The Oddest Couple: Can it Last?
The article below was originally published in the June 1984 Musician magazine. And was written by Charles M. Young
by Charles M. Young
Page 2
If you locked David Lee Roth in a Texas Steel-Cage Death Match with Journey. Quiet Riot, Iron Maiden and Abdullah the Butcher, Roth would be the guy to walk out alive, spit on the bleeding cadavers of his enemies, and incite the crowd to tear up their seats and club any vestiges of civilized authority into the cement. This is no shit. The guy’s been taking kick-boxing lessons from Benny “the Jet” Urquidez, a champion in Hong Kong and Japan where anyone who ain’t a kick-boxer is a wimp.
“It’s a good way to get your ya-yas out.” says Roth, who exudes a quiet confidence-make that loud – confidence stemming from the certain knowledge that he can kill any interviewer instantly with his bare feet. “I wanted the most severe training I could put myself through. So I went to Benny the Jet and said, ‘I want to do this five mornings a week, and did for…let’s see…ten and a half months. The rope, heavy bags, speed bags, shin training technique, the throws. And I did road work every night. When I started, I couldn’t run around the block without heaving and blowing. I got up to six, eight miles by the end-Of course, you can’t train like that on tour. You have to gird all your energy for that one night-time shot. That’s a two-hour bout right there, and you don’t get to sit in the corner after every round. This is not just standing there projecting I spend fully thirty-three percent of my time off the ground”
Yeah, but why kick-boxing as opposed to say, aerobic dancing?
“It’s competition at the maximum,” says Roth who looks almost as healthy at 4 a.m. in a St. Paul hotel room as he does performing at a distance. “There’s no chess pieces between you, not any form of equipment. Hitting somebody else-anyone can do that. The trick is not getting hit and taking care of your business. There’s a whole lot of strategy involved, a whole lot of developing incredible presence of mind. Focus. Control. Control of your most basic instincts: fear, anger, vengeance.”
He can summon up this mindset at will?
“It’s something you learn over hours and hours of practice. I’m not exaggerating: hours and hours and hours and hours. That’s the only way to do it. You can concentrate more on any one thing, whether it’s a lover or a contract or an audience. Audiences fall somewhere in between.”
Given to flamboyant jumpsuits and scarves around the neck in his private as well as public dress and an entourage of dwarves in karate suits, Roth smokes, drinks, consumes a fair amount of junk food, and generally tears himself down with an exuberance to match the discipline with which he builds himself up.
“You gotta balance it out,” says Roth. “I don’t do anything all the time.”
When critics are not complaining that Roth is boorish, cynical and an evil influence on today’s youth, they object that his voice is a one-note piano, or more accurately, bellow.
“We have songs that run at a different intensity, but they’re still high-pressure, songs like I’ll Wait. Totally different feeling from something like ‘Jump.’ ‘I’ll Wait has a very somber tone, almost sad, but it still has a lot of torque. It gives the impression of being fast. Throughout the history of the band, we’ve had a number of different sounding songs.”
But because of the band’s let’s-get-wasted-and- fuck image, it’s been hard for people to hear those songs or Roth’s vocal range (guys got a falsetto that sounds just like Janis Joplin), even when the proof is right there in the black plastic grooves. “I’ll Wait,” to stick with one example, must be the first time they’ve ever sung about delayed gratification.
“That’s not something we’ve aspired to, no,” Roth rasps.
But if you listen to the song, it’s remarkably sensitive, dealing with one of Roth’s favorite themes, whether in lyrics or in interviews: image vs. reality. In this case, it’s the image of a particular woman he’s fallen in love with while wondering about the truth of her real personality. In Jungian terms, it’s about the anima, a man’s ideal woman, his female soul image….
“It’s about the girl in the Calvin Klein underwear ads,” says Roth, cutting loose with a long, low, wet laugh. “You know the one where she’s wearing the guy’s underwear? I cut her picture out of the newspaper, pinned it in front of the Trinitron and wrote the words to her. Any other poignant questions?
How about the rest of the lyrics on 1984?
“I wrote them in the back of a 1951 Mercury lowrider. I’d call up Larry the roadie, he’d show up after lunch, we’d hop in the car and go driving all through the Hollywood Hills, up the Coast Highway, through the San Fernando Valley. I’d sit in back and write the words for whatever music I had on the cassette. Every hour and a half or so, I’d lean over the front seat and say, ‘Lar what do you think of this?’ He’s probably the most responsible for how it came out.”
Eddie just comes by with a cassette and says, “Here’s the rifts. Sing over them.”?
“We hear ’em in the studio. We all put the material together. He has the music, the original four or five different parts. “Yeah, that might be a good chorus… we’ll play that just once, call it a b part… that’ll be a verse there… let’s chop this up…we’ll save this for another song. Once that process is completed, I’ll get it on a cassette and I call Larry.”
Not a primary creative force in the music beyond the lyrics. in which he claims no pride, Roth does seem to occupy a position of arbiter between Eddie and the public. He exercised his veto power over “Jump”-the number one single in the country for five weeks-for two years before agreeing to sing it.
“Man, there is so much music, so many snippets of good riffs and bad riffs-who knows what is getting thrown out after awhile? I don’t remember from two years ago. Maybe it wasn’t right for two years ago. We hear all these bits and pieces and then we have to sift through them. We can’t possibly put everything on the album. Jump’ made it there eventually.”
One thing the critics have not accused Roth of is pretension.
“The music is so much sturm und drang. The whole parade is so much sturm und drang and chaos and hysteria. It becomes so much larger than life, I keep waiting for it to bust. Here you have a road crew of seventy-five people, a hundred tons of equipment, nine semis, five buses, all to support what? We’re not even selling soap here. We’re selling the Four Stooges, four guys pounding away at the simplest instruments, playing the most simple songs, falling down occasionally. It’s a mockery of the whole corporate process. All the personalities-the agents, the promoters, the managers, the newspaper critics, the groupies, the truck drivers-they’re all like cartoon characters. If you look at it like that, like a cartoon, you’re going to have a good time.”
There’s more than a cartoon going on here.
“Lemme tell you something. Somebody asks me, Dave, what’s it mean when you say somebody’s rocking or when somebody’s not rocking. I say, ‘I’ll illustrate: a guy with black socks, black shoes, blue and white Bermuda shorts, Hawaiian luau shirt, a Nikon and a jackknife around his neck, zinc oxide on his nose, a pair of sunglasses, a fishing hat with all the badges on it, and he’s staring up at the tall buildings-that’s rock ‘n’ roll’. Now the freedom to do that is very serious, but the picture is a crackup.”
This is important, because a lot of Musician readers are looking for the secret formula of rock ‘n’ roll, some attitude, some piece of equipment, some article of clothing that will make them a star. Roth has just given away the game. To rock ‘n’ roll, one must be a nerd.
Breaking the general rhythm of the interview, Roth doesn’t laugh.
“I’m primarily motivated by fear and revenge. My songs, my interviews, the way I dress…. Every time we play, I’m dancing someone into the dirt.”
“There’s nothing to give away. The music is a matter of luck It’s magic. If you could duplicate it, there would have been a whole lot more Beatles. All I can do is answer questions that have nothing to do with the music, try to illustrate where it comes from. People can judge whatever they want: ‘Oh, well that’s an interesting way to live your life. Perhaps if I tried that, I wouldn’t play all sad songs for a change. You know how often hear that? Ninety-eight percent of the people who pick up an acoustic guitar think that means sad. I’m no teacher, but I say. “Hey, have you tried anything a little more positive? Why don’t you take a sad subject and win for a change? All I can do is tell stories, make funny asides. You can’t explain the music, only the people it comes from. The most exciting thing to anybody. it seems to me, ought to be to know another person’s personality-whether it’s your wife, your boyfriend, a politician, a rock star, a ballplayer. It doesn’t matter. There’s always somebody else.”
One personality Roth seems uninterested in knowing better is Eddie Van Halen. The situation appears similar to the mid-period Who when the tensions and creativity seemed to reach an optimum balance-enough to keep passion in the music, but not enough to destroy the band. Their quotes hint at deep wounds-Eddie omitting Roth from his list of “deep humans,” Roth portraying their show as The Four Stooges with no credit for Eddie’s artistry-yet neither is willing to pull the scabs off in public.
“Two different personalities,” Roth mutters. “Two different worlds. Two completely different worlds.”
One difference in the worlds is that Eddie’s doesn’t have that much money.
“It depends on what you do with it once it crosses your palm.
He’s got a great new studio. How many tracks is it? Nice microphones. Pretty floor All those little pieces of wood that just fit right together all the way to that big door. I don’t got that.” Roth’s tone drops a reeking load of sarcasm on Eddie’s temple to his muse.
What does Roth got?
“A bathing suit. I choose to wear it in Tahiti more often than not, but as far as material possessions go. I own a bathing suit. There’s been money made. Making it is the easy part. Keeping it is the whole ball game. It’s like jumping. Going up is easy. I can teach you that in twenty minutes. Going down, it’ll take you three years.”
Back on the subject of nothing being more exciting than getting to know another personality, who was the first to make such an impression on Roth?
“Al Jolson.”
What?
“Al Jolson. He was doing something completely off the wall. Had a great voice, lot of conviction, determination, a show that shook the world. White gloves to this day are the hottest thing going. Each song created a different feeling, a different mood. Showbiz, glamour, big time stage with velvet curtains and glitz and all the razzmatazz. And it was just old country-type, bluesy, rural shit. I learned all his greatest hits by the time I was seven. And ever since I’ve known that I would make music onstage.
Roth snuffs out a cigarette and rasps a Jolson medly: “You Made Me Love You.” “Toot, Toot, Tootsie.” “Dixie Melody.” “Sonny Boy.” “There’s A Rainbow On My Shoulder.” Not really an oeuvre that created a lot of different moods and feelings. but it did create one feeling very well: joy. Like a Van Halen show. Joy for teenagers, a celebration of the physical…
“No, no. I’ll sync it up for you exactly. I am primarily motivated by fear and revenge.”
What????
“Fear and revenge. You’ll find it in all my presentations: my songs, my interviews, the way I dress, the way I walk down the street. Granted the fabulous success of 1984, but we’ve had our problems with management, accountants, lawyers, all the attendant things that come with working your way out of the bar scene. People think this has to be paradise, but I’m telling you, these thorns linger with you. And you pluck them out one at a time with each success. You’re number one, you can pull this one out of your shoulder. Ya know, that sonofabitch. It’s part of arriving. Every time we go out and play, yeah, I’m having a great time, but I’m also dancing someone else into the dirt.”
Such feelings inspire a counter-load of guilt in most people.
“I’m not even going to plead nolo contendere. Not guilty. Judge Wapner. Life is one big party, and it’s our duty to dance.”
Was there ever anything he felt guilty about?
“There are some things I wish I’d done differently, but as far as guilt and shame, no. Life is not a popularity contest. That’s a simple equation, but to take it to heart and believe it and act on it, that’s a whole different thing. You make a few good friends, you burn a trail across the world, leaving a permanent shadow of groupies and rubble as never before in the history of rock ‘n roll, and one day, it’s Miller Time. It’s a big art project. A lot of times it’s fingerpainting, but nonetheless art. I can’t imagine being any happier. I just don’t see where the guilt and shame would come from. Unless it’s from your psychological background.”
Precisely. Most people grow up anchored to shame as a form of social control. They never throw off their parental influence and end up cogs in the machine.
“I threw off my parents super early. They sent me to a child guidance clinic when I was seven. So I disposed of all those vestiges of society way back.”
What was wrong?
“No guilt”
That got him into the clinic?
“Whatever it was, I just wasn’t ashamed of it. That’s what threw them.”
There’s a lot of people out there who are frightened and resentful of that lack of shame, people stuck in jobs they hate-or even like-but they’re anchored to a mortgage, raising their kids according to traditional morality….
“You know what I tell people like that? I may not go down in history, but I will go down on your little daughter.”
To appreciate Van Halen fully-which is to appreciate as Paul did light on the road to Damascus-it is not mandatory to undergo a ten-and-a-half month regimen of full-contact kickboxing and roadwork. Nor is it necessary to spend all your waking hours for fifteen years with a guitar in your hand. Nonetheless, a certain amount of mental preparation is strongly recommended. The serious acolyte, for example, should move to St. Paul in the middle of December and experience nothing that is not slush until Van Halen comes to town in March. To experience slush and then to experience Van Halen is to know joy. If one is a teenager, one must fondle one’s ticket for thirty minutes every morning and evening, speak of nothing else for six weeks (even in algebra class) (especially in algebra class), and get physically ill with anticipation as if it were Christmas. If one is an adult, one must meditate unceasingly on the mantra: “God help me erase all image from my mind of David Lee Roth going down on my daughter” Whatever one’s age, it is essential to identity with Roth’s enthusiasm, see in him one’s own potential to dance demons into the dirt. Do not envy him his naughtiness. Do not think “I tell a joke like that at home and my parents would whack me,” or, “I do a sword dance in a jumpsuit with most of my ass hanging out and Fireman’s Fund will consider me a weak candidate for middle management.” Just accept that he gets away with stuff that you can’t. He is-to cite a 4,000-year tradition-a Trickster: amoral, driven by appetites, tells too much of the truth when he isn’t omitting too much of the truth, gets away with it all because of his enormous charm. Not everyone in the tribe can be a Trickster, or the maize would never get picked. But he is necessary to the collective spiritual life. Can you really hate Bugs Bunny with genitals?