The Tapes Archive

Debbie Millman

When David Lee Roth was a boy, he liked to draw at the kitchen table. When he asked his mom to come over and look at what he’d created before she did so she would ask, Should I get a magnet? In other words, either the drawing was worthy of being displayed on the kitchen refrigerator or he was wasting her time.

David Lee recalls looking down at his drawing and thinking, I can do better. David Lee Roth is still pursuing mastery. The lead singer of Van Halen is just back from the Ultra Music Festival in Miami, where he performed an electronic dance remix of his classic 1980s song Jump. David Lee is a best-selling author, a multi-platinum rock and roll star and a businessman.

Today, I’m going to talk to him about his multifaceted career and about some of his latest projects, one of which is a new line of skin care products for tattoos. David Lee Roth, welcome to Design Manners.

David Lee Roth

Wow, that’s a hell of an intro.

Debbie Millman

Yeah, you’re a pretty impressive dude.

David Lee Roth

A humanitarian.

Debbie Millman

Absolute philanthropist.

David Lee Roth

When you look in the mirror in the morning, we always recreate ourselves, especially here in the United States. And if you live in the here in New York City, this is like a Benetton ad gone crazy. Every every nationality, every great accent. Within two blocks, you can smell the fragrances and aromas of 14 different kinds of meals. So creating yourself is great.

Debbie Millman

Well, I want to start by talking about your family. So your uncle, Manny Roth, owned the Jazz Club Cafe Y in Greenwich Village in the early sixties and booked some of the first shows for Dylan and Hendrix. He not only gave Richard Pryor his first shot, he also became his first manager and got.

David Lee Roth

Him his first job on the Johnny Carson Show, which in terms of race was a monster, epic monster, epic thing. Whew. He pissed off everybody.

Debbie Millman

You mentioned an interview that your uncle did when he was 96. I found this quote and I and I want to read it because I thought it was so interesting, the parallels. So he said this about you going over to the cafe when you were a little boy. I used to fix him up with ice cream, whatever he wanted.

Debbie Millman

I didn’t try to turn him on to anything, but maybe it was osmosis. I was in the center of the scene there. All you had to do was carry an empty guitar case and the girls would follow you.

David Lee Roth

Let’s discuss the girls. Because Aunt Judy had legs up to her earlobes, I’m telling you. And everybody would circle around. And I remember asking Manny at one point in time, that’s one of the comics who’s always here, and he’s always looking at Aunt Judy. Who is that? That was Bill Cosby. He had just gotten out of college. He was working his ways, his like early sixties, 1961.

I remember coming out of a little tiny manager said, there’s so many talking to himself in the mirror. He said, Oh, that’s Rich Little, the impersonator practicing his stuff. He’s on Johnny Carson coming up like this. And because Judy had all these great looking model girlfriends. All right. And this is when Cher and Streisand were on the covers of Vogue as models and stuff like this, all kinds of characters.

David Lee Roth

Woody Allen used to come sniffing around and they used to laugh and joke. It’s nice hanging around with all Judy’s girlfriends.

Debbie Millman

How did Manny Roth influence you.

David Lee Roth

That there is such a wild diversity? First thing I saw when I walked in, I watched maybe seven, eight, somewhere in there years, like in 1961, like that. I was always told, remember everything memorized everything from the time I could remember those words. So first thing I saw was a Virgin Islands steel drum band that’s in a basement.

Downtown is still there. The cafe was okay with Duke or whatever. I came out of a center of a whole lot of foment and conflict, a lot of Shakespeare going on around me. And I loved it. And I learned you got to try everything, You got to eat every kind of food. Here. You got to get to know every kind of person here.

You better start learning some different languages. You better start, start, start like that. And I did. Just haven’t stopped yet.

Debbie Millman

You’ve said that the healing, happy side of your family came from your dad, and while your mom was an art teacher, you learned to box from your mother. And I’m assuming that you were speaking metaphorically.

David Lee Roth

All the best. Boxing is technical. If you have the best super technical boxers, the most adept at, it’s kind of boring to watch because it’s like watching people play chess.

Debbie Millman

But you learn from your mom.

David Lee Roth

Oh, you bet.

Debbie Millman

In what way.

David Lee Roth

Mom is unforgiving. Mom won’t sugarcoat it for you. She’s been kicked out of three homes now because she’s unforgiving when food’s wrong. We came from student housing Pop, you know, had just started college, not even medical school. When I happened.

Debbie Millman

You were supposedly an accident. Is that true?

David Lee Roth

Yeah, I happened. And so it was not a happy arrangement. Pop was never home. The only time he was in the family is when we went to visit him down at the hospital where he’s an intern, a resident. In those days, you had to live there, you know, the white shoes and the whole thing. So Mom was really in charge of arts and crafts and culture and so forth. And her determination started with reading. You had to learn to read and you had to learn why we read and so forth. All the way up until I was a teenager, when I was finally able to, you know, at the end of high school. But she hired a teacher to teach four of my buddies and I had her read.

So we went through the usual Chekhov, Shakespeare, and then we did the Once and Future King and so forth, you know, but going around didactic, academic, you know, what is, is, what’s the meaning of subtextual inference? And on and on and on. I learned early that you’re going to have to cross train your brain the same way a guitar player is going to spend his life in a corner practicing scales the same way a Go master will dedicate his entire life to call it training.

You don’t play Go, you train at Go. And then if you’re good enough, you teach. Go.

Debbie Millman

Let’s talk about your first psychiatrist visit. Your parents thought you were super active at six years old. They even thought that you might have had autism. What was the psychiatrist’s diagnosis?

David Lee Roth

When I was born, one of my legs is about an inch and a half longer than the other one, then the left is. So any time you look at pictures of me doing the spinning back, whirling, whatever kick it was with my left leg, my right legs is the strongest. When I was bored, I had flat feet, the rickets or whatever.

And not rickets, but, you know, etc.. And I had to wear braces for, I don’t know, first three or four years, whatever, like that. It was very unforgiving treatment back then. You had to sleep with a metal bar between your feet. And I had to spend all day and all night like that. Okay. First on my belly and if I was on my belly

I read Mom would just leave stacks of magazines and books didn’t matter what couldn’t. I was just I read because I couldn’t flip over.

Debbie Millman

I have two more questions I want to ask you about your childhood. I read that you shoveled dung behind a horse stable to make money out…

David Lee Roth

We didn’t call it dung back then.

Debbie Millman

What did you call a David Lee?

David Lee Roth

I couldn’t wait to work to have a job. Wow. I had a job since I was 12.

Debbie Millman

So you, you shoveled

David Lee Roth

Shit, and I had. I had to go to the Social Security and tell them that I was older, but I went by myself, you know, and told them I was older by one year than I was, and, you know, so that I could have my card and go to work for Ernie Robinson, who’s no longer with us.

A horse trainer.

Debbie Millman

You also worked at a hamburger stand and you worked in a hospital as a cleanup boy. And this was all in all.

David Lee Roth

We didn’t call ourselves cleanup boys. We were at the time we were surgical porters and surgical techs.

Debbie Millman

With all of these jobs that you had working with horses, working in the hospital, you’d started to do this at a from a very young age. Where did that drive come from?

David Lee Roth

Mark Twain. Even if you don’t know his writing or don’t care for it at all. He was never just a one job for a whole lifetime kind of fella, but a 110% application perhaps for whatever he was doing at the time. He started off as a reporter in the Gold Rush, and he described how he got off the train with four pounds of tobacco, about $35 American currency in a tweed jacket.

All right. Henry Miller, the writer. Okay. We all know him because of his sexual writings and so forth. I really don’t know that I have a taste for his writings. But Henry, you’ve seen the movie. Henry and June got off the boat in Paris with $15 American currency, a cross pen and one tweed jacket okay like that, and went and visited and tried many, many different things.

Ultimately, Twain was a lecturer in between. He wrote, and we all know about it. There was a little stint in there as a steamboat operator, and I think as long as you really apply 110% and you looking to somehow pitch in, let’s just call it pitch in and make contribution is the loftier way, but shit that smells like homework to me.

I’d rather just pitch in.

Debbie Millman

But I read that when the Roth family gets together, you’re expected to talk about what you did the previous year that contributed to making a better world. Is that true?

David Lee Roth

Yeah, it’s. What have we done constructively lately? You know? What did you do? Constructive today, children? We were called that until Dad passed away about seven years ago. Oh yeah. But it was mom who had who had she was the book reader. You follow and Pop was a healer all the way up and he had blood cancer and was in the wheelchair and waited co-conspirator just about ten years ago till my sister’s left the room.

He says, I need you to help me with something. Well, we had a co-conspirator attitude because back when I was seven years old, we’d sneak off to see movies Mom didn’t want us to see, like Marilyn Monroe and Brigitte Bardot.

Debbie Millman

So what conversation did you have with your dad in the hospital?

David Lee Roth

He said, I just signed up for Doctors Without Frontiers. I’m going to get on a boat and I want to go to West Africa and do eye exams. I said, okay, how does it work with wheelchair? You just not only do stand up, do eye exams, I’ll make them sit down.

Debbie Millman

See where you get your industriousness. When did you first realize that you had a talent for singing?

David Lee Roth

Well, we’re making a wild assumption, but.

Debbie Millman

No, David Lee. We’re really not.

David Lee Roth

Your Honor that’s an assumption.

Debbie Millman

We’re really not Yeah. Yeah. Sorry, I’m. I’m not falling for that one.

David Lee Roth

Entirely a subjective comment.

Debbie Millman

No, No, it isn’t.

David Lee Roth

This man has a voice. It sounds like water on a sick cat.

Debbie Millman

No, No, it doesn’t.

David Lee Roth

He’s mutiny on the high seas. He should have been a sailor judge

Debbie Millman

I’ve heard you sing a cappella, sir. You have a voice. You’ve got the pipes.

David Lee Roth

All of the people, all of the jobs, all of these experiences are in my voice. Okay? You’re never completely there. You’re always a work in progress. You’re either going up the mountain or down the mountain. The top is about as big as this little space here. It’s usually fucking freezing. I’ve been up some high mountains. Okay, everybody’s waiting.

Well, you get the fucking camera ready, and then I forgot the flag. A lot goes on up at those tiny little summits, and it’s down down down. All your time is ascending. And then going back down the mountain. You follow?

Debbie Millman

I did.

David Lee Roth

Your time at the top is almost insignificant. You’re freezing. You hold up the flag. Fuck hurry up, Ray. Stuff that shit back down there. Get your glove back on as fast as you can and vacate. So it’s all in the planning. It’s all in the doing. I never assumed that I was great, but I have always assumed that I could make you feel great.

I can make you feel young and skinny from 800 yards out to courses. Give me a few moves. Okay. We’re going to engage. We’re going to talk because my instrument is exactly what we’re using right now. Now, I haven’t started to work yet. I’m legitimately answering questions like a reverse this very quickly, young lady.

Debbie Millman

I’m sure you could.

David Lee Roth

Make you feel so desirable and young and fuck it I’m going to have a drink. Mm hmm. One cigarette a year is right now time. I’ll buy you that drink?

Debbie Millman

When did you realize? When did you first realize you had a talent for singing?

David Lee Roth

I never decided I had a talent.

Debbie Millman

But you started taking singing lessons.

David Lee Roth

I loved it.

Debbie Millman

It. You just loved it.

David Lee Roth

I loved it from the time I was seven. Okay? And it was my first school play. I was in third grade. And again, scruff of the neck. It was okay.

Debbie Millman

What played was it?

David Lee Roth

The teacher was going to help you learn the libretto. This teacher is different for the dancing now. You got to go get measured for the costume. Now is dress rehearsal.

It was codified in Boston, Massachusetts. Brookline, Massachusetts.

Debbie Millman

Do you remember what play it was?

David Lee Roth

Well, it was about I don’t remember the title, but there were different facings of books. Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, etc.. And I was Mr. Bookworm. I still have the glasses Mom made for me, Mortarboard, etc.. Shall I sing it to you soulfully? Like if I sing it like a little kid, it’s nothing. It’s all updated a little.

Debbie Millman

Please.

David Lee Roth

There. My name is Mr. Book. Well, I hope you like to read and you pay to get in here. And I would just go from book to book and open up and Wizard of Oz characters come out and whatnot. Beyond that, I didn’t learn to sing from happy and celebrated and whatnot. I don’t sing to celebrate. Never did.

Debbie Millman

But I think..

David Lee Roth

Give me 2 minutes and I’ll share with you where I really learn to sing and where the code comes from because I rarely ever talk about it.

Debbie Millman

Okay.

David Lee Roth

Fellow name Salo Blumenthal. I was in fourth grade and we were studying for bar mitzvah. All right. And

Debbie Millman

Not a lot of people know you’re Jewish.

David Lee Roth

It’s the middle name because it’s Indiana, you know, And Blumenthal would walk in and he carried the weight of the world on his shoulders. He was as wide as he was tall and he wasn’t very tall. And we would be sitting here. We were Wise Acres. This is, you know, the sixties, the hippies. It’s, you know, Flower Power and Grateful Dead and the Doors and bring all through to the other side.

It doesn’t sound like but it was for the most years. And say, hello. Blumenthal All would walk in and you always do the same. What you would take is old sports coat, cheap jacket, often take it off and you roll up his right sleeve first. There’s nothing there. And then he roll up his left sleeve and he’d lock eyes with you and he’d see the number tattooed on the inside of his forearm, which was his camp number.

And then he’d roll is or other arm up like that and look up and see if you were still looking, if you were new in the class you look to see, because that was his orchestra number and he would tell his story. Inevitably, the newbies in class would ask, What are those numbers? He’s Well, this was for Birkenau and this is from Songs, This is my orchestra number.

And they’d say, where, you know, what did you do in there? I sang Inevitably, somebody like a Rickie sitting behind me here, one of the Weizmann brothers would go, What happened if you didn’t sing good? And he was very serious. He would leave for you. Go. You didn’t sing good. You went up the chimneys. And more than once in the next five years, I would hear, Mr. Roth, if you cannot find it in yourself to sing for those who did sing so you don’t go up the chimneys.

And I think of that every time I sing. Every time I write, every time I dance, it is so compelling. Let’s take away all the earn the money and support yourself. My latest review from somebody, somebody dot.com, that is the most deterministic, compelling thing that you could possibly tell a kid can’t be more thankful. Wow, what a fucking slab of fucking wake in a face for a kid who might have gone in a wrong direction.

Keep in mind, I got sent to my first work related environment when I was 13. My parents took me down to the police station in Pasadena and had them tell me fuck up again you’re going to a foster home. That’s exactly what happened to me. Mom was very unforgiving.

Debbie Millman

Now, your sisters have said that there was a bad Dave and a good Dave and the bad Dave came from Sibyl Roth.

David Lee Roth

That means assertive

Debbie Millman

Okay.

David Lee Roth

It means compelling. It means determined. Okay. When you say a bad person, are you talking about ethics and moral? I think you can determine that I have a fair share of that.

Debbie Millman

Absolutely.

David Lee Roth

Today, what qualifies as bad.

Debbie Millman

Is very different.

David Lee Roth

Very different.

Debbie Millman

Yeah.

David Lee Roth

Okay. You’re all what we’re always compelled now more than ever, perhaps to determine what is a good critic is somebody who supports and enhances. Or is it somebody who prefers the boo instead of the yay. I like that boo instead of the yay. I know plenty of heavy metal bands that I can get on that plane at JFK and I can go boo very creatively all the way to L.A. It’s a five hour trip if it’s.

Yeah. Oh, wow. It’s so great. Really moving. Great. Oh, critique. Observe the flaw. Do you follow it? Diane Arbus, the photographer, says, my whole career was based on the flaw. We all think we have it together. And I’m paraphrasing, but we all have a flaw Somewhere in the program. Those pants are just a little high water shirt that belt buckle white with polyester.

And that’s what’s observed and that’s what is photographed. And there in lives the statement wabi sabi, it’s the flaw. It’s when the beautiful old buildings around here start to fall apart and decay. There’s a beauty in that. And if it’s not in the thing itself, it’s in the feeling of impermanence that you get in there. It’s quiet in there.

Debbie Millman

You’re singing coaches taught you early on to sing like the girls. What was that about?

David Lee Roth

It means there’s a range element in your hinge. Okay, is where all that power comes from. All right. If you’re self-taught. Well, already we have a little bit of a moment here because I think only a fool thinks that just experience can replace an education. Yeah. All right. So if you want to cross, train yourself up so you can get your voice up into that stratospheric level of Aretha Franklin levels or Chaka Khan levels or ok as well as singing way down.

You know, my business manager out there handles Taj Mahal old blues man, and every day you hear that grind in my voice now. And you know, in terms of how I would call what I do, I’m soul Growler in that operatic far from country. It’s I’m closer to Wilson Pickett HA than any and then a cleaner folk tone.

Right For example when you start working with bands, somebody is always sick, whining, complaining or just got divorced and doesn’t want to sing. I’m that guy. Okay, I’ll take your part if do you follow?

Debbie Millman

Yeah.

David Lee Roth

As the drum major, I got to know everything.

Debbie Millman

And she were the understudy.

David Lee Roth

Every instrument in band thinking, If you’re going to be a band director, you gotta know every instrument and be able hum it without the paper.

Debbie Millman

And how many instruments do you play?

David Lee Roth

Well, define find play? I can sing the cover off the ball. Still, to this day, I take lessons in jazz guitar regularly and I started with my guitar teacher maybe ten, 12 years ago, and I said to him I would like to be able to be at a beach bar somewhere, somewhere foreign, somewhere tropical, and there’s an acoustic guitar and all kinds of interesting folk sitting down.

I want to be able to put a jar out front for tips and do an hour without singing, which I can do now.

Debbie Millman

So let’s talk about your musical career. By by the seventies, you made your way to Pasadena City College, where I believe you took some theater classes. And this is also where you meet for the first time, Edward and Alex Van Halen. Tell us about that first meeting.

David Lee Roth

I didn’t meet Eddie and Alex at music school. Okay, That’s close. There’s you know, it’s hazy history because we didn’t have smartphones and nobody was keeping

Debbie Millman

Everything you were doing.

David Lee Roth

A Oh, it was a big deal. You know, when you were able to document anything.

Debbie Millman

Yeah,

David Lee Roth

all you had was a Kodak camera that you had to go stop at the place next to the 7-Eleven. Right. And come back in a week. Yeah. I knew the Van Halen’s when we were in seniors in high school and we were cross-town rivals.

All right. I was Diamond Dave because I came from the bussing program, all black and Spanish speaking schools and other I was the other that and the Japanese girl who was always good at math. And Cindy Yamazaki wins the math award again. Always. You have now 34 kids. All right.

Debbie Millman

You sound like you’re a little jealous.

David Lee Roth

I do math is a way of life. I caught up. You’re right. It had a reinforming impact on my life. That is musical, social, spiritual, everything. Like I started off you know, I dip it in sugar, so it’s more digestible when I tell you about the cars I have. It’s not because I’m trying to bro you and Dude, what are you driving, bro?

I’m making a statement.

Debbie Millman

What’s the statement?

David Lee Roth

It ain’t a Tesla. It’s not an off road vehicle with knobby tires. I own a 1951 Mercury Lowrider and a 66 VW on making comments. Those are answers to questions you may not have asked yet. All right. Same thing. If I tell you the music that I listen to, it’s a bit more predictive. Right. But in my case, that’s across the board because I was forced to listen to all kinds of music.

You know, the running joke being I was abused as a kid musically.

David Lee Roth

Mantovani

Debbie Millman

Those eyebrows were working full time right there.

David Lee Roth

And we were forced to listen to everything and we went too free Everything. Student Day. Student Matinee free. Family day free family dress rehearsal, matinee. Student Day in. I saw every Broadway play and every art gallery opening and, you know, on and on, and museums and battleships. And it wasn’t all just, you know, friends or whatever, because my family was all in the military, Air Force and so forth.

So we went on the battleships in the submarines and the frigates and the schooners and the museum exhibits as well. I’m a combat hippie peace, love and heavy weapons, just in case they don’t want to fall in love.

Debbie Millman

So tell us about meeting the Van Halen’s.

David Lee Roth

We were crosstown rivals.

Debbie Millman

And what we what were you fighting about?

David Lee Roth

Well, they played heavy, heavy metal, you know, Black Sabbath kind of note for note spectacular. There were no girls in their audience. And I came from, you know, Earth, Wind and Fire, Superfly, James Brown, Al Green, you know, social music. So I approached Van Halen said, I think I know why you’re not getting club gigs. Personally. I just dance, test everything.

Something is simple. Later, the hip hop rediscovered Aerosmith. Yeah, it’s a perennial, but let it de la la la la la. Well, it’s about Al Green beat probably 110 beats a minute. That means you can dance without spilling your drink. If it’s an open drink any faster than ten bpm, you’re going to start spilling your drink. Okay, so.

But which is okay, but get ready like that. And that’s funky. And a power trio can play the hell out of that. And we did. And we ultimately had a set of some 200 songs I personally would test. The combination was miraculous. We had a wonderful diversity to the sounds. You’ll hear Latino, Hispanic sounds and influences in some of our most popular stuff, even though you think of Van Halen as, you know, hit the weight stack and, you know, conquer the next mountain kind of stuff, which it is.

You know, you’ll hear like at the beginning of the song that a lot of folks don’t know, but they know the songs. Jamie’s cryin. It’s the beginning of Wild Thing, one of the most well-known, you know, arguably well known hip hop rap song. Where did doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo. Well, that’s not heavy metal.

Debbie Millman

Tell us more about some of the songs and where they came from or what inspired you to write them?

David Lee Roth

Broadway In terms of the formative thinking, okay is always been based in terms of what was let me let me isolate down to one fella, Leonard Bernstein. Okay, That’s Porgy and Bess and West Side Story. Let’s start there. Whether or not you know or care of the play, it’s the format of it. Things like threnodic which means we’re going to keep playing the song, but now we’re going to start talking instead of everyday.

Now I know Tony, like I know me that today is the Jets territory. You’re kind of in key and you’re moving through and there’s the narrative and explanations and you actually have a conversation and then you go when you’re a Jaguar and you break into that song. So I just having been trained to that, I put that in a song like, I don’t Know, Ain’t Talkin Bout Love, which sold 10 million before MTV, was even an idea.

And this was a time when people just were hating on our kind of music. When I came out, it was all about punk rock and mohawks on one side, and I’m going to strike that pose and Saturday Night Fever, Baby, have your records ready. Those were amazing moments. Late seventies, usually an epoch on par with the culture, like the Roaring Twenties in terms of the arts, letters, gastronomy.

You know, now if somebody says to you is go see Springsteen on Broadway, you really there to hear the songs? Me neither. You’re here. It’s mostly the in-between. In fact, got rid of most of the songs and it’s all in between. And I’m in cause I go for in between the songs as much as the songs, the brains, the flavor, the stories, the talk.

Want me to give you a little example.

Debbie Millman

Yeah

David Lee Roth

Having fun?

Debbie Millman

Yeah.

David Lee Roth

You go first now. What’s the best meal you ever had?

Debbie Millman

I had a meal at the Hotel du Korean in 1987. It was the first time I ever tasted Francois

David Lee Roth

foie gras.

Debbie Millman

Mm hmm.

David Lee Roth

Wow.

Debbie Millman

Yours? Oh, it was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced in my mouth. It was unbelievable.

David Lee Roth

What? It tastes like.

Debbie Millman

Heaven.

David Lee Roth

Okay, You have a poetic license, and you’re using it on me. My hands are up. Okay. My story takes 2 minutes.

Debbie Millman

Okay, let me hear it.

David Lee Roth

And I’m going to title it while we missing Anthony Bourdain so much and why he was so important.

Debbie Millman

Okay.

David Lee Roth

For some reason, I get worked up when I do this story. It’s one of the few times I get emotional, like, choked up sometimes.

We thought we were going to die. We had four days in New Guinea and we hadn’t eaten. I really have trouble with this story. And I had put the trip together, trained for it for over a year. Four of us, plus a couple of bearers named Toby fell ill with a bone in his nose. And we were in the highland jungles of New Guinea.

And we had gotten up to 10,000 feet in the Star Mountains in an attempt to ran out of food, got totally lost in the jungle where a lot of people have disappeared. Really thought we were going to die. On the third night we sat in a circle without a fire in the rain. Nothing eat. And we went around one by one, described the best meal we ever had.

And you took it as long as you could, so you got your mind off of things. That was the thing. Okay. I described going to Canter’s Delicatessen and getting corned beef and pastrami and chopped liver on Jewish rye and described it all right down to the mustard. Okay. Right down to the drinks, everything. And you had to describe.

We describe the table, the napkins, the waitresses, everything. And it got over to one of the translators, and he knew half a dozen different dialects. I don’t know that he had ever been out of the country. Toby started going off. He literally had a hole in his nose for, you know, come out of the hill tribes. And you started guys.

It wasn’t at a restaurant. It was at the beach. And he described the way the light came out of the moon. And he hit the leaves and bounced off the water. And he could follow that light out. He took it as far as that, like following one ripple all the way. I described the costumes of the waitresses and the smells of their perfume.

Describe the table. Describe the plates, The sounds of the forks hitting the plates. I remember him telling that, and we all just laid back on our packs. And this was going to be the end. He went on for 40 minutes before he even got to the salad.

Debbie Millman

Wow.

David Lee Roth

And I was laying at my pack, and we were getting, like, the only jazz luggage, you know. And when he finally finished, somebody without even sitting up said, Toby, where did you have that meal? And without even moving, he was laying on his back. He said, I didn’t have it. My wife did. And she told me about it.

I don’t know why you choked up on that one. That’s why Anthony Bourdain’s. That’s why guys like that are so important. And it’s part of why I’m a storyteller today. That happened in 1985. Boy, I learned. Learn to tell a story.

Debbie Millman

You’re clearly a really sensitive, heavy feeling person. When you were first touring and making the whole Van Halen thing, you came off as such. A tough guy. Is such a a a dude a man about town. Playboy. How much of that was real and how much of that was something that you were a story that you were creating?

David Lee Roth

It’s a plan. Where are you going to go in life? You’re going to climb the Treasure Mountain, right? And it was a different day and age, a different time and a place. Our values and who we were, what we look like, how we demonstrated if we’re tough guys or smart guys or whatever. I think that what I did was saturate living, and what people focused on was mostly the travel.

I saturated with visiting other countries and actually doing things there as a means of if I go rock climbing in Paris, okay, I’m going to run into the rock climbing community and I don’t have to ask anything. It’ll take me and you have to ask, Where’s the apothecary? My stomach upset. What are we having for dinner? They’ll be gone.

This is the apothecary. Do you need anything? Usually we get upset stomach from the water. And afterwards. David, we are eating dinner. Come, It’s. You don’t have to decide anything. It’ll all You become part of a community. Same thing. Kayaking. Kayaking. Here in Manhattan. This huge community of boaters and whatnot that happen here. And working from the inside out is kind of been my M.O..

Don’t want to visit. Just watch it through a window.

Debbie Millman

But were you doing that with Van Halen?

David Lee Roth

Well, I was I.

Debbie Millman

Was watching it through a window. It felt like you were I mean, I’ve been spending the last week or so rewatching all the videos I grew up with and the sex appeal, the bravado, the early stage.

Debbie Millman

I mean.

Debbie Millman

In 1984, I was in college. So I felt that, you know, I lived through that.

David Lee Roth

When I was young. I did, as a young man does.

Debbie Millman

But you you and Van Halen, you toured for years and years before you made it. But when you made it, you made it. It was 0 to 60 and all of a sudden you guys were a global phenomenon. How did you manage that? Did you always just feel like it was inevitable that this was going to happen, or was it a surprise?

David Lee Roth

We were always confident that we were going to survive and make it in show business based on a paradigm that was still a bit unusual in our culture at that time. And today, which was we were an album band, we were not singles driven and even through the seventies, it’s a singles culture. All right. I recorded Henson Recording. Big shout out to everybody Henson Recordings and La Brea and Sunset, because today you’re going to run into a McCartney, a Metallica in a Mariah Carey all in the same day in that studio.

Okay, They did We Are the World in There and whatnot. But it’s the most famous because that’s where the Mamas and the Papas did all their singles. All of the leaves are gone You know etcetera That’s The Mamas and the Papas And what else? They’re famous for all the Carpenters singles.

Debbie Millman

Sing Sing US a Carpenter song.

David Lee Roth

Well, I can sing it like that. We only just begun to learn to learn. But singles is what really was you know the seventies version Need three minute songs, three and a half minute songs. The idea of an album band really started to kick in and that you could make a living with that. But again, what I was discussing in the late seventies, even the Sex Pistols, Jesus, whatever, Never Mind the Bollocks, you know, Antichrist is four minute song that was produced by the guy who did Blue Oyster Cult.

Didn’t know that shit, did you?

Debbie Millman

But you had you had Dark Side of the Moon all of the Yes sort of double albums that they were doing, Relayer and Topographic Oceans, which were really high concept.

David Lee Roth

Yes. And you have a great memory, but for most of the world it was all about singles, because pop music, rock music was relegated to one hour a week in Holland up through the eighties. I’m going to mispronounce it wildly, but I was talking with Armin Van Buuren about I bet you grew up to Alfred Lagarde Betonshow, which played rock and roll one hour a week.

David Lee Roth

I think it was on Wednesdays on Dutch radio. Okay, so the media got a hold. They decided you do this, you’re a category. You fit like this.

David Lee Roth

You know.

Debbie Millman

But you broke all of that.

David Lee Roth

It was word of mouth and also the value of a live show, performing live is arguably our forte, or at least mine interacting with somebody, engaging with somebody directly, you know, somewhere between my carnival barker personality and my emcee. Okay. And maitre d and the Devil’s Son in law.

Debbie Millman

Is it true that you wrote Runnin’ with the Devil in 18 Minutes?

David Lee Roth

Let’s qualify that for professional bearing. Okay.

Debbie Millman

David Lee Roth

Well, somebody asked me that at one point. I think it might have been Howard Stern asked me is how long did it take you to write Runnin’ with the Devil? And I thought for a second. And the truest answer is, well, if you’ve watched a thousand movies and tried to memorize the soundtracks, you’ve read a thousand books, tried to remember everything you’ve read, you’ve met hundreds and hundreds of people and tried to memorize their stories, and you’ve had more than two or three different jobs in your life.

David Lee Roth

And a million air miles take about 18 minutes. You know.

Debbie Millman

The the great designer Paula Scher who designed the Citibank logo drew it on a napkin, but said that and it took her about 10 seconds, but it said it took her chance.

David Lee Roth

I know Paula

David Lee Roth

Scher’s

David Lee Roth

Background that goes all the way back to almost every album cover. She’s the jazz ones with the airbrush were the best.

Debbie Millman

Oh, I think the Boston album although she hates when I say that.

David Lee Roth

Come on. It is. She learned from individuals that she was surrounding all the best arts and crafts comes from a group, a gang, a collective, which Salts writes for New York, says, You got to form gangs, got to form cliques, alternately support with each other, compete with each other, you know, defend each other, harass each other. Doesn’t matter if you’re Picasso or Paul McCartney.

You came from a group, a collective. And, you know, for Picasso. What was it, George? What? You know, they would decide, I am painting the Kleenex box and Picasso would go, Your Kleenex box is shit and try to out paint the exact same Kleenex box. Today, we think, Oh, no, Auteuil. He worked alone. The only one who ever did that was Prince.

Debbie Millman

Yeah. Some people think that the best way to get your best work is to have a nemesis that you are really, really competing with.

David Lee Roth

I’m going to enlarge upon that. Is that your best teachers, your best coaches, the ones you were going to get the most dramatic, most combustion out of your engine will be your most hated, your most feared and your most disastrous adversary.

Debbie Millman

Absolutely.

David Lee Roth

Because you know how to bullshit everybody else.

Debbie Millman

Whenever I feel really, really, really bad about myself in my life, I think about what can I do to better the people that don’t think enough of me?

David Lee Roth

Well, good answer to anybody who criticize you in any way you can. You know, you can drop them with a simple throw by going, You know what? You may be right. Sometimes that leads you to some self-examination, but it’s even more academic than that. It’s chemical. Figure out in advance something that you need to think through, whether that’s a family issue.

Ah shit how do I tell mom about this? All right. There’s a reunion coming up. I’ll tell my sister first, then we’ll show her the bill. You that kind of thinking or. Oh, no, I just got fired. What the fuck am I going to do? That kind of thing or blank canvas. Blank canvas, blank canvas, blank canvas. Paint something will ya, like how you figure out something you need to get your brain working on, right?

Like this. And when we call channeling your fury. Okay? Or your pain or your self-pity, very important. Do not be embarrassed by it. You need time to feel sorry for yourself. Tell your spouse all that’s got to go into the work. And the time when you are most put upon some soul crushing nonsense that happens to you. It doesn’t matter if they fucked up your hot dog at Papaya King or you just got sued and lost everything.

You fucked up. Try it again next time, go get drunk, go to sleep smoking pot Sliwa if you have it ready. Okay. Shit. I got to think of lyrics for this first verse in this chorus, or I got to unwind some family disaster again. Okay, then I know I got to think of that as soon as you piss me off for any reason and.

All right, I’ll literally pull my jacket over my head, you know, on the bus, the plane, the car, and get to thinking on that. And that’s when that adrenaline goes to work for you. It’s like napalm. Very effective. Just be very careful where you place it. Have it ready. There’s advice. You had a better question than my answer.

Debbie Millman

I’ve been very patiently sitting here. When have you felt sorry for yourself?

David Lee Roth

Well, currently that my my running comedy line is fear and revenge. Are my main pivot.

Debbie Millman

I don’t know if that’s an answer to the question.

David Lee Roth

Fear and revenge. Revenge on my wristwatch because it’s ten years too fast. Okay. I wasted a lot of fucking time waiting around for the guitar player, right? So I’m not going to change him and I sure ain’t changing history in the rearview mirror, even if I turn it. So let’s turn that rearview mirror, see how good we look while we’re getting somewhere.

Tell the wristwatch fuck you and get ahead of it like Grandma says. Okay, maybe that’s as close as I get to feeling sorry for me. All right, Go beyond that. I’m kind of over crybaby, alcoholic millionaires bouncing on the end of the mattress, taken up Folks like your time going, Well, you know what? Feel cheap. I feel sorry for a lot of my fellow man when I reflect that God is just.

David Lee Roth

Mm hmm. You watch the news?

Debbie Millman

Oh, yes. You didn’t you didn’t fall into a lot of the traps that a lot of rock and rollers did. You’ve never been in rehab. You haven’t been divorced 14 times.

David Lee Roth

Well, if you read, I’m going to generalize wildly here. Okay? If you read. All right, then you’ll experience the lessons of others in your generation. The Miles Davis biography is amazing and there’s a whole lot of traps. Here’s what happens when you do this, this and that. And here’s who’s liable to line up and hate on you.

Debbie Millman

Yeah. Did you read the Miles biography Autobiography? Back then?

David Lee Roth

I started reading everything I could possibly shoplift in fourth grade. I had a special raincoat four sizes too big.

Debbie Millman

Do you ever get caught? Oh, you must have. When you got to go down to the police precinct.

David Lee Roth

I got caught more than a few times. If you had even a vaguely interesting cover of a paperback or a magazine, you went down the sleeve. I was reading paperbacks like The Carpetbaggers, the first real sexy one from Harold Robbins. I knew who Lenny Bruce was in fourth grade, How to Talk Dirty and Influence People. The Dick Gregory book, The N Word that was the actual title was on the Spindle Up at the Rexall that went down the sleeve.

David Lee Roth

And all of that opened up my eyes to, you know, Dick Gregory’s first black comedian to play in white clubs early. He’d caused a big furor, and he was talking about civil rights. His book and his next book was called The Back of the Bus. I was a fourth grader, but I was an avid reader. I could read way past my, you know, my giving chronological age.

Debbie Millman

So that kept you from.

David Lee Roth

Well, there’s pitfalls. I knew what killed Marilyn Monroe and I knew what killed Billie Holiday. I knew what killed Elvis. And I knew ultimately, long before I even start listening to Elvis history. Lessons of history, you know, in its history is mulched in with very colorful and interesting and tenuous lifestyles. Then you remember it perhaps a little better.

Debbie Millman

But you never succumb to those excesses.

David Lee Roth

Yes. Oh, certainly I did.

Debbie Millman

In what way?

David Lee Roth

Oh, I consumed my body weight and anything that was showed up in early books, if any of the early authors, if any of the apollinaris did it, if any of the again, Henry Millers or but it.

Debbie Millman

Didn’t overtake you always annotations that way that it did Eddie I mean he ended up having to go to rehab. You did not

David Lee Roth

All right.

David Lee Roth

To be perfectly fair. Okay, I’ve had my wild excesses, okay? But it usually involved corn alcohol and women, loud African-American music. The remixes beyond that, though. I always balanced the physical. Okay, I’ll say it. So you remember minds working butts twerking.

Debbie Millman

Took two years to do some of those jumps you did in Jump.

David Lee Roth

Me a lot of time. And I started off physical from the time I was able to really walk and run parents made damn sure it let me think. I walked into the garage in seventh grade and there was a pair of parallel bars.

Debbie Millman

In your garage.

David Lee Roth

Yeah.

Debbie Millman

Why

David Lee Roth

Pop bought Olympic parallel bars. And he told me you’re going to learn parallel bars.

Debbie Millman

Why parallel bars?

David Lee Roth

Just decided gymnastics are revered in the Midwest. You don’t need a whole lot of equipment to do it. And then ultimately, the martial arts started 12. Yeah, my birthday and still, you know, all the variety. When we say martial arts, it’s not just a fist to face confrontations, not kickboxing and mixed martial arts. You’ll go through that phase.

All right. But what you’re learning ultimately is something that’s much more consequential than that. You’re just not going to engage any adult males over 12 years old for long unless there’s a moving groove, whatever. Now, in kendo class, which I attended here in New York, many times, most of the participants are female. We start our little girls when they were about nine years old.

Okay, you’ve seen what a kendo helmet looks like, what the shoulder pads and whatever. And you teach your little nine year old girl what it means to have 180 pound monster like me come screaming at her with a bamboo cane. Now, of course, you just lightly jab. We take care of the kids. But she learns that all this smoke and fury doesn’t me shit.

Okay, All your micro traumas go out the window when you learn that screaming and yelling and swat and threat of fuck you in 82 languages. That’s what I assumed right off the bat. And she’ll begin to develop her core, her core strength. Now, I come from a show business where most of the folks in front office have all the spiritual core of a cannoli.

David Lee Roth

Yeah. Yeah, right. You give me somebody like Gaga Pink Yo, you dig in, There’s there’s a determination there that’s kind of old school, like from the fifties or something.

Debbie Millman

They work hard.

David Lee Roth

Gwen Verdon And there’s a new documentary coming out about Fosse and Verdon..

Debbie Millman

Yeah.

David Lee Roth

Who did Damn Yankees and all of that kind of a thing. Whatever Lola wants Lola get. Well, that isn’t by genetics. You got to teach little Lola how to swing a sword. And it doesn’t have to be a sword for me. My word is my hand. My voice is my sword. I’ll get the job done long before anybody draws a pistol.

David Lee Roth

Sarge.

Debbie Millman

At the height of Van Halen’s fame, you said that when the people screamed so hysterically for such a sustained period of time, they’re screaming for themselves. Not for you or for Eddie, but because they see themselves reflected in the band.

David Lee Roth

You feel your own strength, your own power. You feel like you could march on trouble.

Debbie Millman

How does that happen?

David Lee Roth

What happens almost religiously get before me, devil. All right, if I say it like that, you go. That’s preachers being as gospel as Foursquare Baptist. Yeah. Is exact same mechanism. First you start off looking at the preacher and then your eyes roll back in your head. You start reaching up and it’s about you. At that point, you feel strength, you feel the confidence.

And for those who don’t know how to say a prayer, I’ll say it and you dance to it.

Debbie Millman

You released Van Halen. Van Halen to Women and Children First Fair Warning Diver Down. And then came 1984. Jump was actually the first video I ever saw of the band, and I was mesmerized and kind of overwhelmed by the sexuality and power of the band. Why did you leave the band?

David Lee Roth

All rock bands are always on the verge of breaking up at any given time. Okay, There’s a lot of fury, a lot of competing egos. There’s always going to be something that is a determining, misdirected factor. Sometimes it’s alcohol and sometimes it’s your wife. Okay, and the wives started going, You know what? You’re the important one. You’re the one the audience loves.

Not your brother. And they started listening.

Debbie Millman

Why didn’t you ever get married?

David Lee Roth

Honestly?

Debbie Millman

Yeah.

David Lee Roth

I’m not well-adjusted at all. I’ll tell you the funny way. Okay. How many rock stars does it take to put in a light bulb? One world revolves around me.

Debbie Millman

Really? You think that that’s

David Lee Roth

Absolutely.

David Lee Roth

Absolutely. And I’ll level with you straight. I’m not really good for living with in terms of outside the project. Outside the team, Outside the group. I don’t have any employees. I got an audience as of three days ago, I was standing up in front of an audience of people, average age, probably 19. Okay, aircraft carrier is owned, run and operated by 19 year olds.

David Lee Roth

That’s the average age of the crew so don’t make light of 19.

Debbie Millman

So you have you ever wanted to get married? Have you ever or have you always just been like, No, not me.

David Lee Roth

I probably had four or five girlfriends over my lifetime.

Debbie Millman

Those are the lines in your head that you talk about.

David Lee Roth

The deepest and shortest is Stacy from Dallas. It was a very long relationship. I’m having to psychoanalyze myself.

Debbie Millman

Yeah.

David Lee Roth

And I’m old enough, to be perfectly honest. I’m a retro hetro. But in terms of the process and courtship and whatnot, at this point in time, I’m just target. I’m just an agenda.

Debbie Millman

What do you mean?

David Lee Roth

It means I’m something to be appropriated.

Debbie Millman

But what about your own feelings?

David Lee Roth

My own feelings are am I being appropriated? Am I being manipulated and maneuvered into here because I’m a trophy now?

Debbie Millman

Right.

David Lee Roth

Right. The idea I was to bump into somebody and then first thing I’m going to hear is I like the real Dave. Really? Because I haven’t even showed him to you.

Debbie Millman

So. So I’m assuming that we’ve gotten very little of the real Dave today.

David Lee Roth

Oh, you got 100% of real Dave.

Debbie Millman

Really?

David Lee Roth

Absolutely.

Debbie Millman

Good. That’s good to know.

David Lee Roth

Absolutely.

Debbie Millman

One of the things that I was really struck by in all the interviews that I listened to was how good a mimic you are. So you can do Leonard Cohen, you can do Aerosmith, you can do ZZ Top, you can do Ricky Ricardo. It’s kind of amazing.

David Lee Roth

Well, okay, first off, I was taught very early on from my singing teachers before I was a teenager to learn to sing in other language.

Debbie Millman

I know.

David Lee Roth

Because you’re using I don’t know, maybe there’s 17 different muscles that make your armature the way you set your jaw and create your tones for different languages. The way you set for Urdu is different than English, which is different than British, and it starts to move like that. The purpose being is cross-training, trying to imitate people directly is you also going to work that sound?

David Lee Roth

And in fact, let me try to put my headsets on because what really got them going is when they fired me from doing what was supposed to be the Howard Stern had left you gone on to Sirius XM, and I got the 103 whatever the K rock kind of thing. And they took away all my guest because they said I was playing too much ethnic music.

David Lee Roth

You know what that means? We that I was having late night humor, too early in the morning and my, my guests were last in. And so I started interviewing dead guys secret. I did both voices. Yeah. I can tell that full disclosure.

Debbie Millman

They were dead.

David Lee Roth

You know, I interviewed Hendrix and so forth and had to do the voices as well. Diamond Dave is a good man. Didn’t do a little Springsteen right, because I looked out the window and Clarence Jay, the truth. We we’d seen saxophone players before and three year old. None of us had ever seen anything like the snowmobile he was riding.

Debbie Millman

That is good.

David Lee Roth

Start. Well, obviously spend a lot of time by myself, but there’s been a lot of.

Debbie Millman

Times where you can figure out how to do that.

David Lee Roth

I have a teleplay coming up I’ve been working on for three years.

David Lee Roth

All right.

Debbie Millman

What’s a teleplay?

David Lee Roth

Well, I don’t know what you’re calling it today. I call it the Martians are landing. Thank you. Orson Welles. You know its sound effects, right? And so forth. Been working on this project for three years, and I play all the parts, all right. And they have varying different kinds of accent. And all of the people who is coming to Fort for for David is you sit in airport for nothing.

David Lee Roth

It may be entertain for self. If you can meet all of these people, why? Why bother? I tell you, because every fucking one of him is in your voice. Later, his way of getting a little bit fucking closer. Oh, I can tell this and get that far into it. And don’t forget to see my inner child like a little fucking more than Edward James Olmos.

David Lee Roth

You see, this was a good idea for a interview. What were you thinking Loco I wasn’t clearly. It was not always for fun. You know, you get that far into somebody’s soul, and then that gets into your voice every time I sing, every one of them’s in there.

Debbie Millman

Yes.

David Lee Roth

All right. Let me know you’re in it to so are you

David Lee Roth

esse

Debbie Millman

You’ve said that your favorite audience is disbelieving nonbelievers and non smilers. Why is that?

David Lee Roth

Oh, at the incept, if you’re already loved and accepted and it’s a birthday party. And yes, that’s one experience. Everybody knows every word, every song that I sang, they know them better than I do. We have a fellow who imitates me perfectly. He makes a living imitating me, plays in rock band, Vegas and so forth. His name’s Ralph.

We call him David Lee. Ralph and I watch videos of Ralph because he has every key bullet point move, you know, every artistic thing that I do. Sometimes I forget to do the back bend I forget to do the back bend. So it’s no, he’s he memorized everything right down to my voice in my.

Debbie Millman

Wow. So. So you said that you’re funny, but you’re not happy.

David Lee Roth

I’m never. Content is always some daily catastrophe or the big projects require holding your mud and staying cool. What’s the most important song in Damn Yankees? You got to have heart. Okay. And then in in West Side Story, Stay cool, boy. Beat it, pop it. Don’t try to stop it. Stay cool. And my answer to that many years later, stay frosty.

Debbie Millman

Are you not happy?

David Lee Roth

Routinely not. I think I’m appreciative of even the smallest and smaller and smaller things. Now I get such a kick and I see my business manager. She was sitting out there. She knows what I mean when I say window time.

Debbie Millman

What does.

David Lee Roth

That mean? Is when I get my job done, I sit in the window. I can tell the staff, I tell everybody I got to do some window time on this and I literally all go sit in a window just like that. And it might be there four or 5 hours. I do not have attention deficit anything. I’ll sit.

David Lee Roth

I can sit and just read a book and I’ll be there 6 hours later. It’s been a difficulty sometimes because everything else goes away. I have no trouble. Focus.

Debbie Millman

It sounds to me, though, that if you’re able to do that, that that could be a moment of being happy. No?

David Lee Roth

Well, I’m always solving a catastrophe. I started a newsletter called The Daily Catastrophe, and you slide it under the door on the road to everybody because the really good trips are full of destinations which the traveler can not expect that I can predict for. You better bring a parka, some Band-Aids, some mosquitoes. It’s a long list Deb know, and it has nothing to do with your destination.

Debbie Millman

But what is catastrophe and happy? How are they correlated or how is catastrophe and unhappiness correlated for you?

David Lee Roth

Happy for me is identifying the deception. Oh, that’s so cool. Whether that’s on a chess board or in a business negotiation or listening to a political speech, that’s a popular one today you follow.

Debbie Millman

So or.

David Lee Roth

Whether it’s wandering into a catastrophic situation and getting everybody settled down and making directive sense of it, I like that. It’s not adventure till the shit starts pouring out of the skies anyway. No, no mud. No Woodstock.

Debbie Millman

Is it about control?

David Lee Roth

Oh, certainly. And it’s about the challenge of. Okay, now use your tools. You called up for this. You didn’t just wander into it all, you know, You got ready, got your mind right. Got self right, whatever that meant, if whether it’s a debate or whether you’re going to try and walk across Borneo. I know some fellows who did that.

David Lee Roth

I prefer debate either way. We banked our ideas, got ready. All right.

Debbie Millman

Yeah. I mean, I’m still trying to figure out the correlation between catastrophe and happiness, but I do think that it has something to do with control.

David Lee Roth

Oh had absolutely nothing to do with control. But then the crucible of human emotion doesn’t happen up until 13,000 feet. That’s when everything disintegrates and you can’t sleep more than 2 hours. And all of the fears and the paranoias and the demons kick in and everybody starts arguing with each other and going, You know what? I’ve always hated the way you chew your food.

David Lee Roth

Really?

Debbie Millman

Now you’re talking about love.

David Lee Roth

Fall apart at those kinds of altitude. Yeah.

Debbie Millman

What made you decide to start Ink the Original?

David Lee Roth

Ink The Original is a product of my complaining, whining, almost killing myself and almost killing the team dozens of times climbing, kayaking, surfing, camping, camping more, camping, walking, bicycle. I use my bicycle every day to go to the 7-Eleven instead of the car all right I’m an expert at what not do.

Debbie Millman

Why is that?

David Lee Roth

And I’ve done everything wrong. I have nine really good scars all over me. I got seven surgeries. I’m the bionic dude, the Watkins team, Doctor Duffy and these guys forget it. They saved me Yo everything. You seen that Free Solo, the movie I’ve almost killed myself on all those climbs?

Debbie Millman

Unbelievable.

David Lee Roth

Couple of Alex’s climbs. I almost killed the team.

David Lee Roth

I make no bones

Debbie Millman

is incredible.

Debbie Millman

It’s not about free soloing. It’s about persistence. It’s an incredible movie.

David Lee Roth

Yes. If I’m an expert at anything in outdoor craft, field craft and so forth, that’s where it comes in. And over the years, swearing up and down, okay, I’m going to create this, this, this and that. And here are all the basic concepts. Well, I started with one. I went showed mom my tattoo. She says, What do you do when you go to the beach?

David Lee Roth

Okay, there’s special requirements here and beyond. Okay. It’s got to be sent free, transparent. That ability to reapply, resubmit. Wait a second. What about if I go climbing in this shit? Last thing I want to do is get this on my hands again. You want to go into the salt water? Let’s not kill the reef. I did not realize in my insular world that there was a huge, huge market for this.

David Lee Roth

I started creating stuff that was for folks who really do live in unforgiving environments. I call it backpack friendly. All right. It’s got to be identifiable in a foreign language. I can identify things in foreign languages, but in case I have to tell the cook, memorize this one. You see my ink logo, can you handle it with gloves, etc.?

David Lee Roth

Because all of our stuff is tactical and practical.

Debbie Millman

What made you decide to start the company? What made you decide? Take your life in this direction?

David Lee Roth

I’ve never been in business outside of art centric song and dance. I saw it as an opportunity here we are expanding into, quote, an unknown territory where I can use virtually all of my skills and talents, starting with connecting people with great big ideas and then motivating them or getting them well. Grandma used to call getting them all north, getting everybody going north.

Let’s think like a scoutmaster. And sometimes I’m in front going, Follow me. Half of being a good scoutmaster is looking your shoulder. 50% of the time I’m going count up and then handing over the responsibility to somebody else and going, All right, I’m going to go in back make sure we didn’t lose anybody. And I get to do all of that in many, many different departments and divisions of what we do here that are far more expansive than simply making records or perhaps even touring, although it is supremely inclusive of everything.

Those departments that I’ve learned.

Debbie Millman

You have, I believe, over 60 products. Now. What kind of products are you making? Can you talk about what they are and what they’re used for and why?

David Lee Roth

Yeah, it’s for unforgiving environments. Having lived out of a suitcase or a backpack on a tour bus or on a boat or on an airplane it’s not just amphibious assault. Sure, we’re military friendly, but it means family events, spring break, fixing that goddamn tire right outside of Vegas. Again, I told you about that tire dip.

Debbie Millman

So it’s skin care products that protect skin that is both tattooed or not tattooed.

David Lee Roth

Well, if I can protect your Rembrandt, that’s an investment of emotion. It’s an investment of money. It’s a responsibility. Way more than I’m going to the beach for three days. What do you got?

Debbie Millman

What made you believe that? This was a viable market?

David Lee Roth

tattoos today

Ink Today is the only true Esperanto I visited. Tribes who don’t have music, who don’t dance. Usually people go, Everybody has nan up.

Debbie Millman

Let’s telegraph that.

David Lee Roth

Not everybody sings. There are religions that forbid singing or government. There’s No singing, no dancing. But everybody has a mark. Everybody will carry the mark, even if it’s not ink. Somebody who Islamic or Muhammad and whatever. When you are bowing three times, four times a day, you’ll have a mark. It’s the same as a tattoo it says who you are, where you been, where you’re going, Right.

It’s how we communicate when we no longer speak each other’s language. If you got cupcakes on your forearm, your baker, you got pinnacles on your shoulder blade, you were a prisoner somewhere, you know, for a little dot where you do your time, you got heart’s in a musical note. I see you up near Lincoln Center. You Juilliard? Yeah.

Noah’s violin case. My name’s Dave right. You see what I’m saying?

Debbie Millman

I do. I read that when you’re at a sushi bar, you might consider folding back a little of your shirtsleeves to get better service.

David Lee Roth

That works until they figure out I’m Jewish.

Debbie Millman

How on earth do they figure that out? Are you wearing a yarmulke?

David Lee Roth

The sense of humor. There are. There is no Jewish chapter of the Yakuza I doubt there ever will be. And if they have a sense of humor, it’s certainly not larcenous coconspiratoriel And laugh to win it.

Debbie Millman

Now, you’re not just going after the tattoo world with this new product line with your company. You’re actually going after companies like Procter and Gamble.

David Lee Roth

If I can protect what I perceived to be the most difficult thing to protect, you’ve got a Picasso on your arm there. If you want to wait around to your my age to hit the wage stack, you’ll look like a 60 something who goes to the gym three times a week. Outstanding work. Let’s try again. Start now. You’ll be able to fool him for years, says me.

All right.

Debbie Millman

Well, if you start that.

David Lee Roth

Keep that tattoo looking.

Good.

David Lee Roth

You know, it keeps you last a whole lot longer, etc., etc.. Okay. Using that accelerated technology, the rest of it now is at our hands. Okay? Because we can do packaging, we can do printing, we can do marketing. There’s probably 17 different labs that we deal with now for our products because if you want the best beeswax, you’re going to Carolinas and my directors of affairs do that specifically.

All right. Most of the products that we deal with on the Duane Reade shelf or just made in New Jersey at a single factory with a French name, you’re all thinking of it, right, because there’s about four of them that have French.

David Lee Roth

Names for me.

David Lee Roth

They’re all made and they’re all made in New Jersey at one factory. That factory makes all of this stuff. And I took a small batch artisanal approach. I’ve used the example of ice cream. Everybody likes ice cream. Everybody generally likes coconut vanilla. Well, if you want to make some really, really superb vanilla coconut ice cream, going to have to learn some French because the vanilla lady lives in Tahiti and the cow lives up in Wisconsin.

David Lee Roth

You don’t have to learn French.

Debbie Millman

Thank you.

David Lee Roth

Although the cow appreciates it. really it’s way more work. It is way more labor intensive adds a few cents more. The price. But what you’re getting is the equivalent of super fine small batch scotch super. In the case of the best premium, don’t you say that the best stuff.

Debbie Millman

Has a business doing so far.

David Lee Roth

Superb. We just had a fella offer to no shit. 25 large to get involved in investment. 25 million I straight up and we’re in our very first season. But take a look around when you think of ink you won’t be able to see anything. But virtually everybody is walking around with some version of who I am, where I’ve been, and who I plan on being.

Debbie Millman

Why do you think that that change has shifted? I mean, 50 years ago, 40 years ago, maybe even 30 years ago, people that were wearing tattoos were subversive. They were prisoners.

David Lee Roth

Which is exactly why we started wearing it, because it works to the anti-hero. And the anti-hero doesn’t mean the bad guy okay? Think of all those old Clint Eastwood movies. You think of any detective movie, the hero is always arguing with the police boss. God damn, Callahan, you break up anymore cars. I’m never. Every police thriller has the irate police chief.

Debbie Millman

It’s a true.

David Lee Roth

Yeah. And the hero is anti that guy. He’s going to break the rules to get it done. Okay. That’s what the anti is in the anti-hero he’s probably going to have sideburns he might smoke cigarettes He might actually be a Tony Soprano kind of guy. He may wear blue jeans instead of a business suit. And he probably has a tattoo.

David Lee Roth

Rock and roll has made our living in the rebel cell. You know, this is we anti heroes we’re against supposedly that codified the format, the expected, the overly conservative you follow.

Debbie Millman

Yeah, but that’s not really rock and roll anymore.

David Lee Roth

Oh, yes, it is very much.

Debbie Millman

Well, I mean, yes. No, it’s still rock and roll. There just aren’t that many people doing it in that way.

David Lee Roth

Rock and roll has transmogrified and now they’re wearing businessman haircuts.

Debbie Millman

Exactly.

David Lee Roth

An anti-gun lobby. Okay. It’s the same. Anti-gun lobby is the same as we’re not going to take it because civil rights were we want the vote. Also, we’re always confronted. I’ve been really aware of this since living in Japan with our are we? And I’ll say to myself, am I going to be an original or an archetype?

Debbie Millman

And what is your answer?

David Lee Roth

Both out.

Debbie Millman

Of hand. You tell the difference.

David Lee Roth

Well, I think the original all is a combination of many different types. If you if you really follow note for note, okay, I’m going to be an archetype. This haircut, that kind of cigarette let’s let’s build one French archetype Late seventies the American uniform was a bomber jacket. Levi’s straight legged. Okay, cowboy boots you follow three day face.

David Lee Roth

Marlboro cigarettes It’s archetype. All right, I’ll take the cigarettes and the boots. But over here, I dig those Viet Cong pajama pants. We’ll take a pair of those. And I like over here. You know what? I’m just going to wear that trench coat. It comes from different places. Original. You’re going to borrow and access, you’re going to extrapolate, you’re going to extract and you’re going to use it.

David Lee Roth

You’re going to make it your own.

Debbie Millman

And you do. David Lee I have one last question for you. You said that you simply have to be creative all the time. You have to create new things and you never have writer’s block. What advice would you have for somebody that does have writer’s block? What would you tell them?

David Lee Roth

Banking. Don’t sit in the middle of the room waiting for Jesus to talk to you. He’s busy. You bank your ideas long before you sit down in front of a microphone or before you sit down at the empty page with a pen in hand. I do both. Before you approach the canvas as you go through your day, anything that inspires you. And

David Lee Roth

for me it is language that’s a big pivot to me. So the taxi driver may have an expression, Taxi driver turns. I said, How’s it going? He does. There are some days. Wow, what a title. Add two dots, Do it. There are some days that’s a song title.

Debbie Millman

Wow. That’s a book title.

David Lee Roth

The title of a of my history. And don’t be foolish enough like I do to think you’re going to remember it, bank it, put it on the page you follow.

Debbie Millman

I do.

David Lee Roth

Thats a simplest expression of it. You’re banking your thoughts, your ideas, you know, no useless days, no wasted days. Wasting time is important to me. There’s time that you just one day

Debbie Millman

look out the.

Debbie Millman

Window.

David Lee Roth

Is. Is means a lot to me. But even that is kind of slotted in that it’s not infinite. And it’s not that I feel that I have to be productive. It’s I realize now that I am surrounded by input stimuli and banking it.

Debbie Millman

You seem to squeeze every single moment out of life.

David Lee Roth

I’ve seen folks who’ve wasted a lot of time and I’ve heard the expressions. You know, wasting talent is a sin. If you have a talent for something, then it usually means other folks can go along on the trip with you. All right, So I’ll take it out of the super personal first person. And in terms of wasting time, if you have the talent, for example, to put together an idea and then guess what?

We’re now we’re going to take our idea. We’re going to go to Europe with it and you waste time. You guys don’t want to die, don’t want to go, Well, what about everybody else who threw in with you? Not everybody’s going to be a group leader in life. Somebody like yourself, your team leader. It is incumbent upon you for everybody else who throws in with you to do field trips, to illuminate, to entertain.

You dig in. If you can’t find it within yourself, you do it for them. You follow my reasoning.

Debbie Millman

Yes.

David Lee Roth

So.

Debbie Millman

David Lee Roth, thank you for being such an incredible force in the world. And thank you for joining me today on Design Matters

David Lee Roth

Deborah, great questions. Thank you.

Debbie Millman

IDEAS Thanks so much. Thank you.