett. That's both sides of Sam and Dave. Yeah. Right?

And that's my natural grind right there. Yeah, yeah. and day yeah right and that's my natural grind right yeah yeah and then baby when i talk it's kindness joy love and happiness yeah yeah and that's my dj voice right omnipotent dj it has nothing to do hey pale face well that's what sort of that's what separated you because you were able to do that was the foundation of it but then then you somehow, you know, you were able to, instead of like having the soul closure, you would just sort of launch it way out. You know what I mean? Like it didn't, it wasn't all staccato like that because you were singing like hard rock music.

Yeah. So it had a little variation to it, but that is the difference. I never really put that together. Yes. The middle part is what you're hearing because Eddie Van Halen was rock solid. I'm doing the devil sign with my hand. It's the horns. I mean, rock solid.

He was Jeff Spicoli in that neighborhood, not himself. The Van Halen brothers had the exact same European back-of-the-hand training in music that I did. Oh, yeah. By their old man, right? Oh, I knew Leonon van halen very very well and i got along with him better than i did the brothers yeah ever always we would sit up very late because you knew the shit like you knew all the music stuff oh and he would tell me about what

it was like to play in the bands during world war ii and you know where was he from in the to holland yeah holland's yeah and And he married an Indonesian woman. Uh-huh. Uh-oh, I'm sleeping for a little poop show. I grew up around it my whole adult life. Has had that accent and those food smells. Yeah. So far, Mrs. Van Halen was, she grew up very rural in Indonesia, like literally barefoot

by the streams. Man, she was literate. She read her body weight in books per year, and she was the tough face. Ooh, she was the face. Just like my mom. My mom was the disciplinarian. Bad Dave came from Sybil Roth, not Nate. Yeah.

Nate was a healer. He came to help you. Yeah. My mom wouldn't even turn. I'd show up with a painting, and I'd go, what do you think? Ready for the fridge? She wouldn't even turn and go go did you clean up your brushes and now i have that in my voice never enough never enough oh there is such a thing as perfection yeah there is perfection sure the uh romanian invasion in

1972-73 olga corbett and Nadia Kameech, Perfect Tens. I saw it. You can watch it. Go ahead and tube it. That's perfect. Let's pick music. Okay, the last 40 seconds of Jungleland. Down in jungle.

Perfect. And it swirls up and your whole everything, everything changes. Man, it starts snowing. Do you follow? The windows drop. The top flies off of your car. You got the same haircut I used to in 82, and the wind is blowing in your beer can, and the sides come off of your car, and drive off that road and you keep on going that's

perfect yeah it's there you can have it yeah and you only get that by insistent identifying of the flaw okay oh yeah because when you're tiger woods it's down to that last it's a 40,000 hour man the guy who flew me here from home i could tell that's a 40,000 hour man. The guy who flew me here from home, I can tell that's a 40,000 hour man. Okay. Not 10,000. That's digestible for pale faces. What about a Van Halen tune or an album? Would you hit that moment? Oh, absolutely. What are your songs? The songs all happen in a surgical kind of environment in terms of you just throw yourself at it. There's a difference between Dave jumped off the top of the 10-story building and David Lee Roth threw himself off of a building. I throw myself. And I learned that my first job out of, now that you know what

I wanted to be in Peace Corps, my first job that I really had, because I didn't know if music was going to swing it for me, so I thought medical, science, arts in some sense. Well, you come from it. Oh, yeah. And I had the stomach for it, okay, because I accompanied Pop to the emergency room. I couldn't wait. I did, too. I used to go to my dad. You know, and he did give me, so I wouldn't ride a motorcycle, he'd show me one of his patients in traction.

It's in your humor. Yeah. It's in your work now it's in your eyes yeah yeah and it gives you it gives you paste puts you in history keeps you there yeah paste you right in there that kind of character that kind of background because if you don't have it there's no tails to your coin yeah y'all cheating yeah you're trying to swindle somebody. There's no tails to your coin. Where'd you get that one? I just made it up for you. Laugh in the mic. I got to drink my drink.

Yeah. So, okay. So when you first met the Van Halen brothers, how old were you? Clearly not old enough. We never got along. We hated each other, but we were thrown together. It was one of those movies. How does thrown together. It was one of those movies. How did that happen?

It's one of those movies. Come on, don't think of the plots. We hate each other, but wait a minute. You had to be. Now the hostile force is the adversary is unemployment and having to get a real job. Oh, my God. We'd rather work seven times harder and seven times longer for a third to pay than a real job. So what were you like, 15?

Yes. Right. We'd just gotten our driver's license and our parents wisely all, you know, in both households were turning and going, you know, in several accidents. Now you have to think about the future because you are going to be politely asked to not live here anymore at some point in your near future. For me, my mom threw me out when i was second week of senior high school that seems harsh well i didn't grow up in a happy environment think about the music yeah and the sense of humor yeah that i have oh yeah um about six weeks i may do okay and then ultimately a few months down the road, I moved in with my pop for a while.

Oh, they were split up? I stayed in school. Uh-huh. I stayed in school, and I kept on. And I came home to get my clothes, and there was another kid living in my bedroom. Really? Oh, I knew him. And he looked exactly like me.

Same haircut, same everything, same size, same height, same everything. But he had a job? Well, he was living in my bedroom and his clothes were mixed in with mine. It's a little bit Twilight Zone, but I'm explaining a little DNA. You can psychoanalyze this over strong, great way. Who was that guy? Oh, he was just a local kid. Why was he in your house?

Well, in my world, in my mom's world, it made sense. Was he paying? No. And I remember turning around and, you know, I left all my clothes. I left everything and it gave me a strength of patience maybe to face what I had coming up in the future, make and do. I've been living out of a suitcase ever since. Yeah, but who was that guy? why was he living in their house? Well,

you're going to have to psychoanalyze that one. Okay. Um, so when did you guys, what was the, what was the, uh, the,

when you started hanging out with the Van Halen guys, they were in a band and you were in another band or you, you, we were, we were, we were crosstown adversaries and we hated each other with a vengeance. My material was simpler, like, B. Goode or simpler Stones songs, but really colorful, lots of really interaction with the audience. And in the 70s, you had David Bowie.

You had Freddie. You had The Who. You had The Stones, arguably at their peak of the visuals. Elton John alone. Right. Oh, my God. Just that in terms of British music hall of the visuals. Elton John alone. Right. Oh, my God. Just that in terms of British music hall influence? Yeah.

Whammo. We had that in spades. The Van Halen's head craft. Yeah. Man, did they have artisanal, super small batch scotch craft. You take a sip of that, you go, whoa, somebody put a thousand hours into that one shot. Yeah, yeah. And you were absolutely accurate.

Together was combustibleible but if you go ask nitro what do you really think of glycerin a little bland transparent put them together boom yeah so you guys are always at each other's throats all the way up to the last phone call yeah really and is from that we never we the the wrinkle is there any love there david oh we love to scrap are you kidding that's how you expressed oh come on you put one of the brothers put any one of the brothers in a room like myself you can put me in a room naked you come back for some reason there's conflict yeah what was it usually oh contesting was how it's like a kitchen. Yeah.

Come on. Out front in a restaurant, it's very good. Right, right, right. Ah, the wine, the flavor. And in the back, it's punk rock. No, no, it's not. What are you fucking doing? Oh, you sit here.

Fuck my soup up. You are shit. You are shit. And it's a Balkan accent versus a French accent with fire and burns and flames. Let's go back out front. And they're fighting and boiling water because the hot water just broke and the thing exploded. But you can't let them know. And that was Van Halen.

So what we saw was the front of the restaurant. Oh, you bet. And you guys were having a ball. And I'm going to use a technical term now. Okay, a technical showbiz stagecraft term. Perhaps you know it. It's called tits and pits. You raise your hands up, and that's what you look for.

All the way out to the 100-yard line. I want to see your tits and your pits. Hands up. Oh, there you go. And it was tits and pits up front. Half the audience, audience women are you kidding in hard rock whoa because you could dance to our shit yeah now you begin to see the symmetry right when we started playing in clubs they couldn't figure out why can't you play all of uh

one side of tommy note for note perfectly and not get a job at a dance club. And I came up Diamond Dave. The nickname came early because I had high-waisted pants, suspenders, two-tone shoes with Cuban heels from A Meals over on Colorado. Yeah. In Old Town, okay? And I sparkled like a diamond. Yeah. And I was very authoritative, you know? I was a little rock star even back then.

Yeah. You dig? And I was like, well, clearly you're not getting jobs at the five sets of nightclubs because your shit ain't girl-friendly, white boy. What does he mean? Fucking A, bro. Remember their, you know, their boxer shorts in corduroys, wide whale corduroys with desert boots. Yeah.

They perked your hair down the middle. Right. Ridgemont high. Yeah. The Van Halens had that voter block and my shit was Al Green coming on here on Soul Train right after this. I'm a dunk or an alias. So you got both sides covered.

Oh, yeah. And it was a collision, and every chorus in Van Halen is Four Tops or Five Temptations or Smokey and the Miracles or, or, or or or or but the riffs are pure slam dunk lead with your face boom and van halen's been places with our faces you wouldn't go with a loaded pistol yeah even that sense of humor right yeah kind of downtown yeah back and forth back and forth back and back and forth, and always contested, always under protest, always under threat of Brazilian jiu-jitsu, always in our version of debate was proximity,

volume, and repetition, repetition, repetition. And out of those sparks came every popular Van Halen song you can imagine. Yeah. We took the beating because we was winning. We paid the cost to be the beating because we was winning we paid the cost to be the boss and after i don't know 10 years on a tour bus with the van halen brothers shit you could do to me yeah i bet so so so the so there was always that sort of innate conflict

of personality but it made it all made sense it was not innate. It was right up here. Really? And it was a volunteered aspect of music that didn't come from self-trained. And you were writing almost all the lyrics, right? I wrote all the lyrics. I wrote the titles. I wrote the melodies, more importantly. You don't have to be able to speak English to know what I'm singing about. Right.

So all six, seven albums, you're at each other's throats. You bet. Right. So all six, seven albums, you're at each other's throats. You bet. It's when you start to lose the lines in your stomach and you puff up and become relaxed. I'm not Jimmy Buffett. Neither are the Van Halens. The Van Halens, full disclosure, this is a fun interview. There's a lot of stuff I don't usually talk about. Van Halen's mother was Indonesian. Yeah. Her father was Dutch.

Right. That's miscegenation in the 1950s in the United States. That's the equivalent of a black man marrying a white sorority girl in Tennessee or Rutherford, Mississippi in 1958. I brought this up during some press interviews in Holland recently to some fellows who were old enough to remember those days and everybody looks away and everybody doesn't make eye contact because that's apartheid it was a big deal and those homeboys grew up in a horrifying racist environment to where they actually had to leave the country that kind of shit now you're hearing conflict you know how you get a perfectly crafty they started in holland the van helen guys were born in Holland? Nijmegen. Yeah. And that's outside the big city.

Their father was a traveling musician. In the days when you make less than nothing, you owe, you owe, you owe again. Right. And he was married to an Indonesian lady, which is whoa. Right. And the brothers, like, what's your favorite Cher song?

Cher song, half-breed. And how many times did they hear that? Then they came to America and did not speak English as a first language in the early 60s. Yeah. Wow. So that kind of sparking, that kind of stuff, that runs deep. Sure, man. Right?

Sure, man. You want a finely crafted Japanese samurai sword? It comes from the hottest flame, and there's a lot of burns and missing fingers amongst the grandmasters. Right. So you got the Jew never good enough, and they had the half-breed bullying. Yep. And together, we have just been complaining and accusing and threatening entire voter blocks in generations i personally was sexually inappropriate with an entire generation musically primarily

out of all the records as like before we talk about your records out of all the van halen records which is the one that you like look at and go, fucking, that was a fucking record, man. It was how it was made. When you learn a guitar chord, okay, every single time you play it again in the rest of your life, you'll think about who you learned it from or where you were sitting and when you learned it. If you get a tattoo, you don't usually look at the tattoo later in life and think of the ethereal meaning. Well, this was granddad. Granddad was actually a Schreiner. So the little star, you don't think of that.

You think of where you got the tattoo and who the person was. I remember the guy who showed me that Chuck Berry riff. Bingo. And you'll always think of it like that. When you make a record, for me, it is that. Where did we make it? Yeah yeah where did we create the sound yeah where did what was the experience that happened then as opposed to listening later because i don't listen later either yeah i don't check uh you hear it on the radio i

and even i'll even by then uh i switch okay i don't read my own reviews. I remember when the first one came out. I was a sophomore in high school, and it changed the universe. Yes, it did. And that was our ambition. We wanted to lead a generational prison break. We had a composite hybrid. We were already complaining and accusing the entire society of our injustices, and we were barely out of our teenage years.

And we had something musically that others didn't have we maintain that which is craft craftsmanship yeah sharp sharp perfect corners perfect edges think like carpentry perfect edges perfect corners dutch edges think of it like a tactical team moving through the dark with automatic weapons perfect turns on those corners perfect to the wall. Perfect corners again. No visit. Just perfect, perfect, perfect because you can't obtain it.

Down, in. Back to you, Mark. Jungle. Perfect. And that swirl. And here comes butterflies and Care Bears and fucking bubble gum bubbles. And it smells like fucking champagne in here.

Yeah. So that was it. So you both had this different type of compulsive craft work ethic. It was completely antithetical to everything that we were using as our mentors, our teachers, our role models. No slop. Well, the slop is something that you study and that it is then implied or inculcated, okay? And that, I'll use the Japanese version of it,

waba-sabi. Yeah. W-A-B-I dash S-A-B-I. Yeah. There are books written about this. Yeah. There are entire orders of Buddhist monks who dedicate their life to this.

That, which is perfect because it's imperfect. Yeah. Like your's imperfect. Yeah. Like your favorite jeans. Sure. Like the cat that's missing a piece of his tail or a piece of his ear. Yeah, yeah. Remember the dog in Little Rascals? He had an ill-formed circle around his eyes.

Yeah, yeah. That's wabasabi. Yeah. Old buildings, old things that are just starting to fall apart a little bit, very Wabasabi. You want the guitar that has the scratch marks and the finger indents. Here's where the cigarette burned the headstock. Right. That's Wabasabi.

And then you learn to combine the two. How do you mix? Now I sound like Leonard Bernstein lecturing at Harvard. How do we mix craft with that kind of a dignity? Because that's a human dignity. It is imperfect. There are no straight lines. There are no perfect corners in life. Oh, Jesus. Metaphysics before happy hour? Back to you, Mark. Well, the thing is, is that the way you guys did it is that with your craft and with your ability to kind of ride that edge in that soul kind of way. And Eddie, you know, I think still out of all of the sort of like, you know, hyper, you know, what's the word I want?

Perfectionist noodlers. He's still got the most tasty licks. So, right. The tasty licks came from a background in melody. Right. The Tasty Licks came from a background in melody. When, for example, Yip Harburg and Harold Arlen had both passed over to the other side. You may not recognize those names, but you recognize their work.

For example, Somewhere Over the Rainbow. Yeah. Those two wrote it. Sure. And they were burying Yip, who did the melodies and the lyrics. That's my job. Yeah. And Harold Arlen's wife was there at the burial.

This was in Beverlyly hills very well known story fellow from the hollywood reporter said to harold arlen's uh wife you know so your husband wrote somewhere over the rainbow your harburg's wife they were burying yep the lyricist said no no she said my husband wrote somewhere over the rainbow her husband wrote, somewhere over the rainbow. Her husband wrote, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. So that's it. Boom. That's how wives do it.

Straight razor wives. What a straight razor wide straight razor woman so when when what so what what exactly what made it what made it stop what made van halen stop the first time when you when you guys when you left when we were young we did as young was when we were a little smarter we did as smarter and you know what i feel a little bit at odds with, let's go back a gazillion years. And why did it fracture? Because all rock bands fracture. 85.

Yeah. It turns into diverse interests. People have the friction of time. And that friction is family. That friction is sometimes it's partying. But I don't know if that's what really separated up Van Halen. Creative differences? Beyond that, there were always creative differences.

We never got along. It was a beautiful, beautiful pairing of, you've seen cowboy movies where the guys are always sabotaging each other, but they're working to somehow accomplish something. And I think you'll see that in a lot of popular bands. Sure. They may have gotten through it.

Yeah. But I don't know that we ever really grew up and became gentrified. Now, that may not be a good thing, but part of me remained 23 years old forever. Yeah. I wake up in the morning and I do two things. First thing I do is I look in the mirror and go, boom, James Bolton. And the second thing is I think to myself, man, you're young, you're good looking, got your life in front of you. What you need with a real job or some version of that and never

went past that, perhaps in a positive sense, certainly in terms of my sense of humor or my values. Things and stuff never really meant much to me, nor did I develop the taste. It was experiences and I'll trade my celebrity, like I'll use it like a passport, but to meet people like yourself, you just picked up the phone and says, Hey, let's do it. Let's call them up. And these days, David Lee Roth is calling you're going to take the call. Yeah. And you're going to listen. You're going to take the call. Yeah. And you're going to listen. You're going to smile and you're going to go, you must be kidding. And then you look to everybody else and go, David fucking, the David Lee Roth.

He's called me. He's coming over. You're kidding. You're fucking, whatever it is, it's going to be colorful. But it's wild that all your records did well too, man. You're writing those songs and you're coming up with all that different shit. Now, was it like throughout all fucking six of your albums you know playing with every goddamn ace in the business i mean did you did you ever like go like well it's not van halen no it's van halen's perfect and i always sensed that perfect would get back together yeah? It's perfect in its imperfection. Think of your most ruined jeans that barely are jeans.

They're your favorite because of the holes in them. Yeah. We're talking about metaphysics or some sort of psychoanalytical thing. Your favorite part of your cowboy boots is the fucked up part. Yeah, yeah. You got to fuck them up. I want the pit bull terrier with the ear missing named Mel. Yeah.

I want Mel with crossed eyes like he's a little bit crazy. And I want Mel's tongue to be way too long or way too small. And I want Mel to have a look like I'd rather fucking die than not follow you anywhere. And if I go, but does that depend on where we're going? And you go, what do you mean going? At least we're together. That kind of imperfection, we knew we valued that yeah and we still have it it's in the music and it makes the music more popular than ever but do you guys can you can you sit down with the with the fellas and you know have dinner and stuff nope

nope not even close not even close this is not a golf club, okay? This is a little closer to the Wild Bunch, all right? There is a fury and an antagonism, and what comes out of that is when it's good, oh, man, that's retina bursting. That'll change your fucking haircut. When was the last time you went on tour? About four summers ago, and we finished up here a couple of nights at the Hollywood Bowl.

How was it? Some of the best shows we've ever done. I remember walking off that deck twice in a row going, oh, yeah, that was some of the best of my career. And we were at each other all throughout the tour. Constant. You've got to be mature enough to understand. All right?

What are you saying when you're at each other? I mean, what's being said? What the fuck are you thinking? Are you out of... What are you fucking thinking? Are you out of your fucking mind? I'm going to put it in Japanese. I can say it in Espanol.

I can say it in Portuguese. That's what it is? What the fuck are you thinking? What the fuck is he thinking is he with you and it's constant and then you assign yourself to the producer who will either take eddie's side or my side you're either a dave guy or an eddie guy and we are all mature enough to understand that we're all pirates here of course you're going to betray me. A family of crocodiles.

Enjoy the reunion. So when are you going out again? I'll be seeing the fellas in a couple of weeks, okay? But this is, again, subject to all, if you don't understand Van Halen, you'll think of it as dysfunction. In the last 3,000 days that i've been back we performed 150 times and it was something something special something unique i don't know maybe it's like my we got a whole generation of people that are still coming they're bringing their kids now well we now i just saw a response like that at the pink pop festival in holland yeah 70 000 people i gotta guess the average age is 19, like whoever runs.

Oh, you were there. That's why you were there with the fellas. I was there with Armin von Buren. Oh, doing the jump thing. Who is a DJ. Okay. And we did a remix of jump. Again, you can remix.

Just you? Yeah. And I went out in front of 70,000 people, average age 19, who knew the words better than I do. They knew where the whoo comes from do they knew where the comes from and they know where the jump is supposed to happen etc it's part of the cultural fabric now yeah you might spell it with a k in holland but yes how many times have you heard these tones coming i don't know the burger king drive-through on how many vacations. You're not going to make it from here to Vegas with classic rock stations.

And there's two per city everywhere on earth. All right? That's just before the internet. And they're playing at least nine Van Halen songs a day. Wow. It's great verb music. Jump, dance, walk, music. Move, move, move.

Yeah, yeah. And it is great ambience, like wallpaper. Somebody good like that might be the beach boys you don't have to like the beach boys at all ask you about them but you turn that you turn the sound on i think the sun comes up yeah if it's a slower song like the girls on the beach or a surfer girl then that's sunset and it goes down but i thought i always felt that that you kind of hold a similar space, Van Halen. Very much so.

Yeah. We always cut the first two weeks of school to go hang out at Laguna Beach or at Huntington Beach. Go down to, I was not a surfer, but the beach is very much part of our upbringing. Southern California culture. Yeah. I just was talking about how Southern California culture, at least viscerally and visually, has dominated the entire earth. I don't care if you're in Abu Dhabi or Togo. It doesn't matter if you're in Oslo or Fiji.

You look like you're from California. I just read a bunch about Dick Dale and the Deltones. Yeah. Okay. The sound of reverb. Everybody knows what surf music is. Yeah. Okay. The sound of reverb. Everybody knows what surf music is. Yeah. Everybody in the Philippines, everybody in Indonesia, everybody in Tierra del Fuego, if you play surf guitar, they'll know what it is and they can imitate it.

They'll put their drink down and act like they're surfing. Yeah. You put your hands up like Spider-Man. To me, it's Spider-Man. To others, it's surfing. Yeah. And you get down and you adopt that posture. The glasses, okay?

Wearing the glasses indoors, you know, the stuff on the string on the glasses, shorts, slaps. Gang, not gang, signing, but signing, you know, the way you move your hands. That all comes from lowrider culture here in Southern California. This is Mexifornia. I say con respecto. They came first. So it's in everything. It's in all of your spice, the way you move your hands.

If you can see, I'm doing it like yo. And that's in everything we do. We've dominated the culture. Even hip-hop, which has dominated all of popular music, at least half of that is West Coast. Sure, man. Do you write songs still often? Yes, I do.

And all of the music, for example, in the back of my podcast is instrumental. I not only play it, but I sing it. And I sing the bass and the drums, and I take it serious. It's not there to be funny. It's not there to be beatboxing. All right? The music is all done in minor key. And if you listen in the backgrounds, okay, there's always music.

And I maintain that it's talk radio, I call it broadcasting, talk broadcasting that you don't have to speak English to enjoy at all. Consequently, we get emails from all over the world when you learn to modulate your tone. And you bring it up and down and everything in the background has my voices. So I'm multiplying and it sounds orchestral mostly at times. You're hearing those kinds of tones that are moving. And it's moving and moving. They're subliminal. Is that Dave in the background?

It was invented. All the visuals for our podcast, I'm sitting there administering. I'm surrounded by stellar, incandescent spirits and talents. But everything you see, I'm in the room. Going more to the left, more to the right, back, back. So it's a full-on experience. You engage in the musical thing. You engage in the talk thing.

You engage in the theater thing. I built the ship and then hired the crew. Men, point on a full disclosure i no longer know where we're going and you're okay with any of you would like to return to port now would be the time they never do they're on board oh yeah so how often do you do the podcast we We work on it two, three days a week because every week you put one up. Oh yes. It's art centric. I have two fellas, one who works in the visuals and his name is Colin Smith. And I went to Adobe Photoshop and said, who's your Led Zeppelin? Who teaches the teachers? Colin's written 20 books on Adobe Photoshop, digital photography, hundreds of tutorials, and that's who's doing our visuals. Okay. So I can sit and translate through

and visually what you're seeing and it's unique what you see us doing. Same thing at our company, Ink the Original, created a company that looks entirely different than anything you would expect of tattooing how long you been doing it now we just really started getting going again i got jesus i've tried two different times yeah wasn't real right for me over the last 10 12 years all right well you were up for you almost did regular your serious radio i remember you filled in for howard for a little bit when he left for a while well i i got fired after four and a half months specifically for playing too much ethnic music yeah and having late night humor too early in the morning i said to them well what if we stayed up which is late night humor he's out of here that was it. Oh, there was conflict early.

And I think they were hoping for Howard. There's only one Howard. That's for sure, yeah. Boy, I sure respect what Howard does. I surely respect where he got to. And what am I going to be, a top-notch third best Howard? As you can see, I have a surgically implanted disco beat. Unsupremely motivated, although we do frequently drive off the road

you're firing on more cylinders than you have boom this is this is this is not even field pace yeah this is you know i love talking and it comes perhaps from top 40 yeah i always want casey casey oh earlier than that dewey phillips yeah going you know hopping top 40 closer to wolfman jack in american graffiti yeah hopping and bobbing and popping with the best bet for the balls about you want me to do the wolfman jack voice sure that is thankful baby that i'm hopping and popping with the best bet for the balls being the tiny wolfman xcrb baby yeah right yeah mighty 1090 well look man i uh oh what's that someone's leaving it's your ride no i couldn't they could be landing how'd they find us they tracked you finally finally you have

a cell phone they're here to pick us up let's go you ready for that dimension where are we going any regrets david yeah the adventures that i didn't go on. Yeah. The trips that I kind of talked myself out of. Like what? Well, it was the face plants and the injuries that make the best stories. Right. That is the trials and tribulations and the daily calamity that I call it. That makes for, that's what taught me. All my biggest haters, my worst arguments that I lost, I learned the most from. Now I'm going to teach you a little verbal judo okay it comes from emt days yeah is if somebody teaches comes up to you and i'm going to look away because even if you just use it as an analogy it's a little painful and

somebody goes hey asshole your immediate response especially as somebody in showbiz is you're gonna you you have a thick skin or you wouldn't be here this far your black belt ninth degree so your best move so hey asshole you know you might have a point class you see what i did you see how i took that away from him and now i'm gonna use it on him thanks for helping out it's a gift it's great My pleasure. And good luck with the show, buddy. This was a great interview. It was fun. It caused me to think.

Thanks. Oh, good. Huh? How about that? Time to get out of the raft, right? Time to get out of the boat. That was fun. David Lee Roth's podcast called The Roth Show is available wherever you get podcasts. Go to

wtfpod.com slash tour for my tour dates. Go to swordoftrust.com for the movie dates. And now I will play some guitar the way I want to, just because I want to, because I can. © transcript Emily Beynon Boomer lives. We'll be right back. See you at Pretty Tales. to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category, and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry

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