A CATCHY DAVID LEE ROTH HEADLINE!

It's fitting that here in this unjust world, where rock stars regularly slander one another openly, where newspapers often present one and only one side of the story, where national news networks provide an overly long analysis of a presidential speech by a well-known Soviet spokesperson, where a surprising majority of American rock critics actually vote Talking Heads� last album as 1985�s best, where writers compose extremely long sentences without giving thought to just how they might end, or, indeed, why— it�s fitting that David Lee Roth speak his piece.

Why not? CREEM has never been a magazine to deliberately cause trouble by fanning the flames of controversy when it arises. Sure, a well known platinum recording artist recently told me he was convinced his last album died a miserable death due to his reluctance to allow drugs be an unspoken part of its promotion, another rising popster told me he was gay but I shouldn�t tell anybody and a third admitted to recently buying a gun and hanging out in shopping mall parking lots— but why should / talk? Heck, I�m no better than anyone else. So when a band as internationally famous as Van Halen personally told me all sorts of mean things about David Lee Roth, and when I went ahead and made them public for kicks— and also because it made better copy than the five minutes they devoted to their bowel habits—serious consequences were a-brewin�. CONTINUED FROM PAGE 39

How would you feel if your former drummer pal told the public that when you were with his band it was like being a Model T, but with your replacement the band is now like an SST? Even worse, how would you feel if you were actually replaced with Sammy Hagar? If it happened to me, you can just bet John Mendelssohn wouldn�t be writing his Eleganza column anymore; if it happened to you, you probably wouldn�t be reading this; if it happened to David Lee Roth—and, of course, it did—he�d certainly want to defend himself. To lay his cards on the table. To provide muchneeded fodder for what could be, with any luck, a long-term, vicious war between former buddies with CREEM�s wonderful readers—both of �em!—the cheerful winners!

Thus, the following conversation with David Lee Roth. A phone call from the funnyman. What�s he doing these days? Is he sensitive to the recent comments his former bandmates have made about him? Is he making a movie? Is he calling collect? Read on and you decide!

Hello, this is Dave.

Hello, Dave, this is Dave Roth. How are you today?

I�m doing really good-—how about yourself?

Real good, thanks.

Where are you calling from?

I�m calling from the heart of Hollywood California...

It�s good to talk to you.

...A short distance from me to you.

What�s going on?

Well, we�re into the stretch of recording the album now—which means some mix work, and one or two more tunes to be recorded. But the rest of it is already on tape, as it were. And I expect that it�s time to make the official announcement, now that I�ve read it everywhere: it�s Billy Sheehan and Steve Vai on bass and guitar respectively, and we�ve been working with a fellow named Gregg Bissonette, who I found in a real unusual place, as drummer.

You know, I�m sure that a lot of the readers of CREEM are familiar with who Billy Sheehan is, or Steve Vai, with their previous work. Obviously, these are rock end of-the-world-for-breakfast musicians, so you really need somebody rhythmically to lead these guys around by the nose, or you�re gonna wind up with 20-minute Cream jams if you�re not careful. So we started looking for a drummer—you know, I wanted a snake-killer right off the bat. You need somebody who can hunt, you know? But at the same time, you need somebody with the chops—somebody who�s musical enough that he can ride along with these characters. And Vai is a graduate of the Berklee something or other...

School of Music...

And you know Billy Sheehan�s got eight fingers on each hand, so you need somebody who can really think music. I found this guy from the Maynard Ferguson Big Bandl I figured if he can power 22 guys without an amplifier and still do his job, he ought to be able to lead these two around. And carry me back home.

■� My original intent, when I bailed out of Van Halen, was, �All right, I�ve gotta get a band together. No telling how long that�s gonna take.�� You know, I�d been with the same guys for 10 years or more —how you gonna replace that? Not easily, probably. Jeez, it took me almost four months. (laughs) I got lucky. I realize that—I got hyper-lucky here.

The guys in Van Halen have been talking about you, and you really haven�t had a chance to talk. What�s been your reaction to it all?

Well, what specifically are you referring to?

They said you left �to be a movie star� —they told me something like, �with

Dave, we were a Model T, but with Sammy, we�re gonna be an SST. � What surprised me most was, when I talked to you guys six years ago or so, there seemed to be some camaraderie between you all that some of the band members now seem to be denying. / thought that might�ve hurt you, personally-hurt your feelings.

Well, you know, the guys go on about how they were so miserable for these past 10, 12 years, the music was substandard, now they�re gonna go on and everything is just wonderful, and they hated it for the last 12 years...Poor Edward Van Halen—forced to live a lie! Struggling to survive the onslaught of Masaratis! Forced to survive Lamborghini

after Lamborghini! Can you imagine the mental stress the poor kid must be feeling?

Except he�s not a kid anymore, he�s 30 years old. You know? And you don�t go bullshitting the public like that. You know? You don�t treat your fans like that. A great part of Van Halen was—it still is a big part of me, you know? My heart was completely and totally into that band, my whole life dedicated to that band. Shit, I must�ve cut a good 10 or 20 years off of my life! Either working for that band or celebrating it! (laughs) And you just don�t go on and treat the public as dummies— you know, mindless word drool poured all over pages abut how it �stunk.�� �Yeah, we hated it,� ��Dave forced us to do i,t�...

"/ figured like—maybe in five years, like Aerosmith went down, we�ll come back up. Maybe put the band back together. �

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DAVID LEE ROTH

Yeah—big bad Dave. Forced them to do it, yeah. �Used to be a Volkswagen, now it�s a Maserati,� you know? Come on guys, you�ll still be working on Volkswagen parts, there. Edward�s a great guitar player, you know? But who died and left him king? There are other great guitar players out there. Let�s talk state of the art: he�s gonna have to learn how to pronounce �Yngwie.� And once he�s done with that, he�s gonna have to spend the rest of the time trying to figure out what language Vai is. So it�s c�mon, you know? We�re all in this together. I sort of feel like...you know, it�s like going out to dinner with somebody, and you think you�re having a great time—in fact, you are having a wonderful time—and part of that is knowing the other person�s having a good time. Right? You get back at the end of the night—or first thing in the morning, as it were {laughs)...and you say, �Hey, I had a really great time—thanks a lot.� And the other person says, �Hey, you know what? I really had a fucked-up time. And you wanna know something? You�re really fucked up, too. But thanks a lot for paying for dinner.� (laughs)

You don�t treat the public like that. I�m used to it from those guys, you know, I�m used to it—but you don�t treat the public like that. So let�s call a spade a spade here. There is no such thing as �he left to be a movie star.� That�s just Van Halen�s wanting you to be pissed off at me like they are. I�m not a movie star. I�m not even an actor.

Did you officially leave? Nobody really told me.

Oh yeah, I bailed. Pure and simple—I walked. It was a question of, �I want to do all these things, there�s plenty of hours in the day, we can start anytime you want...You want to start at one in the morning? Fine. You want to start at one in the afternoon? That�s fine too. But we start—and we�re gonna do everything.� �I brought this movie to the Van Halens, I said, �C�mon guys, let�s do this—we�ll make the music, I can work on the editing, we�ll make a stage show..?� No, no, no, no. �We�re just a band, man—we just want to make a record and stay in the studio.� Really? How long? �Well, better give it a year.� A year? All right, my last record was only four songs long—it took me five days. A year? I don�t know if Templeman�s gonna go along with that, I don�t know if the producer�s gonna go along with that. �Well, we wanna produce ourselves.� Produce ourselves? What�s the payoff? �Well, we�re tired of these long, fiveor sixmonth tours. You know, all over the world. We don�t have to do that anymore.� That�s true we don�t have to do it anymore. What are we gonna do? �Well, Alex and I have been talking, we figure that just a couple of months in the stadiums in the summer of �86�ll cut it—then we�ll get all the people, it�ll be no problem.� Two months? In the stadiums? Forget it! If it�s a statement kind of celebration—if you�re gonna do Farm Aid —great reason to have a stadium gig. Perhaps another artist can communicate with that many people better than I can. But I can�t. I think it�s a rip-off. You get in a stadium, 20 yards back, you can�t hear. Eighty yards back, you can�t see. It�s a rip-off. And I said, �No, I�m not gonna play it.�

Did you detect a little bit of jealousy on their part, because you�re so recognizable and you had such success with Crazy From The Heat?

I don�t know—we always shared the credit —we always shared the glory. Until I started reading, you know, all this nonsense from Edward Van Halen. And then here comes this singer, Edward�s new singer, zooming up out of oblivion, gonna address us on everything he thinks, you know? I�ve never even met the guy—never even shook his hand. You would think that since he is older than the rest of the guys, that he would know that there are five sides to every coin.

So you read that stuff and it pissed you off?

Well, we did not split amicably at all. That�s some more nonsense that they�re putting in the press now. Uhh-uhh. Now that they realize how ugly their little hatchet job on me is reading, now Edward turns that impish little �Ohhh, I�m so sorry.� You know, that little boy thing. Forget it, kid! You�re 30 years old, man—I don�t buy it. (laughs) I don�t think the public does, either.

What do you expect from the new Van Haien album?

I�m sure that Edward will play every bit was well as he ever has—I never said he was anything but a wonderful guitar player. He�s just a shitty human being.

A low blow! Can I take it you�re reacting to their reaction?

Absolutely, (laughs) Absolutely. I figured like—maybe in five years, like Aerosmith went down, we�ll come back up. Maybe put the band back together. I would go do my thing, and maybe they�d go do their thing. And then it would come back together. Leave the Van Halen thing set. Let it sit. It�s not dead—let it sit. If Zeppelin—if Page got back together again with Plant, they�d sell out all the stadiums around the world, period. You know? So let it sit—why burn holes in the name? Why try to fix something that wasn�t really broken?

Would it�ve been a little easier for you if the name was not Van Halen, but something different?

It would�ve held a little better for the future. It would�ve held hope a little better for the future. But I�ve never seen such a vicious hatchet job done from one person to another in the public press. Including the National Enquirer or any of that. And I�m a big fan of this yellow journalism, screaming, pro-wrestling-type, tear-your-hat-off-andlaugh-into-the-empty-hole-type press. And I think what�s happened is the fellows up at 5150 have started to take that stuff a little seriously.

You�ve been pretty good at being obnoxious and being funny—and you�ve gotten Van Halen a lot of mileage out of it. But it�s ironic that you�re former bandmates are acting that same way toward you. It almost doesn�t seem fair or something.

Yeah. I think they�re either lying, or even more pathetic, they really believe what they�re saying. So...you know, that makes me sad. That gives me frustration there. Has your new band performed in front of anybody yet, or has this been just in the studio?

Nope—just in the studio, just in the basement.

Your game plan here, then, is... the movie comes out...

The whole thing comes out the end of July. The movie, the tour, the record, the single, the video, the t-shirt. (laughs)

Are you gonna maintain your Jungle Studs-thing and climb the Himalayas or whatever?

Nothing overly life-threatening until the end of the tour. There is no time. I�m so bagged right now, as far as...I got no manager here. We got no movie agent—it�s just us, you know? Which is kinda the rock �n� roll dream, isn�t it? We�re in charge of everything down here. And you know, when I left the Van Halen camp—you remember all those colorful light shows you saw, remember the wonderful stage productions, those funny album covers and t-shirt designs and the whole circus-like atmosphere? Every single one of the people responsible for that stuff came with me. Except for one drum roadie.

The guy that does the lights, the guy that did the stage design, the production manager, the truck driver, the lowliest cat who gaffer-tapes the floor in place every night— came with me.

That says a lot.

And you can�t just replace those people. That was a big contention between me and

the guys when I was in Van Halen. You don�t just replace people like that. Everybody gets the same colors in their paintboxes as far as light shows and stage design, but some people do Mona Lisas and other guys do stuff that belongs on the refrigerator. You know?

So what�s gonna happen now? You�ll be on the road for a year, and everybody�s gonna ask you the same stuff I�ve already asked you.

No problem—I just make up new answers.

And that would appear to be that. Unless, of course, on the morning you were typing these very words, your copy of the Detroit Free Press contained the following blurb in their highly readable Names & Faces column:

�'SUING: Rock singer David Lee Roth, CBS for $25 million, claiming that the firm failed to honor a contract by not producing the film he was to star in.�

You want more details? I can�t provide �em—this story, in CREEM�s famed up-tothe-microsecond style, goes to press in mere minutes. Does David Lee Roth even have a movie to star in? If he doesn�t, what�s he gonna do with $25 million? Will he give me some? If not, why not?

No matter. As always, David Lee Roth shall have the last word. And movie or no movie, this last word is appropriate indeed:

�I thought Van Halen had some historic value. I think Van Halen made a historic impression. I don�t know how far down in history we�ll go, but...we changed some things around a little bit. I�d like to think we had an effect on the video world, I�d like to think we had a little bit of an effect of the style of rock music—whether it�s the kind of pants that your wear, or the way the guitar players play, or how the singers cut their hair. Whatever it is, I think Van Halen had an effect there. And I was part of it. And I don�t like to hear somebody cutting it down. That was my team, you know?�

We know.