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Yeah, so it's old........but it's still a good read........
DLR: Oh yeah. Just when you thought you'd seen it all here comes a whole 'nother lofts worth. I describe adventure in a very simple term: the thrill of the unpredictable fetish.
POP: That's what was so great about Roth-era Van Halen. The rough edges. You can't polish off the rough edges. That's what's wrong with Van Halen today. There's no balls.
DLR: Classic Van Halen made you want to drink, dance and fuck. Current Van Halen encourages us to drink milk, drive a Nissan and have a relationship. And you've always sensed that, 'cause you feel the same way. I'm the most validating guy you could ever want. That's why I'm still in this magazine 20 summers later. Plus, you suspect me of everything, huh? Don't ya? And so do all of you reading this. You can go, 'Diamond Dave? Yeah, he does. You can tell, that's why he sings that way.' So no matter what I admit to, and I admit to a great number of things in my book, it's all totally validated. That's worth the price. The only things that I don't admit to in this epic tome are current with 'everybody got off easy.' So ya all better fuckin' behave. Nobody moves, nobody gets hurt. This is a robbery.
POP: When you recorded the two new songs with Van Halen, were there any other songs that you guys jammed on that were left unfinished? Any outtakes?
DLR: Your talent and output as an artist will always be a slave to your character, your personality and your lifestyle. And the Van Halens have changed to a great degree. I love responsibility. I volunteer for everything, but the Van Halens have a tremendous amount of responsibility, and on more than one occasion Ed Van Halen would look off, MTV style, into the past, blink a few dozen times like Oprah and go, 'I hate you. I'm jealous of you.' Why? 'Cause you followed your passions, even when it cost you in record sales. I have always done what I was supposed to do. I always had my brother, an agent, a manager, my brother in law,' and on and on. And I knew that in advance. Storming the Gates Of Leipzig will cost you a lot of your soldiers. Some of it is for valor. Some of it for ambition and imagination. Damn the torpedoes. With Ed Van Halen, it is strategic. It is taking care of responsibilities, which is great. God bless him. Mick seems to have pulled it off, so has Keith. The ultimate pirate. Nevertheless, let's hail back to Rocky II and III, with Burgess Meredith. Any great fighter, no matter how great you are, you can do 10 percent better with a beanie and a bucket. Smoke lightning and crap thunder. He sits with Rocky in his new Italian suit in his marvelous Mediterranean architectural pallet and says, 'I can't train ya, Rock.' 'Why not, Mick?' 'Cause the worst thing that could happen to a fighter happened to ya. You became civilized.'
Remember 'Eye Of The Tiger' and all of that? I do believe that if you're going to strike the blow, the shot heard 'round the world, you need not be a brillianteen Samurai or a five star general. You follow the story of the little skinny villager who was walking along in the late 1500s near the Osaka Gate outside of the castle in a conical hat and a little diaper who accidentally steps on the scabbard of a Samurai next to him. Which was a great insult. Big time insult, slap in the face. And the Samurai turned to him and said, 'I challenge you to a duel to the death for your disrespect.' And the villager had to accept and he was beside himself. And that night he went to the swordsmith of the village and said, 'What can I possibly do? Can you teach me something with the sword? Can you give me some advice? I'm a farmer. He is somebody who's been swinging around a 14 pound straight razor since he was 16 years old.' And the swordsmith laughed and said, 'Yes, I can teach you two things. First I will show you one cut, because I cannot teach you fencing in one night. One cut only. And then I want you to go home, and as you sleep I want you to get used to the idea that you're a dead man. There is no hope on this Earth for you or even in the next life. Get used to it. All is lost. Not that you are prepared to give up all, but that all is already lost. Then you will have such complete concentration on the one cut I am about to teach you that you have a chance of sending him to Hell as you ascend.' So they worked for 10 minutes, he went home, and got really used to the idea that all was lost. Not that he's prepared to give it up, but that it's gone. And the next day at high noon, he showed up in the village square and held up a sword that was as big as his whole little body. And the Samurai drew his sword eloquently and they locked eyes for 10 minutes and did not move. And after 10 silent, deadly minutes, the Samurai lowered his sword very slowly and said, 'You win. I can see in your eyes and the way that you hold that sword that you are protecting nothing. There is no gap in your defense that I could possibly surge through. Even if I take your head, I'm going to be leaving with you and that is no victory. You win.' That gap in your concentration in Japanese is called 'Suki.' I used to know a stripper from Dallas named Suki, but it was spelled differently. Nevertheless, just as terrifying. When you can take that spirit and pursue your vision, go! Climb the Treasure Mountain and do not return empty handed. This serves as advice to new young artists in any kind of art, poetic, ballet, theater, writing, computer, song, dance, photography. If you can really wake up in the morning with that in your heart, you'll climb the Treasure Mountain. The times that I have failed, and the only real regrets I have are the adventures and love affairs I didn't go after. I was not that little guy. I had fears, distractions, gaps in my concentration. When new artists say to me, 'Dave, how will I know that I've made it?' I tell 'em, 'When you can spell 'subpoena' without thinking about it, you made it.'
POP: There's tons of great unreleased old Van Halen songs from various bootlegs. Were there ever any plans to release this stuff as a box set, or is that now out of the question?
DLR: Those were the golden years. The struggle. When all else was put to the side. When I was in classic Van Halen, I was in charge of propaganda. Beautiful thing, all the photos, the rumors, the stage shows, the T-shirts, and on and on. I believe it all adds up to your message, especially if your message is, as mine so frequently is, 'I have no message.' What we got with the last greatest hits from Van Halen, who had a series of other agendas, was a black and white album cover picture of a piece of a guitar. Half of it was some other singer. No video. Had I been in charge, it would have gone something like this: In America, we believe big time in publicizing the shit out of 'we ain't talkin'.' First we make goddamn sure that everybody knows we ain't saying anything. Then we get three jets for each syllable, Van-Ha-Len, and ya gotta line 'em up so that it spells out. We reconnoiter a super studio somewhere tropical, salt water, solar power, fly the entire mad dog and Englishman retinue, wives, girlfriends, household pets, favorite paintings, don't pack light. Bring the palm trees, and we'll go get someplace with a vaguely French name like 'mosquito.' We'll spend three months down there, 90 days metric, putting together an entire album and rehearsing said material plus all the classic VH stuff by loading all of this 80 to a 120 person entourage onto between four and seven great, grandiose tall masted sailboats, and touring adjacent islands and playing at thatched roof, propeller in the ceiling bars on Friday and Saturday nights. I would hire the Coen Brothers and Sonnenfeld as our cinematographer to make a documentary with a twist. Build a sub-plot or four or five. Dinners on Friday nights will be replete and complete with 40-plus guests, doesn't include the 120 original members-Quentin Tarantino, Heidi Fleiss...now I'm just going off the top of my head here, this is just the first 38 seconds of recon here. Then it becomes suddenly evident that we must tour. Well, that means we have to rehearse in Paris, London, NY, Miami and LA. Just to get the flavor, because you play like what you ate for dinner. And then we run the band through its paces in the Pacific Rim and South America. And we leak, dribble, ooze and supply the internet with all the most colorful, rumor-mongering, gossip, detailed, tabloidal...'they were chasing him and nine paparazzi were killed in a tunnel.'
POP:I think people were really excited about a Van Halen/Diamond Dave reunion, and really wanted to see it come in with a bang and develop into an album and tour...
DLR: And why not? Live it and breathe it because it fuels what you do as an artist. If you hate where you are and you're sitting around on the Island Of Mosquito, 'Awe the fuckin' French. I hate the French.' Great! That comes out in your playing.
POP: If Van Halen were to approach you about getting back together...
DLR: Not without a lawyer and a valium!
POP: If they were to come back to you, tails between their legs and say, 'Okay, we fucked up, we've alienated all of our fans, and chose this loser from Extreme. C'mon Dave, let's do a reunion for real.'
DLR: Stop! I don't accept 'tails between the legs.' S'cuse me, my knuckles are draggin'. I still read the printed word, especially books. I eat red meat. I drink a strong drink without the ice in it. And I do not come from a smoke free environment. Should anyone approach me with, 'Baaaaa baaaaa' and a tail between their legs, not interested. Somebody comes back to me and goes, 'You heel-rockin', change-fumbling, puss-nutted, no-dick, cock-breath, throwaway fuck up, let's go hunting!' What's happening over there on Howdy Doody Mountain is that there's an ego problem. They don't have one. What kind of animal makes the most angry faces and loudest sound out in the bush? The one that's the most frightened. I have an ego the size of Texas and then some. You need me to sit down and start over again-I don't care how many times-you want me to reconvene and be with and break bread with you. Can do! I'm very settled in who I am.
POP: So it would depend on how they came back to you?
DLR: Oh Jesus, this band has been at each others throats since before the beginning. Once upon a time, no even before that. And out of this conflict comes marvelous, competitive, flame throwing, hallelujah, dump truck size, Bubba's hot barbecue, Watusi couple number two to the dance floor please. When classic Van Halen is together it's like one person. When I say 'I' in this respect, I mean my whole cadre that I am part of. I'm the tear boss, and I'm a fuckin' lifer.
POP: When you guys got back together was there any point when you just hung out and jammed? DLR: No. And that's why it's so magnificent that the result transcended all of that. It is purely magical to be part of a dynasty. Van Halen, to many people, is equal to what Mick and Keith may be to some people. Page and Plant. Lennon and McCartney. There comes a point in your career if you make it past the requisite three to six years, which if you think about it, Beatles, six years and gone. Hendrix, six and a half, gone. And on and on. There comes a point, if you're lucky, where you enter a pantheon of heroes where you're known for what you've done, not what you're doing now, or what you're going to do in the future. If Beethoven were cryogenically brought back into the market place tomorrow, what would we all want to hear, 'da-da-da-da' (Beethoven's 5th)! When the Three Tenors get together and they surf every wild vocal wave operatically throughout history that you could imagine and then some, what's the encore? 'O Solo Mio!' Ha Ha! When you go to the Stones, what do you want to hear? Play me 'Brown Sugar' and I'll go get a T-shirt. That's Van Halen. And that is part and parcel of when what you do as an entity transcends just music.
POP: Were you worried when you left Van Halen in '84 that you might not be as successful a solo artist? That the sound of the group might have transcended the talents of any one player?
DLR: I had no delusions about that when I left Van Halen. I left for the same reasons that this time occurred. But to start a band from scratch? Oh my god, Frank. Wow! That is something. But I am a team player. Spiritually, critically, I am. I love the responsibility that is labeled onto me because of that, and I love to be able to depend on it, ya know. For me it's not the Dave Roth show. For me, it's back to The Dirty Dozen and The Wild Bunch. Remember the bald black guy who was a bow and arrow expert? And this one's a sharp shooter...
POP: You got a safecracker...
DLR: Right, a computer programmer. That's what I always based it on.
POP: A covert, operative, vigilante, destroy-everything-in-sight team.
DLR: And every bit as knuckle dragging and marshall-spirited as all of those movies. When we're through pounding everybody else into oblivion on the Monsters Of Rock Festival, then we'll turn on each other.
POP: Why is it that Michael Anthony is only mentioned in the book like two or three times? Is he, to quote Derek Smalls from Spinal Tap, 'like luke warm water'?
DLR: I grew up in a family with parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents, etc., who weren't happy unless they were completely miserable. Ed Van Halen and his brother are cut from the same stone. Somebody always has to be under their thumb. Mike Anthony has always played that part because I refused to.
POP: Is he the 'yes man' of the band?
DLR: Very much so. He doesn't come from the background of 'I'm not afraid to get in your face.' I been places with my face you wouldn't go with a Glock, okay? My best pal in jujitsu is Greg. Sniper on the Florida Swat Team. 6'4 and huge. He says, 'Hey, ya wanna hear some war stories? Remember that guy who kidnapped the bus load of retarded kids? I'm the one who capped him. Three hundred meters with a Honeywell scope.' And I said, 'What kind of gun did you use?' Michael doesn't have that facility. He doesn't question. Which is great, but you can't school somebody into invincibility. So like the current bass solo where he rolls around on stage and makes like he's a cheetah, I invented that solo for him back in 1980 because he couldn't really play something articulate musically. Which is fine. Never held me up. So I said, 'Okay, now you are a professional wrestler, now you're a machine gunner, now you're a desert rag,' and what have you. But he's always been under the thumb of Ed Van Halen. Now again, I have an immense ego. My whole strategy is based on: I like you. I hope ya love me. I hope ya love everything I do. And this is what I do, Frank. If ya love what I do, tell a friend. If you don't, tell an enemy, 'cause I'm still gonna be here tomorrow.
POP: When you were touring in the Eighties and early Nineties, Extreme opened for you. What was your relationship with Gary Cherone like before the recent chain of events?
DLR: I always pictured Extreme as being short for 'extremely boring.' And I describe their music and Gary Cherone's contribution as a condom advertisement, have you read this before? 'Thousands of tiny little notes, urging you to let go with music so thin, you feel like you're hearing nothing at all.' There will always be a Holyfield or a Tyson, but there's only one Mohammad Ali. There will always be a new body building champion, but there's only one Arnold. And there's only one David Lee. I'm the fun in Van Halen, always will be. And I think you can see that now. My belligerent enthusiasm is as optimistic as ever. I'm an optimist. When I go fishin', I take a Nikon and a frying pan.
POP: A staple of rock concerts in the Seventies and Eighties was for every musician to take a solo, but the vocalist usually just stuck to fronting the band. You took this to another level on the 1984 tour when you did a sword and streamers dance as your solo section. Where did that come from?
DLR: It should look like it sounds. And it should be Esperanto. It should cross all racial, economic and language barriers. When I did the sword routine, that's classic kung fu. Why do I do what I do? Or why do it the way I do it? Well, I've always believed that it should be based on the personality, the character and the musicality of the individual. So I'll use my body language in a variety of ways. And when you do a kung fu form, or even pretend that you're doing a backhand in tennis for the final hit of a song that ends, you can feel it. Twenty thousand heads reflex back. These are ancient art forms. I also believe in the Kabuki method that you should be able to freeze the action at any single point in time and have a perfect photograph. There's no such thing as a bad photo. At any point, transitional or otherwise, even when they're switching the stage set and the curtains. You should be right on. And that doesn't mean that you're always strategizing exactly where you're gonna be. The best photography, according to the great photographer Diane Arbus, always shows the flaw. The guy who gets himself totally fixed up, thinks he's looking sharp, cool and happening, but his pants are four inches too short or the belt shouldn't really be poly-vinyl-fluoride. You know what I'm saying? I believe that imperfection, when you are completely immersed in the thing at hand, won't deliver a bad photograph.
POP: I got one more question, and I hope this isn't too weird.
DLR: I hope you can catch as good as you can fish!
POP: One of the rumors that have been floating around over the years is that the real reason you left Van Halen is that you had slept with Alex's wife and they kicked you out. Any truth to that?
DLR: What it was, was that I kept riffing that Valerie had slept with Schneider!
POP: Any last word for POPsmear readers?
DLR: Larceny! Somewhere between shoplifting and manslaughter two is larceny! Thins the blood, builds character, keeps the skin looking good.
At this point, we ended the 'official' interview session and headed over to Crazy Girls to enjoy some of Hollywood's finest female attractions. When I entered, Dave, who had arrived before me, had officially draped the room. He was sitting proudly in a back booth with an array of empty shot glasses before him and two strippers next to him performing lap dances on each other! As I entered, he shouted, 'Frank! Hey pal, come over and join the party!' As I approached the beaming, jovial, center of attention that is Diamond Dave, it dawned on me: this was a moment that, in my wildest childhood fantasies, I had never imagined could possibly come true. I had money in my pocket, a whole bar full of booze awaiting my consumption, a bevy of naked women at my disposal and David Lee Roth calling me 'pal.' What more could I ask for? What followed was an evening so far beyond my wildest expectations that I have actually been sworn to secrecy by the powers that be. So I'll just have to let your filthy little imaginations paint the pictures and fill in the blanks. Let's just say that I'll never listen to the song 'Unchained' the same way again.
DLR: Oh yeah. Just when you thought you'd seen it all here comes a whole 'nother lofts worth. I describe adventure in a very simple term: the thrill of the unpredictable fetish.
POP: That's what was so great about Roth-era Van Halen. The rough edges. You can't polish off the rough edges. That's what's wrong with Van Halen today. There's no balls.
DLR: Classic Van Halen made you want to drink, dance and fuck. Current Van Halen encourages us to drink milk, drive a Nissan and have a relationship. And you've always sensed that, 'cause you feel the same way. I'm the most validating guy you could ever want. That's why I'm still in this magazine 20 summers later. Plus, you suspect me of everything, huh? Don't ya? And so do all of you reading this. You can go, 'Diamond Dave? Yeah, he does. You can tell, that's why he sings that way.' So no matter what I admit to, and I admit to a great number of things in my book, it's all totally validated. That's worth the price. The only things that I don't admit to in this epic tome are current with 'everybody got off easy.' So ya all better fuckin' behave. Nobody moves, nobody gets hurt. This is a robbery.
POP: When you recorded the two new songs with Van Halen, were there any other songs that you guys jammed on that were left unfinished? Any outtakes?
DLR: Your talent and output as an artist will always be a slave to your character, your personality and your lifestyle. And the Van Halens have changed to a great degree. I love responsibility. I volunteer for everything, but the Van Halens have a tremendous amount of responsibility, and on more than one occasion Ed Van Halen would look off, MTV style, into the past, blink a few dozen times like Oprah and go, 'I hate you. I'm jealous of you.' Why? 'Cause you followed your passions, even when it cost you in record sales. I have always done what I was supposed to do. I always had my brother, an agent, a manager, my brother in law,' and on and on. And I knew that in advance. Storming the Gates Of Leipzig will cost you a lot of your soldiers. Some of it is for valor. Some of it for ambition and imagination. Damn the torpedoes. With Ed Van Halen, it is strategic. It is taking care of responsibilities, which is great. God bless him. Mick seems to have pulled it off, so has Keith. The ultimate pirate. Nevertheless, let's hail back to Rocky II and III, with Burgess Meredith. Any great fighter, no matter how great you are, you can do 10 percent better with a beanie and a bucket. Smoke lightning and crap thunder. He sits with Rocky in his new Italian suit in his marvelous Mediterranean architectural pallet and says, 'I can't train ya, Rock.' 'Why not, Mick?' 'Cause the worst thing that could happen to a fighter happened to ya. You became civilized.'
Remember 'Eye Of The Tiger' and all of that? I do believe that if you're going to strike the blow, the shot heard 'round the world, you need not be a brillianteen Samurai or a five star general. You follow the story of the little skinny villager who was walking along in the late 1500s near the Osaka Gate outside of the castle in a conical hat and a little diaper who accidentally steps on the scabbard of a Samurai next to him. Which was a great insult. Big time insult, slap in the face. And the Samurai turned to him and said, 'I challenge you to a duel to the death for your disrespect.' And the villager had to accept and he was beside himself. And that night he went to the swordsmith of the village and said, 'What can I possibly do? Can you teach me something with the sword? Can you give me some advice? I'm a farmer. He is somebody who's been swinging around a 14 pound straight razor since he was 16 years old.' And the swordsmith laughed and said, 'Yes, I can teach you two things. First I will show you one cut, because I cannot teach you fencing in one night. One cut only. And then I want you to go home, and as you sleep I want you to get used to the idea that you're a dead man. There is no hope on this Earth for you or even in the next life. Get used to it. All is lost. Not that you are prepared to give up all, but that all is already lost. Then you will have such complete concentration on the one cut I am about to teach you that you have a chance of sending him to Hell as you ascend.' So they worked for 10 minutes, he went home, and got really used to the idea that all was lost. Not that he's prepared to give it up, but that it's gone. And the next day at high noon, he showed up in the village square and held up a sword that was as big as his whole little body. And the Samurai drew his sword eloquently and they locked eyes for 10 minutes and did not move. And after 10 silent, deadly minutes, the Samurai lowered his sword very slowly and said, 'You win. I can see in your eyes and the way that you hold that sword that you are protecting nothing. There is no gap in your defense that I could possibly surge through. Even if I take your head, I'm going to be leaving with you and that is no victory. You win.' That gap in your concentration in Japanese is called 'Suki.' I used to know a stripper from Dallas named Suki, but it was spelled differently. Nevertheless, just as terrifying. When you can take that spirit and pursue your vision, go! Climb the Treasure Mountain and do not return empty handed. This serves as advice to new young artists in any kind of art, poetic, ballet, theater, writing, computer, song, dance, photography. If you can really wake up in the morning with that in your heart, you'll climb the Treasure Mountain. The times that I have failed, and the only real regrets I have are the adventures and love affairs I didn't go after. I was not that little guy. I had fears, distractions, gaps in my concentration. When new artists say to me, 'Dave, how will I know that I've made it?' I tell 'em, 'When you can spell 'subpoena' without thinking about it, you made it.'
POP: There's tons of great unreleased old Van Halen songs from various bootlegs. Were there ever any plans to release this stuff as a box set, or is that now out of the question?
DLR: Those were the golden years. The struggle. When all else was put to the side. When I was in classic Van Halen, I was in charge of propaganda. Beautiful thing, all the photos, the rumors, the stage shows, the T-shirts, and on and on. I believe it all adds up to your message, especially if your message is, as mine so frequently is, 'I have no message.' What we got with the last greatest hits from Van Halen, who had a series of other agendas, was a black and white album cover picture of a piece of a guitar. Half of it was some other singer. No video. Had I been in charge, it would have gone something like this: In America, we believe big time in publicizing the shit out of 'we ain't talkin'.' First we make goddamn sure that everybody knows we ain't saying anything. Then we get three jets for each syllable, Van-Ha-Len, and ya gotta line 'em up so that it spells out. We reconnoiter a super studio somewhere tropical, salt water, solar power, fly the entire mad dog and Englishman retinue, wives, girlfriends, household pets, favorite paintings, don't pack light. Bring the palm trees, and we'll go get someplace with a vaguely French name like 'mosquito.' We'll spend three months down there, 90 days metric, putting together an entire album and rehearsing said material plus all the classic VH stuff by loading all of this 80 to a 120 person entourage onto between four and seven great, grandiose tall masted sailboats, and touring adjacent islands and playing at thatched roof, propeller in the ceiling bars on Friday and Saturday nights. I would hire the Coen Brothers and Sonnenfeld as our cinematographer to make a documentary with a twist. Build a sub-plot or four or five. Dinners on Friday nights will be replete and complete with 40-plus guests, doesn't include the 120 original members-Quentin Tarantino, Heidi Fleiss...now I'm just going off the top of my head here, this is just the first 38 seconds of recon here. Then it becomes suddenly evident that we must tour. Well, that means we have to rehearse in Paris, London, NY, Miami and LA. Just to get the flavor, because you play like what you ate for dinner. And then we run the band through its paces in the Pacific Rim and South America. And we leak, dribble, ooze and supply the internet with all the most colorful, rumor-mongering, gossip, detailed, tabloidal...'they were chasing him and nine paparazzi were killed in a tunnel.'
POP:I think people were really excited about a Van Halen/Diamond Dave reunion, and really wanted to see it come in with a bang and develop into an album and tour...
DLR: And why not? Live it and breathe it because it fuels what you do as an artist. If you hate where you are and you're sitting around on the Island Of Mosquito, 'Awe the fuckin' French. I hate the French.' Great! That comes out in your playing.
POP: If Van Halen were to approach you about getting back together...
DLR: Not without a lawyer and a valium!
POP: If they were to come back to you, tails between their legs and say, 'Okay, we fucked up, we've alienated all of our fans, and chose this loser from Extreme. C'mon Dave, let's do a reunion for real.'
DLR: Stop! I don't accept 'tails between the legs.' S'cuse me, my knuckles are draggin'. I still read the printed word, especially books. I eat red meat. I drink a strong drink without the ice in it. And I do not come from a smoke free environment. Should anyone approach me with, 'Baaaaa baaaaa' and a tail between their legs, not interested. Somebody comes back to me and goes, 'You heel-rockin', change-fumbling, puss-nutted, no-dick, cock-breath, throwaway fuck up, let's go hunting!' What's happening over there on Howdy Doody Mountain is that there's an ego problem. They don't have one. What kind of animal makes the most angry faces and loudest sound out in the bush? The one that's the most frightened. I have an ego the size of Texas and then some. You need me to sit down and start over again-I don't care how many times-you want me to reconvene and be with and break bread with you. Can do! I'm very settled in who I am.
POP: So it would depend on how they came back to you?
DLR: Oh Jesus, this band has been at each others throats since before the beginning. Once upon a time, no even before that. And out of this conflict comes marvelous, competitive, flame throwing, hallelujah, dump truck size, Bubba's hot barbecue, Watusi couple number two to the dance floor please. When classic Van Halen is together it's like one person. When I say 'I' in this respect, I mean my whole cadre that I am part of. I'm the tear boss, and I'm a fuckin' lifer.
POP: When you guys got back together was there any point when you just hung out and jammed? DLR: No. And that's why it's so magnificent that the result transcended all of that. It is purely magical to be part of a dynasty. Van Halen, to many people, is equal to what Mick and Keith may be to some people. Page and Plant. Lennon and McCartney. There comes a point in your career if you make it past the requisite three to six years, which if you think about it, Beatles, six years and gone. Hendrix, six and a half, gone. And on and on. There comes a point, if you're lucky, where you enter a pantheon of heroes where you're known for what you've done, not what you're doing now, or what you're going to do in the future. If Beethoven were cryogenically brought back into the market place tomorrow, what would we all want to hear, 'da-da-da-da' (Beethoven's 5th)! When the Three Tenors get together and they surf every wild vocal wave operatically throughout history that you could imagine and then some, what's the encore? 'O Solo Mio!' Ha Ha! When you go to the Stones, what do you want to hear? Play me 'Brown Sugar' and I'll go get a T-shirt. That's Van Halen. And that is part and parcel of when what you do as an entity transcends just music.
POP: Were you worried when you left Van Halen in '84 that you might not be as successful a solo artist? That the sound of the group might have transcended the talents of any one player?
DLR: I had no delusions about that when I left Van Halen. I left for the same reasons that this time occurred. But to start a band from scratch? Oh my god, Frank. Wow! That is something. But I am a team player. Spiritually, critically, I am. I love the responsibility that is labeled onto me because of that, and I love to be able to depend on it, ya know. For me it's not the Dave Roth show. For me, it's back to The Dirty Dozen and The Wild Bunch. Remember the bald black guy who was a bow and arrow expert? And this one's a sharp shooter...
POP: You got a safecracker...
DLR: Right, a computer programmer. That's what I always based it on.
POP: A covert, operative, vigilante, destroy-everything-in-sight team.
DLR: And every bit as knuckle dragging and marshall-spirited as all of those movies. When we're through pounding everybody else into oblivion on the Monsters Of Rock Festival, then we'll turn on each other.
POP: Why is it that Michael Anthony is only mentioned in the book like two or three times? Is he, to quote Derek Smalls from Spinal Tap, 'like luke warm water'?
DLR: I grew up in a family with parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents, etc., who weren't happy unless they were completely miserable. Ed Van Halen and his brother are cut from the same stone. Somebody always has to be under their thumb. Mike Anthony has always played that part because I refused to.
POP: Is he the 'yes man' of the band?
DLR: Very much so. He doesn't come from the background of 'I'm not afraid to get in your face.' I been places with my face you wouldn't go with a Glock, okay? My best pal in jujitsu is Greg. Sniper on the Florida Swat Team. 6'4 and huge. He says, 'Hey, ya wanna hear some war stories? Remember that guy who kidnapped the bus load of retarded kids? I'm the one who capped him. Three hundred meters with a Honeywell scope.' And I said, 'What kind of gun did you use?' Michael doesn't have that facility. He doesn't question. Which is great, but you can't school somebody into invincibility. So like the current bass solo where he rolls around on stage and makes like he's a cheetah, I invented that solo for him back in 1980 because he couldn't really play something articulate musically. Which is fine. Never held me up. So I said, 'Okay, now you are a professional wrestler, now you're a machine gunner, now you're a desert rag,' and what have you. But he's always been under the thumb of Ed Van Halen. Now again, I have an immense ego. My whole strategy is based on: I like you. I hope ya love me. I hope ya love everything I do. And this is what I do, Frank. If ya love what I do, tell a friend. If you don't, tell an enemy, 'cause I'm still gonna be here tomorrow.
POP: When you were touring in the Eighties and early Nineties, Extreme opened for you. What was your relationship with Gary Cherone like before the recent chain of events?
DLR: I always pictured Extreme as being short for 'extremely boring.' And I describe their music and Gary Cherone's contribution as a condom advertisement, have you read this before? 'Thousands of tiny little notes, urging you to let go with music so thin, you feel like you're hearing nothing at all.' There will always be a Holyfield or a Tyson, but there's only one Mohammad Ali. There will always be a new body building champion, but there's only one Arnold. And there's only one David Lee. I'm the fun in Van Halen, always will be. And I think you can see that now. My belligerent enthusiasm is as optimistic as ever. I'm an optimist. When I go fishin', I take a Nikon and a frying pan.
POP: A staple of rock concerts in the Seventies and Eighties was for every musician to take a solo, but the vocalist usually just stuck to fronting the band. You took this to another level on the 1984 tour when you did a sword and streamers dance as your solo section. Where did that come from?
DLR: It should look like it sounds. And it should be Esperanto. It should cross all racial, economic and language barriers. When I did the sword routine, that's classic kung fu. Why do I do what I do? Or why do it the way I do it? Well, I've always believed that it should be based on the personality, the character and the musicality of the individual. So I'll use my body language in a variety of ways. And when you do a kung fu form, or even pretend that you're doing a backhand in tennis for the final hit of a song that ends, you can feel it. Twenty thousand heads reflex back. These are ancient art forms. I also believe in the Kabuki method that you should be able to freeze the action at any single point in time and have a perfect photograph. There's no such thing as a bad photo. At any point, transitional or otherwise, even when they're switching the stage set and the curtains. You should be right on. And that doesn't mean that you're always strategizing exactly where you're gonna be. The best photography, according to the great photographer Diane Arbus, always shows the flaw. The guy who gets himself totally fixed up, thinks he's looking sharp, cool and happening, but his pants are four inches too short or the belt shouldn't really be poly-vinyl-fluoride. You know what I'm saying? I believe that imperfection, when you are completely immersed in the thing at hand, won't deliver a bad photograph.
POP: I got one more question, and I hope this isn't too weird.
DLR: I hope you can catch as good as you can fish!
POP: One of the rumors that have been floating around over the years is that the real reason you left Van Halen is that you had slept with Alex's wife and they kicked you out. Any truth to that?
DLR: What it was, was that I kept riffing that Valerie had slept with Schneider!
POP: Any last word for POPsmear readers?
DLR: Larceny! Somewhere between shoplifting and manslaughter two is larceny! Thins the blood, builds character, keeps the skin looking good.
At this point, we ended the 'official' interview session and headed over to Crazy Girls to enjoy some of Hollywood's finest female attractions. When I entered, Dave, who had arrived before me, had officially draped the room. He was sitting proudly in a back booth with an array of empty shot glasses before him and two strippers next to him performing lap dances on each other! As I entered, he shouted, 'Frank! Hey pal, come over and join the party!' As I approached the beaming, jovial, center of attention that is Diamond Dave, it dawned on me: this was a moment that, in my wildest childhood fantasies, I had never imagined could possibly come true. I had money in my pocket, a whole bar full of booze awaiting my consumption, a bevy of naked women at my disposal and David Lee Roth calling me 'pal.' What more could I ask for? What followed was an evening so far beyond my wildest expectations that I have actually been sworn to secrecy by the powers that be. So I'll just have to let your filthy little imaginations paint the pictures and fill in the blanks. Let's just say that I'll never listen to the song 'Unchained' the same way again.
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