David Lee Roth: 'I've been rich and I've been poor. Rich is better'

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February 2, 2012 at 10:51 pm Quote #3470

ron
(11464)

David Lee Roth: ‘I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor. Rich is better’

He’s been up, he’s been down. And in recent years he’s also been a medical technician. Now he’s back with Van Halen and has much to say about the band’s glory days. First, though, he wants to chat about, erm, sheepdogs
Michael Hann guardian.co.uk, Thursday 2 February 2012 15.30 EST

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/About/General/2012/2/2/1328196820609/Van-Halen-in-1978-on-roll-006.jpg
Van Halen in 1978 on roller skates in front of a mural of the planets. David is in the stylish red jumpsuit. Photograph: Lynn Goldsmith/CORBIS

There’s something to clarify before David Lee Roth gets down to business, talking about his life with and return to Van Halen, arguably the most important American hard rock band ever. Namely: why did I have to watch a video of him putting his sheepdog though its paces before I was allowed to speak to him?

It’s hard to tell why — because Roth’s answers are circumlocutory, filled with metaphor and grandly entertaining — but my guess is it’s to illustrate how his life has returned to its beginnings. “My background is in Indiana,” he says. “My grandparents came from Europe in 1917 and made their living working in a general store, and selling beer by the pail for four cents in the 20s in Newcastle, Indiana, which today is still bib overalls, livestock and the great outdoors. Just down the street is Indiana University where my pop went to school — he later became a doctor. But while he was just starting college when I was born we lived in a little house at the edge of a farmer’s property and I grew up chasing muskrats and collaring dogs.” Training a sheepdog, then, is coming “full circle”.

Full circle in another sense, too, for next week’s release of the new Van Halen album, A Different Kind of Truth, marks the first recordings Roth has made with the band since departing amid a cloud of bitterness in 1985, when he was replaced by his arch-enemy Sammy Hagar (as far back as the 70s, Hagar was calling Roth a “faggot”, Roth responding by saying Hagar had “a social problem”).

Though Indiana-born, Roth was hardly your typical farmboy. His Uncle Manny ran the New York bohemian hangout Cafe Wha? until 1988, putting on the likes of Bob Dylan and Lenny Bruce, and Roth would hang out there as kid visiting in the early 1960s. He was never much of a student, bouncing around schools — for disciplinary reasons; he’s evidently ferociously bright, even if he often chooses not to show the world — until he moved to Pasadena, California, as a teenager, where he enrolled at Pasadena City College and met the man with whom his life would become entwined, a young guitarist called Eddie Van Halen.

For seven years — from the 1978 release of their debut album, until Roth’s departure as frontman in 1985 — Van Halen were a living, breathing cartoon of the rock’n'roll lifestyle. They were mocked for the supposed excess of demanding a jar of M&Ms in their dressing room at each show, with all the brown ones removed (though the reason for that was to check the promoter’s attention to detail: if he couldn’t get such a simple task right, what else might he have missed?). They celebrated sex and drugs and drink. Then they celebrated them some more. If Sunset Strip in the 1960s had been the party, Van Halen, a decade later, were the after-party. And the world lapped it up: the Roth-era Van Halen sold 35m albums, despite their sometimes variable quality. There were masterpieces — their debut, a shock as seismic as punk, and Roth’s final album with the group, 1984 (the one that gave us Jump and the marvellously goofy Hot For Teacher with its apocalyptic drum intro) — and there was the tossed-off, 31-minute long Diver Down, from 1982, heavy on covers and instrumentals.

“Van Halen was an island unto ourselves,” Roth says. “If you stop at that island — we recommend you do, but abandon all hope — do not back up! It was like Port Royal in the 1700s. It didn’t belong to anybody, which was why it was great.”

But was it ever hard work appearing to be having that much fun all the time? “I was a surgical tech right out of high school, I sold clothes; I shovelled shit at a horse stable for years. I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor,” he says. “Rich is better. Totally better.” He laughs, a great wheezy crackle. “The job we have is a privilege. The Van Halens [Eddie and his brother Alex, the drummer] and I have had steady jobs since we were 12 years old. Mine was working before and after school at a horse stable. For them it was paper routes. Mr Van Halen was classic European: you’re making your money for the rent. I was lucky I didn’t have to do that … Even at your worst moments, there’s a whole lot of Shakespeare going on. How can you not appreciate it? At your lonesomest, most catastrophic, it’s still pretty cinematic. I think the smiles were genuine. Don’t mistake them for simplistic grins — there’s a lot of pirate smiling.” Piratical sounds about right, for Van Halen were adept at picking fights, too. When they headlined the 1983 US festival in California, in front of 375,000 people, and millions more watching on MTV — for a reported $1.5m fee — a bombed- out-of-his-mind Roth took on the Clash, who were also appearing: “I wanna take this time to say that this is real whiskey here … the only people who put iced tea in Jack Daniel’s bottles is the Clash, baby!” That came moments after addressing a member of the crowd at whom Roth had taken umbrage: “Hey, man, don’t be squirting water at me! I’m gonna fuck your girlfriend, pal!”

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/About/General/2012/2/2/1328200204376/David-Lee-Roth-Singing-005.jpg
David Lee Roth Singing David performing in Florida in 1983 Photograph: Neal Preston/CORBIS

From the very beginning, Van Halen sounded unique. Their first album, with its clean, popcentric sound, changed the face of hard rock: there was no use of the devil’s interval, the chord progression that traditionally signals metallic doom. Instead, as Roth says: “We’re the band that sold a Ricky Ricardo rhumba in Jamie’s Cryin’. Dance the Night Away is Santana, because we used to play all those weddings and those dances at the backyard parties.”

The combination of chart-baiting pop and tough rock guitar spawned a legion of imitators in the LA hair metal scene — Mötley Crüe, Poison, Cinderella, Warrant and the like — who tried to set up camp on Van Halen Island. “I don’t know who coined the phrase imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,” Roth observes. “I think David Mamet coined the phrase imitation is the sincerest form of stealing. Probably a litigating attorney coined it first. OK, if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery then there are a whole lot of dogs out there … At worst I feel like I’m driving past a traffic accident and I’m relieved no one was killed.”

Van Halen were there first, though, and they were the best. They sounded like the future (it’s no coincidence that Eddie Van Halen’s alien guitar caterwauling was used in a scene in Back to the Future, to convince George McFly he was being visited by a being from another dimension). Eruption, the famous guitar solo from the first Van Halen album — and the Back to the Future wake-up call — showed a new generation of players how to bring the flash: you didn’t need 10 minutes for your solo to make the point — 100 seconds would do.

If you look closely, Roth says, it’s easy to see where Van Halen took their inspirations from. “I can point for you and go: right there we’re imitating Eric Clapton; right there I’m imitating vocally David Bowie; right there is Bruce Springsteen” — he puts on a gruff voice, aping the Boss — “‘Diamond Dave, you’re a big man!’” — and he guffaws — “but this is how you create a signature sound. If you’re lucky to have it, there’s no way around it. I actively imitated everything from the Nicholas Brothers tap dancing to Mick Jagger going ‘Oooh yeah!’ But because of whatever it never sounds like anything to you but David Lee. And when Edward plays you might never have heard the material before but you instantly recognise it as fast as, say, Jimi’s guitar.”

Crucially, though, Roth says they were never just a metal band, even though they revolutionised the genre. “Metal is a bit specific,” Roth says. “The neighbourhoods we grew up, learning, acquiring musical knowledge, were very separate neighbourhoods, unlike, for example, New York City where Mr Chin lives next to Mr Steinberg who owes rent to Mr Patel and they all speak Serbo-Croatian. It’s just the school system. Here [in California], the Venice Beach surf neighbourhood is very different than San Bernadino Hell’s Angels. Below south of the harbour freeway: ‘Que pasa? What are you looking at?’ And that all works into Van Halen. You can hear it – it’s loudly diverse but you can’t feel the seams. It’s like if you go to a car show and you Stevie Wonder it: you can’t feel where the Chevy turned into a Mercedes door frame which turned into — that’s a De Soto grill! –” and suddenly he’s no longer the blind man at the car show, he’s an aggrieved Mexican kid wondering why the blind man’s hands are all over his girl — “‘That’s my girlfriend loco! What are you doing?’” He guffaws. “All those different neighbourhoods add up into the sound, and to say it’s one kind of sound — no! It’s so much of a hybrid that you have to give it its own name.” He concludes his spiel, bafflingly, with the tale of Yip Harburg. “He was a millionaire industrialist who lost everything in the stock market crash of 1929 and when his kids and his wife said: ‘You can earn it back honey,” he said: ‘No, I’ve always dreamed of being a lyric writer on Broadway.’ And he did. He started from absolutely nothing, with no background, and he wrote Brother Can You Spare a Dime, arguably the most famous American song of the Depression, and he wrote the lyrics and the melody for Over the Rainbow. How’s Yip doing so far? I confine the theatre of my fame to what would Yip think?”

Those different neighbourhoods, plus the steals from Springsteen and Bowie and Yip Harburg, were what made the band unique. Even on the demos they recorded with Gene Simmons of Kiss in 1976, they already sound like a band who are only themselves, sui generis. “It’s not magic,” Roth says by way of explanation. “It’s science. And the beautful thing about science is it’s true whether you believe it or not.” And then we’re off. “For example, the busing programme in America started in 1966 and my sister and I were sent off to schools an hour and a half away that were 95% black and Spanish speaking. Today I only listen to R&B — only listen to R&B — from any time period, doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter at all, whether it’s big band swing all the way up to anything that’s on Beatport. The Van Halens went to Ridgemont High. Ever see the movie? That was their high school — 98% Jeff Spiccoli and home of the monster riff and every ending to every song should sound like world war nine or just the end of the world. Who does endings better than Van Halen live? I’ll send you a ticket. I’m ready to argue this. Unarguably the best endings ever, right? They sound like the end of everything. Biblical. And the guitar solo? It is a religious icon, certainly on a par with some of our more popular professional sports, which I maintain are religions. Put the football down — I’m ready to argue.” He laughs. “That’s how we do the solo.” And laughs again. “And you’ll know when the solo’s coming because there’s a scream. There are moments. Combine the two and what you have is hard rock from the 70s. We enjoyed our fame in the 80s but we had nothing musically to do with it. And you can interpret that four different ways, depending on how I just said it.”

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Roth reunited with Van Halen David finally reunited with Van Halen.

After Roth left Van Halen, he embarked on a solo career that started brightly before fading away, but he found another lease of life, even before he first reunited with Van Halen for a tour in 2007. “I’m a state- licensed EMT [emergency medical technician] in New York.” It seems staggeringly unlikely, but an internet search reveals it to be true. “I probably have over 200 911 calls on my ticket in the last six years alone. I live a very different life away from music.”

Even so, he has chosen once again to hitch himself to the Van Halen wagon. Is it possible he and Eddie Van Halen — for all the very public acrimony between them — need each other to create anything resembling their best work? For the first time, Roth pauses — there are 30 seconds before he speaks. Then, finally: “Clearly. Very astute. Clearly.” Apart, they’re footnotes; together, they’re a novel. “We went to school together. Literally. We took theory and orchestration together. We both have almost identical backgrounds in how we learnt. We learnt at the back of the hand from eastern-European teachers. Unfriendly eastern-European teachers.” And for a long time, they shared the same aims: “I always thought of it as part of a group. I never thought in terms of Rod Stewart, I thought in terms of the Rolling Stones or the Sex Pistols. I think Edward thought in the same vein.”

And does knowing you need each other make the tensions between you all the worse? And we’re off on one of those long, rambling, glorious answers. “Jesus, let’s go back to the 1600s again. People didn’t understand psychology, right? You showed them emotional content and made somebody cry and they thought it was demons. One of the best reviews you can get in my estimation is from the villagers if they killed all the actors and buried them at the cross so their ghosts couldn’t haunt the village — because everyone left the play crying and laughing and they couldn’t understand why. Today we give them an Oscar for that kind of emotional ride. Being human has caused so much of that. Let’s really back into some theory here. What is art? Simple, I think — something that forces and compels you to think, and that can be a mint condition copy of Raging Bull or it can be the Kardashians. The same questions will be asked and you will be forced to confront yourself, and you will be forced to triangulate where you stand on everything from racist politics to haircuts. And are they really different? Do you follow? You’re going to ask the same questions and that … shit … is … art. And it has caused you to question more than that goddam soup can Warhol sold us. Or tried to. Bring that one up. You follow? You are compelled into argument. Consequently, arguing about our band and our rock’n'roll – you can do that certainly for longer than actually listening to it.” Then he laughs long and loud, and offers the perspective that comes with being 56, happy, and aware that there’s more to life than telling the world that it might as well jump. “Van Halen music is whisky in a paper cup! Short doses and not every night, PLEASE!”

- A Different Kind of Truth is released on Interscope on Monday.


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February 3, 2012 at 5:49 am Quote #3477

Mac22
(3216)

Good read thanks Ron.


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February 3, 2012 at 10:24 am Quote #3493

Vince G.
(2255)

Killer interview. Very nice to see Dave actually respond the questions with actual answers, and not his typical shtick.


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February 4, 2012 at 8:47 am Quote #3569

JasonA
(1104)

We should just make this the official DLR interview thread:
http://jam.canoe.ca/Music/Artists/V/Van_Halen/2012/02/02/19330721.html

UNCHAINED: The DLR Interview

By DARRYL STERDAN, QMI Agency

Truth is, David Lee Roth has always been different.

“Nobody well-adjusted ever got my job,” explains Van Halen’s larger-than-life frontman down the line from California. “Much less kept it this long.”

Fewer still have returned to it as spectacularly. This week, after months of mounting hype, speculation and rumours, the 56-year-old singer and his bandmates will release A Different Kind of Truth, their first disc together since their landmark sixth album 1984. (Read the review right HERE.) Questions abound: How did the band finally make peace in 2007 after decades of bad blood? Is it just a marriage of convenience? How have things changed since the old days? Why does A Different Kind of Truth consist almost primarily of reworked ’70s and ’80s demos instead of new songs?

You won’t get info out of the Van Halen clan; they’ve stubbornly maintained radio silence for years. Even Roth is far from the loose cannon he once was.

And when he does break the silence — as he did in our exclusive Canadian interview — straight answers aren’t his game. Never have been. A notoriously evasive subject, he basically ignores questions and delivers rambling monologues from his hotwired pinball machine of a brain. The legendary motor mouth spat out more than 4,000 words during our 30-minute chat, unleashing a torrent of metaphysical mumbo-jumbo, blatant boasting, random digressions and bizarre one-liners. He was entertaining, baffling — and mildly frustrating as he danced around inquiries. “You’re gonna have a fun time editing this,” he laughed at one point.

But even as he hid inside his blizzard of verbiage, it became clear Roth has grown since we last heard from him. Instead of sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll, these days he’s into the great outdoors (he owns three pickup trucks but no car), training competitive herding dogs (he just imported one from Manitoba) and emergency medicine (he was a New York City paramedic in the ’90s).

Which is to say: Roth can still run off at the mouth. But he doesn’t run with the devil anymore. He’s a different kind of cat again. Older, wiser, more philosophical. Not that he wants that get around. “Don’t go making me look smart,” he warns. “Nobody’s going to want to talk to me.” As if.

As we count down to A Different Kind of Truth — and an upcoming tour that hits Canada in March — here are more revelations to ponder from the mouth of Diamond Dave:

1 | Van Halen are eternally unhip — and proud of it.

“We were never cool. Even when we were happening, even when we were the flavour of the week the first time, we weren’t cool. John Travolta and Saturday Night Fever were cool. And across the street, The Sex Pistols and The Clash were cool. We were just kind of an island. I don’t know that Van Halen ever really fit in. And it was not a conscious act. Many times we’re trying to imitate other people; it just comes out looking and sounding like us. And today we’re still not cool. We’re somewhere between Katy Perry and Muse. Somewhere between Kings of Leon and Maroon 5. Welcome to our island. Abandon all hope.”

2 | They aren’t taking this reunion for granted.

“Everybody values their privilege. And it is indeed a privilege and a gift to be able to have this job as opposed to a lot of the jobs the state offers. Everybody has had at least one or two medical near- misses or at least one or two dental tragedies. Sometimes that’s all it takes — you get your teeth knocked out a couple of times and you start to realize you’re mortal. That illumination alone can rebind a band. Besides that, we’re gonna do it for world peace. I could answer all of of these questions with that. Do you want to do the ‘world peace’ interview?”

3 | But they are taking it seriously.

“Though Van Halen’s history is incandescent and full of allegations — most of them true — we’ve taken the music very seriously. Starting from when we were classically trained kids (and) up to this minute, our work ethic is the antithesis of what common rock ’n’ roll would be. We’ve been rehearsing for the last three months, frequently at nine and 10 in the morning. It’s special ops in that it doesn’t matter what time it is. We do it when we are called upon.”

4 | He still wants to get in your pants — musically.

“I’m still chasing the ideal that initially compelled me — which is to write a superb song with a permanently memorable lyric … I don’t know if it’s a noble pursuit, but it certainly is a contribution of sorts. If I do it right, you’ll have a tune wedgie for the rest of your time.”

5 | The new songs aren’t old — they’re vintage.

“I retooled all of the verses and melodies. I retooled all of the lyric. So there is a body of new that meets halfway there, that I think makes very colourful sense. The idea that it was in a vault — well, are you talking about a head of lettuce or fine wine, sir?

Perhaps age has dignified it even further by virtue of its authenticity.”

6 | It’s all about Dave. Really.

“All music is autobiographic. Particularly when it’s not meant to be.”

7 | VH speak the universal language.

“You don’t need to speak English to understand what I’m singing about.

You don’t need to be a rock ’n’ roll fan to love and appreciate the show. You don’t even need to have hearing. Our deaf section is routinely filled. (But) we’re also the ones who sold you Ricky Ricardo rumba for Jamie’s Cryin’ and Dance the Night Away. That’s pure Carlos Santana … I speak fluent Spanish. I can get us totally in trouble now in Spanish and Portuguese.”

8 | VH are the kings of jailhouse rock.

“My father was a prison doctor for the last 25 years of his career. We called it the Ivy League — Folsom, Quentin. And he used to joke: When one of our records would come out, both the guards and the inmates celebrated. If you carry a gun to work, whether it’s with a uniform or a pair of two-tone shoes, you telling me you don’t know me? Come on, loco!”

9 | They know how to get the party started on their upcoming tour.

“We picked Kool and the Gang to open for us because Kool and the Gang and Van Halen are the sounds of an entire continent at recreation.

We’ve come to represent that — although you’re more likely to hear Kool and the Gang at a bar mitzvah than me, even though I’m a brother.

You go to a Hasidic Jewish bar mitzvah and they’ll play Ladies’ Night by Kool. Me, they’ll let in — ‘But he doesn’t sing; he runs with the devil!’ ”

10 | Onstage, he wants to be outstanding in his field.

“The optimal is to be able to do what you promised to do from top to bottom in a Motown fashion. Can you sing the whole song? Is it recordable quality? Can you do it with authority? Night after night?

Or did you have to Auto-Tune it? Did you have to put a whole lotta tinsel on the tree and utilize a lotta production value and a lot of troupe dancers and a variety of diversionary, result-oriented tricks?

Which I like. But you better be as good as professional wrassling. The goal is to delight. Whether you use darkness and horror, or smiles and celebration, to delight is your obligation as an artist.”

11 | Offstage, he wants to be outstanding in his field.

“My favourite poem is one sentence long: ‘Well, the sky should know me by now.’ It’s a contrast to the exchange of interiors that we experience as musicians. It is like living in a submarine — the inside of the studio, the inside of an arena, the inside of the bus. That is not at all a lament.”

12 | When it all goes wrong, he’s the master of disaster.

“My first job out of high school, I was a surgical porter working the night shift down here in East L.A. And I kept all of those certifications up. There was about 10 years when I had to grow my hair out and conquer the world, so I put that curriculum on hold. However, today I’m a New York State EMT. I’m tactically certified … Do you know how to feed 100 people breakfast? I do. Do you know the best way to get a fire going if you’ve got somebody wet and freezing? Get to the commissary — Fritos are so full of fat. You light a Frito, you’re going to be amazed … If something bad happens to you, I can pretty much unf— the situation until the right people show up.”


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February 8, 2012 at 12:10 pm Quote #3969

JasonA
(1104)

http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/music/inteview-with-van-halens-david-lee-roth/story-e6frfn09-1226266040365
Interview with Van Halen’s David Lee Roth
By Cameron Adams
News Limited newspapers
February 09, 2012 12:00AM

THIS legendary rocker is back with Van Halen and barking mad about dogs, writes Cameron Adams.

>> Since we last saw you you’ve become a dog trainer.

Well on the insurance form they’re called “canine athletes”. We train dogs for cattle and sheep herding. They’re very different. Sheep are a lot like supermodels – they bunch together, they rattle very easily.

You want to keep the dog 10-15m out or they act like girls at a nightclub: “OMG, he’s looking!” Cattle are like drunks at a hockey game – two will want to fight: “Who are you and what’s with your badge?”

Two of them will be like: “Leave them alone, let’s go see the game.” Another one is lost: “Where’d you guys go?” The dog has to deal with all of that. You work them off a whistle. It’s the original video game.

>> Do you get recognised by people in the dog world?

If you work with livestock, if you wear jeans to work, don’t tell me you don’t know Van Halen. That’s an in for me. I’m wildly enthusiastic about dog handling, it gives me an entree to travel the world.

My dog Mike will enable me to travel to the UK and Ireland. I’ll come in dead last, make no mistake, but it’s life outside of the showbiz circle.

It’s international and noisy and a little dirt under the fingernail adds a little to the sandwich.

>> You’re back fronting Van Halen and have made A Different Kind of Truth, your first album with them since 1984. Was it important not to just tour and play old songs?

Nostalgia is a form of denial. I love denial. I like selective amnesia, too. Mix the two and you’ve got a hell of a weekend. However, in terms of aiming the starship there, nah, retromania is not a great destination.

>> Recording the album took so long your Australian tour last year was cancelled. What was it like in the studio?

There’s a history of tension between you and Eddie Van Halen.

It was like a stand off in a Chuck Norris movie. We each had the laser dot on everybody’s forehead waiting for the other guy to blink. Except for Wolfie, he had a Super Soaker …

>> Yes, Eddie Van Halen’s son Wolfgang is on bass now. What’s it like being in a band with a 20-year-old?

I’m starting to be impressed by the kid. I didn’t want to be. He can play the s— out of that thing. He’s bringing it. We never changed. We’re a ’70s hard rock band. We enjoyed our fame in the ’80s but all our roots are pre-’80s. That’s Van Halen. Old plus new. It’s like watching Dragnet on your iPad.

>> How are you and Eddie getting on?

If Ed and I can get along then world peace can have a chance. There’s sparks, there’s energy, there’s a team enthusiasm closer to pirates than little league. There’s still some pillaging going on there. You can hear it in the music. There’s routinely conflict but there’s a lot of laughter.

A lot of appreciation for the privilege of the job; compared to some of the other jobs we’ve all held, this is better. In one of the songs I say, ‘I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor, rich is better’. It’s totally better.

>> How do you describe the chemistry between you and Eddie? It’s led to you leaving the band a few times.

Our form of sparks will be in the first sentence of our mutual obituaries. These are the songs and messages that have brought a smile to a thousand hips.

Maybe that’s our only responsibility as artists. You must delight. I don’t care if you’re running with a football in a screaming stadium or playing a solo violin in a concert hall, you must delight. We treasure that responsibility more than ever. You see it in the handshakes.

The smiles are genuine. We individually idle somewhere between pissed off and not too pissed off in terms of anger. When you get too happy that’s a different band. That’s a vacation.

>> What was it like seeing Van Halen when Sammy Hagar or Gary Cherone was frontman?

When you change the engine, you have a whole different form of transportation. Any similarity between the reality of some of the other vocalists and mine is purely coincidental.

>> In your most recent stint away from Van Halen you worked as an emergency medical technician in New York. Tell us about that.

I pushed an ambulance for three summers. That right there provides a whole new view of the world around me. It was crystallising. Galvanising. I was in and out of the projects.

When you hear Jay-Z rap about Marcy Projects … been there. Life loves those who love life. That’s what I ran into in the blue uniform.

When I pursued it even further into aviation and dog handling, I recognise the similarities more than the differences. But hey man, no metaphysics until happy hour!

>> OK, it’s Van Halen’s 40th anniversary this year.

That’s some distance in a business where three-and-a-half summers is the requisite career. We’re 40 summers at this camp. They made me a counsellor this time.

There’s not much here I don’t know how to do. I know how to make the pancakes, get the kayaks ready. I do the camp fires arguably the best.

>> Can you see yourself in Van Halen long-term this time around?

It’s a revised spirit, it’s a real band. However temporary it may be there’s a real core of strength, an integrity to the band. An obsessiveness to it that will ring true at least for the rest of this tour.

To promise anything beyond that, I don’t know. That kind of friction and back and forth solicits the best. In the battle of the bands, we actually are a battle of the bands in one band.

A Different Kind of Truth (Universal) out now.


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February 8, 2012 at 1:22 pm Quote #3977

vhroxu2
(1790)

“It was like a stand off in a Chuck Norris movie. We each had the laser dot on everybody’s forehead waiting for the other guy to blink. Except for Wolfie, he had a Super Soaker …”

:lol:


Vhtrading member since 2004.


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February 8, 2012 at 7:17 pm Quote #4004

guitard
(7354)

The way Dave answered a lot of those questions…I think he could make a good politician. Are we looking at a future Senator Roth??


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