Washington post DLR/VH Articles Washington post DLR/VH Articles Old news articles from Classic VH era and DLR solo. Thanks to Steve Kattula for donating these. ROTH'S ROWDY ROCK ROMP By Todd Allan Yasui Monday, April 18, 1988 ; Page B11 David Lee Roth is a showman first and a singer second. Friday night at Capital Centre, the flamboyant former lead vocalist for Van Halen rappelled from the rafters in rock-climbing gear, demonstrated some crafty martial arts skills with a silver baton and gathered his whole band at center stage for an instrumental jam on steel drums. Besides his ability to entertain with rock circus antics, Roth deserves credit mostly for his knack for picking talented sidemen. After a well-publicized feud with former band mate Eddie Van Halen that led to their parting, Roth had the good sense to tab master guitar technician Steve Vai to form a new band. Although much of Vai's fingerwork was buried under the thundering decibels, his technique shone through on a restrained instrumental that only briefly turned into a blueprint heavy metal solo. Most of the time Vai played sinewy patterns and supplied tentative stutter riffs while Roth shimmied around the stage, yelping out catchy pop-metal tunes such as "Just Like Paradise" and "Goin' Crazy (From the Heat)." Roth's version of "Just a Gigolo" sounded very limp, as most novelty video tunes do when presented in concert without the benefit of visual humor. Ironically, the band's best moments came when it dished out some of Roth's past with Van Halen. Although hard-core Halen fans might consider it blasphemous to play Van Halen songs without Eddie Van Halen, Roth and company sounded surprisingly fresh and furious on "Hot for Teacher," "Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love" and "On Fire." DAVID LEE ROTH'S PLASTIC METAL By Mark Jenkins Column: ON RECORD Friday, April 15, 1988 ; Page N23 WESTERN literature includes many tales about dreams of improbable transformations: the ugly duckling who wants to become a swan, say, or the swaggering heavy-metal stud who wants to be a classy cabaret crooner. Some of these dreams come true. On his new "Skyscraper" album, former Van Halen frontman David Lee Roth isn't quite so up-front about his crooner ambitions as he was on his debut solo EP, but the disc nonetheless suggests that the thrill of metallurgy is gone. No wonder he clambers up cliffs (as the cover photo documents) in his spare time: rock 'n' roll is no longer enough to goose his adrenal glands. Not that "Skyscraper" doesn't pack plenty of hard-rock flash. Steve Vai, Roth's Eddie Van Halen surrogate, is an agile fretboard gymnast, and tunes like "Just Like Paradise" are serviceable heavy- metal pop. Still, Diamond Dave seems happiest when delivering, above Vai's Bach-rock riffing, a platitudinous nostalgic ballad about "ahh, the crazy things we thing we used to do." At this rate, he'll be dueting with Barbra Streisand by album No. 4. DAVID LEE ROTH -- "Skyscraper" (Warner Brothers 9 25671-1). Appearing with Poison Friday at Capital Centre. Hype, Hype, Hooray!; Rock Stars Gather for MTV's First Video Awards By Richard Harrington Monday, September 17, 1984 ; Page B1 NEW YORK -- The prelude and finale of Friday's First Annual MTV Music Video Awards could have been produced by Cecil B. De Mille, who knew a good crowd when he formed one. In the streets of early evening and at the parties of early morning, walls of people strained for a glimpse of the rock elite. In between, MTV, the cable channel that plays rock 'n' roll videos 24 hours a day, hyped the hand that feeds it. Itself. Outside Radio City Music Hall -- temporarily renamed Video City Music Hall by a silver-sequin-gloved Mayor Koch -- crowds swirled under the the lazy laser lights of two huge spotlights. Star arrivals were confirmed by shrieks and flashbulbs, with Billy (The Lip) Idol, Cyndi Lauper, Rolling Stone Ron Wood and David Lee Roth eliciting the loudest screams. Inside, Bette Midler and Dan Aykroyd were doing a terrific job of hosting the ceremony, refusing to let it sink to the level of dullness of other awards ceremonies. Midler in particular seemed to the manner born, tossing off her lines the way Ann Corio does clothes. In fact, many of those lines were just this side of risque', though delivered with a buoyant rock 'n' roll spirit that was evident throughout the evening. This may be the first music awards show that didn't feature the insufferable country group Alabama. Herbie Hancock's "Rockit" video copped the most awards, five, and Quincy Jones, who produces Michael Jackson's records, was given a special Merit Award. Unfortunately, his citation was read insultingly by Rod Stewart and Ron Wood, who obviously thought it would be funny to recite their lines as they sank to their knees and out of camera range behind the podium. "It's easy to have humility when you're successful; the problem is trying to be arrogant when you're a flop," said the unflappable Jones. As one might expect from a show celebrating fast-paced videos, things never slipped into low-gear, even when choreographer Michael Peters listed all the dancers in the award-winning "Thriller" video. Acceptance speeches were limited to 30 seconds; most tended to be shorter. The performances by Rod Stewart and Tina Turner were much better than one normally finds on television awards shows; Stewart's even used clever effects to make it look like a video. Joe Piscopo and Eddie Murphy were the loosest and -- not surprisingly -- the funniest presenters, dragging onto the stage the poor stage hand responsible for showering confetti on the audience. Of course, in the democracy of fashion that is rock 'n' roll, an awful lot more of the 5,800 guests (who had paid $100 a seat) looked like rock 'n' roll stars than actually were rock 'n' roll stars. Especially when they were stepping out of the armada of limousines lining the streets. And though there were stars, the great majority of the audience was made up of industry people who acted like stars. These were the Heppies, folks who mostly came to the business in the '60s and settled in it during the '70s. And inside and out, it was like an old-fashioned Hollywood extravaganza, though mounted New York City police proved once again that laws made for man and dog do not apply to horses. As a result, an awful lot of what was deposited outside made its way inside on the bottoms of Guccis. If there is something odd and irritating about MTV putting together, promoting and benefiting from its self-designated awards show (only videos shown on MTV were eligible and the awards are about as meaningful to the general public as the advertising industry's Clios are), that's nothing new for the network that has brought self-promotion to a new level. And while no one can deny the profound influence MTV has had -- on music, fashion and film -- it's equally hard to defend MTV's bullying tactics and virtual exclusion of black entertainers. Diana Ross accepted two awards for Michael Jackson; it's just about the only way she's been able to get on MTV. Awards like this, and the presence of Lauper, Midler and a radiant Turner (off to London Saturday to star opposite Mel Gibson in "Road Warriors II") would lead one to think that MTV has come a long way in terms of racist and sexist attitudes. In fact, the dominant MTV image of ditzy blondes in underwear was underscored by Missing Persons' lead singer Dale Bozzio and, even more so, by Madonna, who performed dreadfully in her underwear and a smile, both of which were as see-through as television will allow. Not that there weren't bright spots, mostly Midler, who sassed her way through the night in high style. If you remember that MTV started as a promotional vehicle for the record industry -- 24-hour advertising, some have called it -- it's only logical that things have come to this. Ironies abound, of course. Friday's live show was seen exclusively on MTV, which reaches some 25 million cabled homes. A taped version of the awards will be going out over the next two weeks (including Thursday on WTTG) to more than 100 broadcast stations with a potential audience of 83 million homes. The sequence -- a cable special moving to broadcast -- is rare, but it comes at a time when MTV is making its first public stock offering and engaging in Word War II with Ted Turner over a second music channel aimed at a slightly older audience. In addition to reaping millions of dollars in publicity, MTV made a killing on the advertising level. Thirty-second spots, which normally go for a top rate of $2,500, were available only in a block of five for a flat $250,000; and one company, Chrysler, reportedly spent a quarter-million dollars to produce a very MTV-ish Duster commercial specifically for this show. Yet while advertisers could buy only a few precious minutes, MTV showed little shame in reminding viewers just what they were watching: a huge MTV neon logo was omnipresent and the podiums were rigged with television monitors that incessantly paraded the clever MTV logos and promos. Because it was live, the show had some pleasant glitches, as when one of the dancers in ZZ Top's live rendition of "Sharp-Dressed Man" stepped out of the Eliminator car -- and out of her shoe. Well, it was something of a first -- a band lip-synching to a live production of its award-winning video. And having a portion of the audience put on the group's patented Texas beards was a clever ploy. Within an hour after the show, most who had been in the audience or on stage were watching themselves on television monitors at the Tavern on the Green, the sprawling restaurant on the edge of Central Park. For once it wasn't sprawling enough: Guests moved around like Siamese twins joined at the egos. The crush was so ridiculous that limo drivers lining the street outside were taking bids for safe passage. If everybody who was anybody went to the Tavern, then everybody who was somebody went to the Hard Rock Cafe, where entrance was more often denied than allowed and where the caste system became more apparent as one moved from the first to the second level -- and from the front of the second level to the back. Here, the stars settled, including Midler and Aykroyd, Cher, Jack Nicholson, Lorne Michaels, Peter Wolf, Huey Lewis. Also Alice Cooper, Paul Shaeffer of David Letterman's show, "Late Night", directors Bob Giraldi, Kevin Godley and Lol Creme (the latter two responsible for "Rockit"), Billy Squier, Herbie Hancock and the bearded two-thirds of ZZ Top. The most active corner of the elite balcony held Rod Stewart and Ron Wood, Dale Bozzio and several others. When Van Halen's David Lee Roth came in, he whispered to a friend to "find somebody fun to sit with." And he did, sitting down by himself, and letting others come to him. As he stepped over the rope, a bouncer told Roth to watch his step. "Always," said the man who really does carry paternity insurance from Lloyd's of London. Roth, who is a genuinely funny man, got in the best line of the telecast, responding to an in-seat interview from one of MTV's insufferable veejays: "Like my daddy said when I was real little, he said, 'Dave, if you ever get into a contest, it doesn't matter if you win or lose, it's how good you looked.' " Which may have been the perfect philosophy for the entire evening. More than 2,000 teen-agers smashed bottles, tore Stephanie Zaharoudis Monday, August 16, 1982 ; Page C2 More than 2,000 teen-agers smashed bottles, tore down a Cyclone fence and dislodged a mobile home used as a ticket booth Saturday morning in Las Vegas while waiting to purchase tickets for a Van Halen concert to be held next month. There were no arrests, but police said several youths suffered drug overdoses and minor injuries from fist fights during the mass shoving match. Rock's Misbehavin' Man; Van Halen Monkey Hour; David Lee Roth and Van Halen's Heavy Metal By Richard Harrington Tuesday, July 28, 1981 ; Page C1 "When I was a little kid, they said I was hyperactive, sent me down to a child guidance clinic." Sitting in the dressing room of Philadelphia's monstrous Spectrum, Van Halen vocalist David Lee Roth pushes back two feet of scraggly, dirty-blond hair from his hawk face. "Every night after dinner, I'd start ticky tack on the table with a knife and fork, singing TV commercials, acting out cartoons. And my folks would say to the company, 'Don't mind Dave, he's just doing what we call Monkey Hour.'" Roth leans forward with a million-dollar smile, ready to punch the last with a gravelly growl that can barely contain its glee. "Well, I turned Monkey Hour into a career. I ticky tack and I sing and I dance and I tell jokes and 'm having a ball misbehavin.'" Having a ball in the corporate rock world of Van Halen means selling millions of records and filling, 20,000-seat megatheaters like the Spectrum (three nights last week) and Capital Centre (tonight and tomorrow) with hard-core fans who believe in stereo sawbucks: $10 for tickets, another $10 for T-shirts, programs, patches and other rock paraphernalia. It's a serious business, with certain crew members assigned "chase the bootlegger" duty at each concert.   Van Halen, unlike most of the monster groups, has hit the top without much airplay and without the press. In fact, the group, and Roth in particular, have attracted some of the most vitriolic press since rock criticism was born. The feeling is summed up in a letter to Creem, the only national magazine devoted to hard rock and heavy metal. "I want to write for your magazine. I hate David Lee Roth. Do I qualify?" (The editors answered: "You and an astonishing number of our readers.") Roth, a spandex-clad electric centaur whose on-stage leaps and erotic posing have blended with the group's maximum volume to turn Van Halen into America's Led Zeppelin, is unerringly described as "What Sylvia Miles would look like if she were a man," and "the female equivalent of Robert Plant." And these comments are from his fans. One girl did write saying, "Boy, would I love to have his hair." Roth sees a lot of the commentary as jealousy directed at the band's openly hedonistic and unabashedly affluent life style. Five years ago, the band was playing covers in Los Angeles singles bars; now they are all multimillionaires, surrounded by servants, bodyguards and other trappings of sudden success. Interestingly, Van Halen has spent the last five years as if there were no tomorrows, meaning the pervasive pursuit of pleasure symbolized by Roth's unique paternity insurance arrangement with Lloyd's of London; he managed to convince them that debauchery was "instrumental" to his work. "This stuff happens all the time," Roth shrugs. "You get letters from all over saying, 'You did this, you did that, you're responsible for this . . . and I want money.' You've got to insure yourself against all kinds of things, much less paternity. There are so many good ways to be bad. That's why you've got to cover your behind." Roth at 25 is not much different from the kid sneaking into the candy store after it's closed with the prospect of long hours with the goodies. "It becomes very difficult to deal with the distractions that come with the fame and the success and the fortune," he whimpers. "It's really difficult to deal with the hordes of 18- to 25-year-old women in sexy clothes who swamp you outside the hotel . . . the private jet planes . . . the catered buffets . . . the drugs that are everywhere -- not that I condone them. Everybody at the show is hysterical, it's 110 degrees and you feel like an animal up there until your head's gonna blow up like in 'Scanners.' It's difficult to deal with all that . . . but somehow we manage. It's tough, but somebody has to." Roth is all but rolling on the padded floor, convulsed with laughter. Van Halen tends to make the news portion of radio more often than it gets airplay. There was the M&M riot in New Mexico where the band did thousands of dollars of damage to a hall when they were served brown M&Ms -- their contract said the brown ones had to be removed. There was the controversial bondage poster of Roth by photographer Helmut Newton. There was the recent marriage of guitarist Eddie Van Halen to television star Valerie Bertinelli. There was Roth's arrest in Cincinnati on the "serious" charge of "inciting the crowd to smoke cigarettes" (charges dropped). " But mostly there is the derision leveled at the band -- lobotomy rock is one of the kinder terms -- and on Roth, whose singing does admittedly fall somewhere between a succession of Tarzan yells and the well-miked groans of a cow being branded over and over. Still, the band has millions of die-hard fans who snap up the records (its latest, "Fair Warning," is top 10) and crowd the arenas. "Maybe it's my triple spin with the knickerbocker break into the full splits with a smile on my face and the toes pointed perfectly," muses the acrobatic Roth before his pre-performance ritual of warm-up exercises and taping up of the legs (a program arranged by Los Angeles Lakers trainer Jack Kern). "It's just like playing ball; you've got to make your career last a little longer. And the music should look like it sounds," Roth insists."It's music 10 feet off the ground. Getting up there ain't hard; coming back down is the whole ball game." Roth has little time for the critics, whom he once decried for liking Elvis Costello "because they all look like Costello. Critics take Van Halen very personally. I think one of the main reasons is that a lot of critics have children of their own. It frightens them to think that any of their kids could turn out like me or one of the other fine members of our band. But while they're busy typing away in the office and putting together these horrendous exposes and diatribes against Van Halen, their kids are at home in bed under the covers with a flashlight, a Van Halen concert program and a Walkman. I get 'em from all sides." Rock; Mother Takes 'Ultimate Trip' Judy Mann Wednesday, August 5, 1981 ; Page B1 There comes a time in the life of all parents when their children turn into teenagers and soon after this cosmic event occurs, previously reasonable children begin begging to go to rock concerts. Most parents can tolerate anywhere from one to two years of teen-age harassment about this before they execute a time-honored parental move known as caving in.And so, with a prayer in their hearts and apocalypse on their minds, they watch as their beloved teen-ager rides off in a car driven by some marginally older kid and disappears into the night. The teenager's thrill of adventure is matched in every measure by the parents' conviction that they will never, ever see their child alive again. Rock concerts can make you lose your grip. For Dee Karman, a mother of two who lives in Sterling Park, the rock concert ordeal began in June when her 14-year-old daughter Jill heard on the radio that Van Halen was coming to the Capital Centre at the end of July. "Who," responded Dee, "is he?" "It' a group, not a he, " was the reply, doubtless one that was heard in a thousand different tones of exasperation around the Capital Beltway that day. Her daughter pleaded to go. But Dee Karman took an extraordinary step that crosses most parents' minds but one that is promptly driven out by anguished cries. "I said she could go, but two adults have to go with her," says Dee. "And she said, 'No, no, we can't have it that way,' and I said, 'It will be that way or you won't go.' She knew she didn't have any choice." Thus began one of Dee Karman's more traumatic adventures in motherhood. Since her daughter was still in school, Dee was the one elected to get tickets and soon thereafter she found herself in line outside Hecht's at Tysons Corner. During the entire three-hour wait, she saw no one over 30. "I felt ancient," she recalled. Shortly before last Wednesday, Dee found out that her husband, who works for the Federal Aviation Administration, was not going to be by her side for this one. He was going to be out of town. She considered selling the tickets. She tried to find another adult to go with her. She even tried to get a 20-year-old male neighbor to go with her. He could not. She was on her own, committed to shepherding four teen-age girls to safety through the unknown terrors of a Van Halen rock concert. Shortly before Dee left her job as a dental receptionist that day, her daughter called her on the phone. "She said, 'I have your clothes laid out on the bed.' i got home and saw she had my oldest pair of jeans out, jeans I don't even wear outside the house, an old flannel shirt, and a scarf she wanted me to wear on my head. I said, 'No, way.' We've got to flatten your hair some way,'" Completing the ensemble was a new pair of shoes which Dee, to her daughter's chagrin, refused to wear outside for a while in order to get them dirty. "Here it is the end of July," says Dee, "and here I am in this flannel shirt. But she thought it was the only thing I had that looked awful enough. "This is my little blond, blue-eyed daughter who wants to be a doctor. So here she is, dressed in the oldest clothes she owns. She has a scarf tied around her head like a sweatband, all of my Indian turquoise jewelry, the dangling earrings which I never let her wear, and all I could think of was, 'If your father saw you, he would never let you go out of the door.' She looked so bad, in fact, that I was afraid some of the neighbors might be outside and see us leave. "I left my purse at home, so I stuffed everything in my pocket. I told them they couldn't go to the bathroom without me. I just didn't know what would go on if I wasn't in there. I pictured it would be really bad. . . . I was a nervous wreck going over there with them. I expected the worst." But she ended up being surprised. She says the kids in the audience got their money's worth, and although she saw one girl who passed out, she came away with the impression that rock concert crowds aren't nearly as awful as they supposed to be. "In fact, several people bumped into me as we were walking and almost everyone said, 'Excuse me.' I thought it would really be a bad crowd. I found out i wasn't that way. "I tried not to be too critical of the music. The thing that shocked me was the pot smoking. It was everywhere," she says. Dee Karman said she scanned the audience at the sold-out concert and figured she was one of maybe five people over 30, which among other things, tells you how few parents would have done what she did when facing the decision of whether to allow a child to go to a rock concert. "Before I went, I would never have let her go alone. Now, I would feel easier about dropping her at the door and letting her go with a group of girls," she says. "It's difficult," she mused in the quiet aftermath of her adventure. "As my mother said when I was growing up, "Wait until you have your own children and then you'll understand.'" Van Halen: the Noise Boys By Joanne Ostrow Friday, April 25, 1980 ; Page THE ALBUM -- Van Halen, "Women and Children First," (Warner Bros. HS 3415). Begin to suspect Van Halen's "Women and Children First" album is up to no good when the fold-out poster reveals lead vocalist David Lee Roth in black leather pants, kneeling, chained by his wrists to an aluminum fence. Now if you're not putoff by the complimentary bondage shot, proceed to play the LP. Of course, it needs the 130-decibel treatment to be fully appreciated. A typical cut, "Everybody Wants Somell," is distinguished by explicit sexual references spoken between screeching verses. Radio airplay of the song doesn't do justice to the animal screams, airplane guitar buzzes and jungle drums. There's enough heavy metal here to be recycled into a fleet of motorcycles. Which isn't to say they don't have fans. Van Halen's ear-splitting barrage will draw mobs of anesthetized youths to a sold-out Capital Centre concert this Thursday, presumably not to listen so much as to soak up the electrified muddle of sound. To grownups, this is the sort of rock that gives rock a bad name. If at first you don't understand Van Halen's music, crank up the volume. The four-man group which sprouted in California a few years ago may be best known for their remake of a Kinks clasic, "You Really Got Me," and their own "Jamie's Cryin'." Alex and Edward Van Halen, Michael Anthony and David Lee Roth have repeated this power-rock formula through three albums. All the songs on their most recent LP are originals, though they're sadly lacking in originality. Oddly, the album title is taken from the least characteristic tune recorded by the L.A. band. "Could This Magic?" is a folky ballad -- perhaps their idea of a musical joke but still the most listenable song on the album. It takes time out from chains long enough to indulge a backporch pickin' session with harmony vocals and slide-guitar licks. A vocal that sounds like John Sebastian, of all people, twangs; Could this be magic Or could this be love? Could this turn tragic -- You know that magic often does. Down-home for a moment, it's metal-as-usual on the rest of the recording. "Take Your Whiskey Home" actually begins with a hint of melody on guitar, but it's soon soused with drums, bass and monotonous vocals. A further electrical effect is achieved at the abrupt end, as though someone had pulled the plug on the group. And not a moment too soon. Producer Ted Templeman has blended some artful guitar zaps and bass echoes, especially on "Romeo & Juliet" when a synthesized "heartbeat" weaves in and out of the oppressive shrillness. But such isolated touches are obscured by the general roar. If you lost interest in grating metal back when Kiss added fire-bomb flourishes to their live show, Van Halen's latest effort is not for you. Their concert will be geared to young, shock-proof eardrums. For anyone else at the show, one line frm Van Halen's "Romeo & Juliet" says it all: "We're in for a very long night."   To email the article you just read above to someone else {click here} .

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