DAVID LEE ROTH & THE PHILOSOPHY OF DIVING DOWN

SEPTEMBER '82—What HM special would be complete without the most vivacious, high-falutin, rootin'-tootin', gung-ho bunch of good guys that current-ly exist, Van Halen? Well, ac-tually several might be equally complete—and, in fact, the previous sentence was a rhetorical question asked just for kicks! Anyway, ace-in-L.A. Sylvie Simmons probes for in-timate details about the biggest-band-in-de-land, and—you get to read it!

Those lips! Those eyes! That body! Pale, hard, smooth as marble; solid chest, muscular legs, and hung between them—a Holiday Inn towel? David—the Michelangelo version, a gift from a fan—draped with various souvenirs is the first thing you meet when you step out of the elevator of what was once Rudolf Valentino’s gymnasium. The second thing is a member of the large Van Halen retinue, officed in this Hollywood building. The third thing— mouth in the familiar pout, eyes in the familiar half-lidded stare, hair in the familiar egg-whisk style—is David Lee Roth himself, drinking Dr. Pepper and smoking Marlboros. More magnificent than Michelangelo’s version, almost perfect except for his tastebuds, here before me is the world’s most loved and the world’s most hated human being in the flesh. And he’s talking nineteen to the dozen...“Well as you probably know, Sylvie, this is a Zen principle—two of the most opposite things become the same thing and as you have probably deduced from our previous interviews (many, I confess) and the music etc.; I represent the Zen council portion of Van Halen; not so much because I am a student of Zen but basically because I am the only one who can spell it.”

The reason I don’t use periods is because he doesn’t. Fast? He’s a killer. It’s barely afternoon, the carbon monoxide is wafting up from Sunset Boulevard, and David’s brain’s as fresh and crisp and sunny as a Kellogg’s cornflake. He’s fascinating and he knows it, laughing, chortling and screaming at his own frequent amusing ideas and jokes, sounding (a lot like the music) like a tornado hitting a safari park. This man could talk the loincloth off Ted Nugent. Turn this interview to 45 and read it LOUD. “I just like to talk,” says David. “I like words. I can only count to four and then I have to start over again — which is OK for my job.” Would make someone a wonderful lawyer. “Yeah, that’s just talking, there’s nothing there. You’ve heard about the 15 minute university? Instead of going through 10, 12 years of college we’re going to offer courses that teach you only what you will remember seven years after you graduate. So if you’ve taken Spanish for seven years, seven years later the only thing you’ll remember is Como esta usted? So we’ll teach you that—Spanish la and lb. Then we re going on to Economics—go to grad school in economics and spend eight years at university, if you want to do it that way, fine. Or you can come to the Fifteen Minute Van Halen University and we’ll teach you what you’ll remember seven years after you graduate which is: Supply and Demand, OK? With a special graduate course extension called: Buyer Beware. And we’ll have a special two minute extension in law...” You get the idea. Sorry I couldn’t condense this into the Fifteen Minute Van Halen interview, but if—like theirs —your attention span’s too short for all this (something the band recognized by putting lots of little photos instead of lyrics on the inner sleeve; if Van Halen fans wanna read, they’ll have to go to a bleeding library) just look at the pictures. It’s what I do.

1st FIFTEEN MINUTES... INTERFACING WITH OUR FELLOW CREATURES

1) Ted Nugent’s said he’d never allow Van Halen on a bill with him. Answer: “People are very competitive: and one of the reasons is they’re competing in a field that is a lot like the state of architecture today—a lot of glass boxes.” (Reference: Tom Wolfe’s From Bauhaus to Our House which David just finished reading.) “It’s the same with music, people talking about ‘my glass box is purer than your glass box’ or ‘your glass box can’t go on before my glass box’.. .1 was listening to the radio out in the city, and there were some people hanging around listening who were very familiar with heavy rock bands—Scorpions, UFO. Michael Schenker, bands of this nature. And a song came on the radio and it had a riff just like Eddie plays that sounds like violins. And I said, ’boy does that sound familiar,' and everybody laughed and everything. Then one of the kids says, ‘wow, that was great Dave.’ And I said, ‘that wasn’t me.’ He said, ’yes it was, I’ve got every album, I’ve got your pictures on the wall. That was.’ And I said no, I’m quite convinced that was the Michael Schenker Band. ‘No no, it’s you.’ And I’m sure it wasn’t us. And it turned out it was actually Judas Priest! So 1 can see where the competitive edge would come in, with everybody competing with the exact same equipment, the exact same technique, the exact same philosophy. 1 don’t think anything personal comes into it, though there are a number of people out there who take umbrage at Van Halen’s lifestyle. A lot of people take Van Halen a lot more seriously than we do. We’re not harbingers of doom, we’re not prophesising The End. We’re not an illustration of the ills to come. On the other hand, 1 like to think of it that way sometimes myself.

2) Sammy Hagar says Roth is a faggot who wants a “relationship” with him. (Came from our last interview when David wondered quite what manner of a man was Sam, writing songs only about cars and not women.) Answer: “Sammy definitely has a social problem. I think it’s based on lack of education—you know, Sammy has travelled, but travel is nothing unless you know what you’re seeing. And evidently he hasn’t seen Van Halen lately or he wouldn’t talk like that.”

3) They pilfered Adam Ant’s costumes for their video and his song title for their album. Answer: “1 didn’t know they had ‘Hang ’Em High.’ I got it from Clint Eastwood. It’s like they say, ‘Dave, that scream you do, I love it, it’s just like Deep Purple.’ Baby, I stole it from the Ohio Players! And I busted my nose and wore tape in front of 65,000 people and looked like an Indian long before Adam met Malcolm McLaren. The video’s supposed to be on a scenario for what would be like a spaghetti western. What you have is the most overblown, over-the-top home movie ever made. We did it rather like a surrealistic art project, like where they paint the picture and come back three days later and try to figure out what they meant. It’s like one of those Escher pictures where it makes sense one way and next time you look at it leaves you in a state of confusion. On top of that, your filthy little imagination is always going to be better than anything 1 could put up on a screen for you, so go for it!”

4) The video managed to incur the wrath of TV programmers in the U.S., Japan, New Zealand and Australia. Answer: “In Japan they thought we were making fun of an almost theological figure, which is the Samurai swordsman. A lot of other people took it very personally too. In Australia they said ‘oh, you’re victimizing women’ (there’s a scene with a person being stripped down by midgets) and I said ‘no no, I’m all for equal rights etc. etc. Besides, that’s not a woman! Thank you your honor, next please.’ ”

FIVE MINUTE GRADUATE COURSE IN FAMILY RELATIONS

1)The National Enquirer reckons Van Halen are such bad boys they’re breaking up Eddie and Val’s marriage with their wild ways.

Answer: “I’ve got no idea what’s going on in their private life. I’ll tell you what I saw on TV last night—they asked Eddie and Valerie, ‘Valerie, would you give up your career and just step back to be a wife and have children’ and she said ‘Yes I would.’ And they said, ‘Eddie, would you step back to be a father and have a family?’ And Eddie thought for a moment and he said. ‘Well I hope I’m home. I’d like to know that the kid looks more like me than the mailman.’ And I think that sums up any changes that have taken place. It’s not like a 360 degree change. You have to understand —Edward is a true musician. He’s the kind of artiste that you spell with an ‘e.’ He’s always in the back of the plane by himself with a guitar, or he’s up in the hotel room jamming with some people. And the only time he’s without a guitar, it seems to me, is when he’s sleeping. And 1 ain’t going to sleep with the fucker, so God bless Valerie!”

2) You’ve been getting some stick from parents’ groups about setting a Bad Example for the nation’s toddlers.

Answer: “Parents fear against any anti-hero. You used to have heroes that stood for Organization and Peace and Perfect Alignment. The hero was the guy in the white hat who got you back into line when you were screwing up. And then the anti-hero got the most popular—the guy who breaks up the Organization, the guy who comes from nowhere and goes home to no one. I watch a lot of movies too! That’s where I learned to French kiss. I don’t remember which one—it was so long ago, doll! Any time a parent sees an antihero—there’s just a difference in culture there just because of age brackets. I suspect Van Halen conjures up images of the Anti-hero, whether it’s because Michael refuses to shave when he’s on tour, or whether it’s because David has some sort of insurance policy (against paternity suits taken out by Ladies of the Road) or whatever. More grist for the mill.”

3) Have you had to use the insurance policy yet? Answer: “No, no.”

4) Were you trying to bridge the generation gap by having Alex and Eddie’s dad play his clarinet on the album?

Answer: “It’s more of a regression. If you were there you’d know what I mean. He’s a typical musician. I’ll tell you a little story to illustrate what I mean.

“They had a scientific experiment here in L.A.—you know how often people resemble their dogs and vice-versa? So they had a controlled experiment where they took three animals: one belonging to a scientist, one from the architectural strata and someone from the musical way of thinking. They took the scientific dog into a controlled environment and there was a pile of sticks there, and the animal sniffed around the sticks and made the sticks into the design of a molecule. They said, ‘hmm, scientist’s dog makes a molecule’ and wrote it down. And they brought the architect’s dog in and it nuzzled round the sticks and made them into the shape of the Empire State Building. Hmm, architect’s dog makes building, and they wrote that down. And then they had the musician’s dog. The musician’s dog gets there half an hour late, was stoned when it got there, started screwing round with he other dogs and left half hour early...

“I think when you hear Mr. Van Halen playing, you’ll have an idea it’s a shadow of where Eddie and Alex are now. There’s a sense of humor in there, a lot of technique, and a whole lot of beer!”

OPTIONAL COURSE IN ENGLISH LIT.

1)You say you like words, but you didn’t write too many of the things on the new album. Half of it’s covers, and half the rest is instrumental.

Answer: “For us, doing other people’s material has been just as enjoyable. When you play on the road you’re playing, if you’re in the studio or rehearsal you’re playing, even if you’re alone and you’re making something up you’re playing, or if you’re playing for your sweetheart by the light of the silvery moon, you’re playing. So it’s not like 1 have to play my golden gospel for you on record every night and whatever. I happen to like so-and-so’s tunes and so-and-so’s tunes. There was a time, before the great hippie movement, when it was very unconventional for groups to write, compose and perfrom their own material—it was not the norm. And I figure if it was good enough for Elvis Presley, Janis Joplin and Beethoven then it’s good enough for us. And it makes Van Halen just a little bit different—because they’re not ‘interpretations.’ They’re rather like send-ups, which is why there are words missing and choruses missing, and this is not so much by device as it is we listened to the 45 in the basement and I go ‘yeah man, I learned the words, did you learn the music yet?’ ‘Sure I learned the music.’ ‘Play it.’ ‘All right, you count it off.’ And you botch four words there, forget a line there, and they’re following you and you act like everything is cool, and by the time the demo is finished, who cares! Same thing happened with ‘Really Got Me.’ 1 got the words wrong—but 1 refuse to admit that I didn’t learn the song. I’ve got my pride.”

I watch a lot of movies. That's where I learned to French kiss. —David Lee Roth

2) Don’t the fans feel cheated—want a few more new songs for their money?

Answer: “If you’re looking for something very specific, I suggest you listen to a very specific band—there are enough, without naming names, who make one specific kind of music. There are some people who go to a bar and order the exact same thing to drink every time they go to the bar. any bar in the world. You have that option. Van Halen will not provide you with that alternative. Van Halen just make the music that-we do.”

3) Exactly what does this “Diver Down” mean? Sounds dirty.

Answer: “Come on, it’s like if you asked Robert Frost, ‘what do you mean by that poem’ or ask someone, ‘explain that movie. What do you mean when Colonel Kurtz says ‘the horror, the horror’.. .It’s for when they start doing any activities under water, something’s going on that’s not immediately apparent to your eye, you put up the red flag with the white slash. Well, a lot of people approach Van Halen as sort of an abyss. It means, it’s not immediately apparent to all eyes what is going on underneath the surface.”

FINALS. GRADUATE COURSE IN ECONOMICS. DAVID LEE ROTH “BUYER S GUIDE TO “DIVER DOWN’"

WHERE HAVE ALL THE GOOD TIMES GONE!

Why another Kinks song?

“There’s two we’ve recorded, but we’re capable of playing six different ones—because at one time, back in our bar band days, I bought a double album from K-Tel or something that had 30 Kinks tunes on it. We learned all of one side and played them into the dirt during the club gigs, you konw, twice a night each one because they sounded good and they were great to dance to, etc., etc. So they’ve always used them for soundchecks and warm-ups. And not to mention the message implied there, whether it might be superficial to some people or not, exists these days more than ever because, what with so many businessmen on stage playing business music. Where have all the good times gone? I’m serious. It happened to punk rock a lot, it happened to new wave, it happened to reggae and heavy metal and on and on— a lot of business people just want to make a buck, and they’re becoming craftsmen more than songwriters.”

Have you had any contact with Ray Davies, gotten his reaction to all those royalties?

“No. We had a seance though, tried to dredge up his spirit. And Chrissie Hynde materialized for a brief moment.”

" Your filthy little imagination is always going to be better than anything I could put up on a screen for you. -David Lee Roth"

Same clothes.

"Better hips.”

HANG ’EM HIGH

It’s all those Westerns where there’s some kind of dissonant sound in the background, like they’ll have one harmonica that only hits one note—eeeee—and that’s when you know that the hero is coming into town or something terrible or wonderful is going to happen. And what happens is Edward will come up with a song or a riff or part of a song, and then immediately I’ll hear it and I'll know right away what the scenario is. I’ll just know.”

CATHEDRAL

Has Van Halen found religion? Will we find you at airports selling cookies for God?

“If I tried to hand you a cookie, Sylvie, would you take it?! No, ‘Cathedral’—Edward comes into the studio and he’ll be playing this music and he’ll go, ‘yeyy, I just made this up.’ And he has no idea what it is. But you’ll walk into the room and go, ‘that sounds like Beethoven” or ‘that sounds like a flamingo guitar, let’s call it something Mexican' or ‘that sounds like Bach, you could play it on the organ,’ ‘Bach who?’ says Eddie, ‘don’t worry about it' says Dave, ‘name it something churchy and it will fit.’ We work together well that way.”

SECRETS

“The nucleus of the lyrics come from greeting cards and get-well cards that I bought in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on the last tour, and they were written in the style of American Indian poetry. ‘May your moccasins leave happy tracks in the summer snows.’

So this is where you get your inspiration from.

“You name it—everything. You’ve got to fill up your bucket. Have you ever talked to anybody with an empty bucket? Have you ever talked to anybody with an empty bucket? [Regularly in this job.] You’ve heard music by people with empty buckets? Music all about groupies, about airplanes, about going on the road, hotels. Not too many people can relate to that. They like to hear about it once or twice, but most of us feel left out. There’s a lot to be said for the educational process: teach me about groupies, airplanes, being on the road: but don’t teach me too much. You have to pick from other places besides the mirror. "

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CONTINUED FROM PAGE 15

There's limits to what too many people want to know about happy footprints.

“There’s only one on there! Can you handle four minutes, Sylvie? I know you can!” [Mother, it's not true.}

INTRUDER

“I wrote that. Remember what I told you about the video? We made it with no consideration for the music at all. There was no story line that we tried to fit to ‘Pretty Woman,' we simply made a movie like MGM. Hollywood-style. None of this conceptual video stuff. When we finished the movie, it was about three minutes too long for the song, so I said. ‘We won't cut any of it, we ll write soundtrack music for the beginning. So we went into the studio and I played the synthesizer and I wrote it —it took about an hour to put that together. It was rerecorded for the album.”

Fancy trying a whole soundtrack for a film?

“Not at all—but I did want to try. As you well know, after you've sold a million records, you become an internationallyrecognized expert in everything!”

PRETTY WOMAN

“Something that is a different vocal sound for Van Halen. different guitar sound, but I don't think it's lost any of its torque. I don’t think any of the humidity has been let out of the tires so to speak. It’s just different— but not by device again. I remember when we were playing it back in the bar days and Eddie said, 'there’s no piano and no acoustic rhythm guitar, how do we fill it up?' And 1 said, 'we try playing something like “Ticket To Ride” and speed it up.' Inspiration does not come from nowhere! You don’t sit in a darkened room or an isolation tank and wait for a burst of light and the Hand of God to come down and hand you the scroll. I’ve tried that. And said fuck it. let’s do ‘Pretty Woman’! No seriously, what you do is borrow from somebody—no, you actually steal it—and you change the beginning and you change the end of it the way you like it and then you change the middle and it’s all yours. And everybody says ‘you can’t do that.’ Horseshit! They used to do that in the days of the classical composers. The great artists did that, so what’s the difference? People want us to be original. I don’t care what people want.”

Side 2

DANCING IN THE STREET

“It’s exactly what the title implies— something going on that was not immediately apparent to the eye. We’ve been playing these lush vocal harmonies and so forth to make up for lack of instrumentation —we don’t have keyboards, we don’t have three chicks in the background going ‘shoopshoop,’ we don’t have a Minister to introduce us and hold the towel. [Just back from a James Brown concert ] So we’re forced to come up with what is now the Van Halen sound—it sounds like more than four people are playing when in actuality there are almost zero overdubs—that’s why it takes us such a short amount of time to do it. If you listen to this song and that sound and what we re doing there, and then go back and listen to the first album and all the way up again, then you'll see where it comes from.”

LITTLE GUltARS

“Edward was saying he'd just seen this TV show with a flamenco guy doing all these wonderful things with his fingers, and he says, ‘I’ve figured out how to do it with one pick, watch this’ and he faked it. And it sounded better than the original. And the song is titled this because it’s played on a copy of a Les Paul three inches longer than your forearm to the tip or your finger so you could put the whole thing in your pocket if you wanted to. It makes a very distinctive sound—different from your traditional rock axe. I got the idea for the song from the acoustic part—it sounded Mexican to me. so I wrote a song for a Senorita.

BIG BAD BILL

“I think it’s a great song. I played acoustic guitar and songs like this solo for quite a while before I ever joined Van Halen. It’s music. Why do I have to bang my head to every single song on every single album? I don't think the audience has that much lack of creativity or imagination.”

THE FULL BUG

“You know what it is? I’ll tell you. You know when you have a cockroach and they run round the house and get into the corner? We used to have these shoes called PRFCs—Puerto Rican Fence Climbers, okay? And this was aptly titled because if you were running from somebody or the police or what have you. and you were wearing your PRFCs. you could hit the fence at a dead run and your foot would stay anyway. And these were also great for when the cockroach moves into the corner and you can’t get at it with your foot or the broom anymore. You just jam your toe into the corner and hit as hard as you can, and if you did it right; you get the Full Bug. So this slang means, to get the full bug, BAMMM! you have to give it everything you’ve got, make the maximum effort, do everything possible, qet the full buq.” HAPPY TRAILS

“Television, television! You wouldn’t believe the number of TV commercials and radio jingles this band can sing in four-part harmony. 1 was nannied and weaned by TV—that’s the babysitter around here when you’re growing up, to sit in front of the tube. You turn into a vidiot. I remember all those commercials. The Almond Joy commercial? Great, we sing that one in four-part harmony.”

Will that one be on the next album?

“Possibly. I don’t know all the words of ‘Happy Trails.’ 1 have a short attention span. We’ve been singing that together for general airport use for years. And we wanted to do something wonderful and different for you.”

It's different.

“I beg your pardon?”

☆ ☆ ☆

The new Van Halen show—new lights, pants, instruments—“everything changes” —is heading your way right now, “the world’s largest production in terms of weight and lighting." Before I'm finally sent on my way. David takes me into a little room — no. not the one with the photos of naked bondage female fans on the wall—to show me a miniature scale model of the new show.

One new feature has a barricade that’s marked in numbers that correspond, so I’m told, to particular security guards at the side of the stage. If, mid-song. David notices a well-built cutie at Section 24. say, he sends Man *24 to seek her out with a gratis backstage pass. Makes a change when the fans have to be protected from a rock star rather than the other way round. “One doesn't live on the road permanently—that's really a fantasy." reckons David, “but when you’re out there—when we're out there — you make the best of it."