It’s the Saturday after New Year’s, and if David Lee Roth, bouncing around his midtown Manhattan hotel room, seems to be feeling as if the holiday season festivities haven’t yet ended, well, that’s perfectly understandable. It’s been, after all, a pretty above-average week for Diamond Dave, even by official Party Animal standards. Not only did Roth help ring out the old year—you know, the one named after his band’s last album—as a celebrity emcee on MTV’s New Year’s Eve lollapalooza, showing up for the event escorted by his new “bodyguards”—two bikini-clad female bodybuilders—and loudly proclaiming his lone New Year’s resolution (“This year, everybody has to decide if they’re going to be a great big hot dog or a tiny little wiener; I myself am going to be a little wiener”). Not only did he ring in the new year the very next night as David Letterman’s very first guest for 1985 as part of a bill featuring none other than Dr. Ruth Westheimer (“You know what they say,” Roth later reflected, “Whenever you have a member of Van Halen on the television, you’d better have a sex therapist within the immediate vicinity”). No, what made this week different than all other weeks was that it marked the appearance on planet Earth of David Lee Roth’s first-ever solo record, a four track EP of cover songs originally done by the likes of the Beach Boys (!), the Lovin’ Spoonful (!!), and Louis Prima (!!!), an EP that is just so alien to what one might expect from heavy metal’s Mr. Splits that it makes, well, almost perfect sense. Especially when David Lee, er, explains it.

“With me, you’ve always got carte blanche.”

“What is this little record all about?” Dave asks before I even get to pose the question. “Why now?” he laughs. “Well, Billy,” he begins to answer in an overly formal newsreel announcer’s voice, “In a continuing quest for the ultimate cool move, Van Halen’s David Lee Roth today shocked the music world...Really now, let’s consider the facts, suoh as they are. Let’s pretend you and I were managers. 'Here we have a rock star. He’s just got done selling eight million records. It’s been his band’s biggest year. His band’s best year. They’re writing better, they’re playing better, they’re more popular than ever. Posters of Dave in the bathtub, Dave on a boat, Dave in chains, it doesn’t matter—Dave anywhere, it’s worth five bucks.

“So all of a sudden our protege turns around and says, ‘Hey, I want to release the song ‘California Girls’—in the middle of winter. I want to put Louis Prima’s ‘Just A Gigolo’ on a record.’ So, in terms of management or whatever, the answer is no, this doesn’t make any sense at all. But in terms of Diamond Dave, it makes all the sense in the world. I think people have come to expect the band and myself to accomplish the impossible, because, quite often, we alone attempt the absurd. So I think it’s a perfect time for me to do this. I mean, it feels right. You know, use my hand darling, I won’t look. Yeah, we’re surfin’ it, sure. But I think Van Halen does not live by hits alone—er, make that hit alone. So we are afforded the opportunity of doing things like this.

“Y’know, l'’ve got a job. People ask me, ‘Dave, do you work?’ I say, ‘Yeah, sure I work.’ Like they’ve got this thing, Rock in Rio, y’know? I could easily jump on the plane tomorrow—y’know, ‘Hey, let’s get some Hawaiian Tropic, we’ll stop the limo if we need some beer, where’s that plane?’ So we get down there and we look around. I know the guys in Eddie Money’s band, I ask ’em if I can borrow their amps. I brought my shoes; I’m cool. So we play down there, spend about two weeks, have a good time. We get a hellified suntan, gamble away all our money, and then come home. They say, ‘Dave, you got a job?’ I say, ‘Yeah, I just got back from a big job!’ Really, I don’t need to make anything beyond the suntan. As long as it’s all paid for, that’s enough. The rest is gravy.

“So I just had some time off, and my job is that I sing and dance for a living, so I just sang you four tunes. Now maybe you want to know why I didn’t make a whole album. Why an EP? Well, you figure any 10 albums you want to name, right off the bat you’d say that, at the most, all of ’em only have three or four songs on ’em. Well, this way, all I did was trim away all the fat and filler. AND I’LL SELL IT TO YOU FOR LESS! I’M ON YOUR SIDE!”

“You mean like, ‘Hi, I’m Dave—trust me!?’ ” I ask, finally managing to get a word in edgewise. “I mean, obviously this record has songs on it that you really like, right?”

“Well, yes,” Roth answers in a sudden attack of seriousness. “We wanted to make something that was very classic. Not to imitate, but to try and reach for the same thing that our mentors were reaching for. I think there’s a world of difference. If you wanna call that zen or Whatever, that’s the idea. It’s very easy to mimic, to go only as far as the footsteps and that’s it. But if these cats, if Louis Prima, say, wanted to record something now, to do a big band thing now, how would he do it? First he’d get somebody like Edgar Winter to play the horns, and then he’d do it in New York, and he’d work at night—and he wouldn’t take three months to do it either. Hey, I’m in for the weekend, you know? I’m a very busy man. That’s what we went for. And it was all very disciplined, in that you can’t bring everybody together—the brass and the guitars and the keyboards and the bass and drums and the conga man, etc.—and say, ‘Alright, let’s jam!’ You’ll wind up like the Grateful Dead, four-and-a-half days later you’ll stagger out with a T-shirt and that’s all you’ll want to remind you of the whole experience.”

I mention that the record’s A-side, with “Easy Street’ and “Just A Gigolo” has a very East Coast, a very urban feel to it and that I’m curious as to how much of this was conscious on Roth s part. “A lot,” he answers. “We worked at the Power Station, and I walked to and from the studio every session, so I could purposely soak up some of the anxiety and tension of the streets here. I spend most of my time walking, as kitsch as that may be. And going into this record, I wanted to try and put myself in the hotbed of urban-blast-taxi-meltdown-madness and soak it up and take it to the studio and release it through a microphone. And that’s what I did. You’ll have to tell me if mission accomplished.

“New York energy is very different than any energy anywhere else,” Roth continues. “Totally and completely different than Los Angeles energy. L.A. energy is probably the soul of Van Halen. And that’s lotsa stuff—not just a blonde and a board.” Pause. “Though a lot of it is.” Longer pause. “Well, alright, maybe all of it is. All I know is you get real distinct feeling from each of these songs. I qiean, now that I look in the rear view mirror— and I really didn’t plan it this way—but I think that if you listen to these songs you hear some very specific sides of me.”

“You mean like the Many Moods of David Lee Roth?” I say. “Not moods, really,” says Dave. “More just places. You can line me up in places better than you can moods. I could be an any one place and have 12 different moods; it all depends on who’s buying the drinks and what the lighting’s like. But it is places here. ‘Easy Street’ is indoors and it’s very smoky and very hot, and if somebody’s taking their clothes off, it’s probably on a stage, and all the upholstery is red— ‘You know how many naugas dies to make this couch, kid? Put your cigarette out in the tray’—that kinda place. ‘Gigolo’ is definitely outdoors and in the city. I see streetlights, and I see a confrontation, I see the steam coming out of a manhole cover, I see an argument with a taxi driver, I see a proposition...‘California Girls’ is on the beach, in the sun, in the water, in sexy bathing suits, it’s got a board under one arm and a babe under the other. And ‘Coconut Grove’ is where we go when we get back, where we go to pour the sand out of our shoes after it’s all over.”

Roth says that the rest of Van Halen has been very supportive. “Hey,” he says, “I tried to get Van Halen to do ‘Gigolo’ for 1984, but we had too much original stuff. I mean, we’re expressing ourselves now, man! But they’ve been great about this thing. I haven’t approached Van Halen music here at all and that was quite conscious. Look, if I was going to do something close to Van Halen, I know where to go to find the best people for it. In my own band. So why would I then want to work with other people and have to learn all of their habits and put up with them? So I wanted to do something very different.”

Does he think that, let’s say, the average Van Halen fan will like this record? “I always say you don’t need rock ’n’ roll to rock,” laughs Dave. “And this stuff is high end music, man. I’d say that the average Van Halen fan’ll give it a 10 ’cause you can dance to it and it’s got soul. I mean, I haven’t sacrificed anything here. Everything that I do is in addition to, not instead of. I haven’t replaced anything! With me, you’ve always got carte blanche. You know that scene in the Marx Brothers movie with Groucho in his cabin on the boat and everyone’s coming in? Well,” he says spreading his arms out wide, “same thing here!'’

“I think rationalizations are more important than sex.”

Somehow, mentioning -the Marx Brothers leads us into a discussion of Van Halen’s humor, especially as it’s been able to show through on the band’s videos. “What can I say?” mugs Roth. “We’re rich enough to do it now. You reach that point where you’re obviously secure in what you’re doing and you just sail forth. I mean, now that we’re major movie moguls, the company guy from Warners just shows up and gives us the money. He hands it to me on the sly and says, ‘Dave, good work on “Teacher.” I won’t even ask you about the next concept.’ And that’s it. Look, success writes its own ticket around here. Nothing amazing about it. The lead singer from Ratt says, ‘Hey, gimme a hundred thou, I got this idea for three minute’s worth of film.’ And he gets it. Ha Ha Ha. Have your machine call my machine. Somethin’, ain’t it?”

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“Wait, there you go again,” I say. “Trashin’ other bands just like the old days.”

“You know I always like to play professional wrestling with other groups,” laughs Roth. “Tag team music. That’s what I want. Like Louis Prima called it, Gleeby Music. Like this wrestling/rock ’n’ roll connection. It’s great. In both, you’ve got colorful hereos. Rock ’n’ roll’s always been the most sexy, the most hyper, the most energetic music, and wrestling’s just like that in terms of sports. I mean, they live one channel away from each other! So, If you’re looking for prime-time-knock-down-drag-outmake-it-worth-my-money excitement, is it Ric Ocasek...or Hulk Hogan? Is it Boy George, or Brutus Beefcake?

“I like exaggerated, larger than life stuff— and you get to believe it, ’cause they interview the wrestlers! And they wouldn’t lie in an interview! I mean, the papers don’t lie, do they, Billy? Look, once you’ve written this down and it’s printed, everything I say becomes truth. And the interviews are much cooler than the matches. And that’s how I feel about rock ’n’ roll a lot of the time, too,” Roth confesses. “I much prefer the locker room stuff to the actual concert. Let’s say you gotta review us. What’re you gonna say? ‘Dave jumped, Edward’s guitar solo was cool, the lighting was good, the crowd got off! But what we really wanna know is, is that you or are you really happy to see us, Dave?’

“That’s what I live for,” says Roth. “That that will exist. Even if we have to throw the party.”

I tell Dave that I’m curious about the little slogans and bromides that he often sprinkles into his conversations—things like ‘Success is never final and failure is never fatal’ and ‘I don’t get all the women I want; I get all the women who want me.’ “Well,” he responds, “These are all rationalizations, and I guess I use them to get me through. I think rationalizations are more important than sex,” he deadpans. “Think about it: When was the last time you went three days without making a rationalization? I use them as sort of levers to get me up the stairs. It’s not all just bar talk, you know. People say, ‘Dave, you’re always tossing off these lines, have these pat answers for everything, all these humorous sayings...’ and I say, ‘Yeah, I got a sense of humor, it’s one of the best things about me. I got a sense of humor as big as the ocean, so things might come out funny a lot of the time. But before you point a finger at me, why don’t you take this stuff home, write it down, and read it?’ I think there’s a little more in there. I mean, I’m not like one of my attorneys...”

Remind me to read this when finished.