The
following is condensed from the book Crazy From The Heat
and deals with the MTV lie in 1996.
David
Lee Roth:
Well,
quite obviously, the Mighty Edward is terrified that somehow all of
this attendant publicity and excitement over my reconvening with the
band is somehow going to overshadow his musical brilliance. As if.
As if anybody in the fucking solar system thinks of Eddie V. as a
backup guitar player. If somebody does, well, then I’m the singer
for Up With People.
We
get to the Awards, the audience is unsuspecting. Edward is pissed,
miserable, that "my-shorts-are-too-tight" face on the
front of his head. We walk out on stage and the place goes
ballistic, nuclear, off the map. Eddie and his brother are
astonished. They had no idea. Well, I see those smiles.
The
Van Halens freeze. Edward puts his sunglasses on. He’s visibly
angry. Visibly. He’s the only angry person in the whole tri-state
area, next to his brother.
And
the audience is going nuts. So I go to work. It’s not something I
think about. For me this is natural, this is freewheeling. I smile.
Well, everybody is suitably ecstatic but not quite fucking ecstatic
enough for a VH gig, so let me put the hip swivel on you, boom! Now
you’re standing up, aren’t you’? Yeah, that’s what you came
for, isn’t it? T-shirts in the foyer!
The
people from MTV had said to me. "You know, Dave, you could
freestyle on this a little bit if you want." "That’s why
l’m here, guys, ‘cuz you can depend on me," and they were
looking forward to it. I was the one guy out of the whole show who
did it.
The
first thing I said to the audience, "God, a lot has changed.
For starters, whoever thought that we would be standing on stage
here again ten years after the fact?" That statement caused the
guys to physically separate from me on stage. For the last decade
it’s entirely been the Eddie Van Halen show. He’s very fond of
saying, "This is my band." And with previous singers it
was. Absolutely. No competition. No encroachment at all.
Just
before we had walked on stage, Alex Van Halen turned to me and said,
"Milk it, Dave. Milk it for all it’s worth." And I
thought to myself—just as they’re announcing us—is he setting
me up?
Edward
stomps off the stage. Now it’s time to go visit the press, which
is in several different tents: domestic, international,
"Entertainment Tonight," whatever.
By
now they’re really furious.
The
press come after them like hammerheads, literally yelling—I’ve
never heard the press talk to an artist like this—"Bullshit!
Bullshit! It came from your manager and he’s standing right
there." The manager ducks out of the tent like a ferret. Now
the Van Halens realize they are no longer in control.
So
Ed Van Halen resorts to tragedy as his form of self-expression.
"All right, I’ve had enough of this. Enough of this, okay?
We’re not going on tour. We’re not going to be doing any shows.
We’re not going to do anything. Even if we were thinking about it,
we’d have to go and make a whole new album first, and we’re
taking it step by step, okay? And by the way, I’ve got to have a
hip replacement, and it’s just like Bo Jackson, see, and I hurt it
jumping up and down on stage."
The
room goes dead. I’ve never seen the air sucked out of a room like
that. He goes into this self-tragedy mode to get attention and kills
the entire moment.
We
go to the international press tent. Same thing happens: Ed goes into
his "my tragic life" routine, kills the room, and somebody
asks, "So what about Sammy Hagar? He’s just gone?" Ed
replies, "Yeah, screw him, he quit, he bailed, man, fuck
him." Well, he didn’t quit. They connived and created a
scenario to make him quit. Made it untenable; he had to bail.
I
looked around and the Van Halens had already left the stage,
disappeared. I took Edward aside in between that tent and the next
one. I said, "Now is not the time to start addressing a whole
lot of personal issues. We created a scenario, we have invited a
whole lot of people to celebrate and now is not the time to bring
everybody down and start talking about your hip. It’s
selfish."
He
said, "Hey, man, this is my fucking life. I’ll say whatever
the fuck I want, all right? It’s my fucking hip, I need fucking
hip surgery.
I
said to him, "Fuck that, it’s bad manners. You’re also
talking about things that I have no idea about. Don’t put me up in
front of the international press and start talking about plans I
have no idea even existed."
He
turns to me and says, "Nobody ever fucking talks to me like
that. You ever fucking talk to me like that, I’m going to kick you
in your fucking balls. You fucking hear me?" I begin to think
we got a problem here. We’ve got somebody who’s off on cloud
cuckoo land.
We
leave from the press conferences to head for the limos and there’s
thousands of fans, screaming and hysterical. Alex comes up to me and
says, "Dave, remember how you used to jump up and down on the
limos, you know, get the crowd going crazy after a concert?"
I
say, "Yeah."
He
says, "Go ahead. Jump up on top of the limo. Get them going.
Get them going."
And
I thought to myself, it’s obvious now, isn’t it, you're setting
me up.
Get
into the limo, everyone’s pissed, silent, except me. I know
what’s up with them.
Copyright © 1997 David Lee Roth Crazy
From The Heat.
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