Fair Warning … Major DAVID LEE ROTH

Fair Warning … Major DAVID LEE ROTH Interview Goes Live - "Diamond
Dave Is Somewhere Between Spider-Man And Spanky From Our Gang"




Steve Kandell from Buzzfeed.com
has written a truly exhausting and entertaining tale about VAN HALEN
singer David Lee Roth who he interviewed recently at his Pasadena home.
Here is an excerpt from the chat:


The most shocking secret about Van Halen in 2013 is that they’re not
volatile or liable to collapse from the weight of interpersonal strife.
The machine is built to sustain that — and in fact is fueled by the
suspicion that this may not be the case.


“We don’t really do anything else for a livelihood,” he says,
lighting another cigarette. “But what we also do is create the aura that
it may never happen. Has this served us well? It’s served us superbly.
We’re Friday Night Lights — the kid who breaks his knee and his career
is ruined, the father who’s drunk and doesn’t show up for the important
game. It may be painful, but it’s better than just winning and winning.
We’ve become one of the great American stories.”


And what’s more American than the institutionalization of something
that once felt untamable? Van Halen’s seventh album with Roth, A
Different Kind of Truth, their first with him in 29 years, came out last
spring. It sold around a half a million copies, which is certainly
respectable by any 21st-century math. But given the tortuous backstory
and the fact that the album is actually really good, or at least as good
as anyone could have the nerve to hope for from a Van Halen album in
2012, the response felt fairly muted. The band didn’t help matters by
swearing off promotional press — of course that was interpreted as a
sign of trouble, or that maybe they didn’t want to talk about the fact
that the album comprised reworked versions of songs that had been
languishing in the vaults for as long as Van Halen has existed.
(“There’s so many people on television telling you why you should buy
something,” he says. “We felt we were making a sterling statement by not
doing that.”) Van Halen are playing the long con.





“What people don’t suspect is that we’re rehearsing, individually
and as an ensemble, constantly,” he says. “Year-round, stopping only for
personal injury, and right now the band is doing phenomenally. But it’s
not like we’re the Stones, living and jamming together in the South of
France and getting drunk and sharing dames after we practice. It was
never like that.”


Barring further personal injury, Van Halen will continue as it is
now: a massive box-office draw that will put out albums every few years,
quite possibly featuring songs that weren’t conceived in the Carter
administration. There will be rumors that the band members aren’t all
best pals; these will be too true and too mundane to necessitate
refuting, but the refuting is part of the deal, as much a part of the
band’s mystique as any song. What was once the Platonic ideal of rock
‘n’ roll indulgence is now structured around, literally, family values;
for true adventure, Roth looks elsewhere. This is not a complaint, it’s a
fact. Without the clout and imprimatur of Van Halen, The Roth Show
loses a little luster, a little marketability. Predictability is a punch
worth rolling with.


“The creative process for Van Halen could be more Technicolor,” he
says. “Let’s go somewhere French, Tahiti or the West Indies, woodshed in
a studio that’s on a boat, travel to little islands, and play the local
bar on Wednesday and Friday nights. Somewhere that has international
influence to alternately complain about and celebrate and adds more to
the emotional menu than, ‘We went up to Ed’s place.’ That mantra hasn’t
changed in 20 years and isn’t going to. Everyone else has very real
families, very real tent stakes. To me, travel is still exciting, but
for others, it can smack of alienation or disenfranchisement. There are
no surprises here at all. We’re on that James Bond schedule, every three
years.”


Read more at Buzzfeed.com.