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David Lee Roth

The one-time lead singer and ring master for Van Halen—not to mention a number uno sex symbol with a wild blond mane of hair and self designed spandex outfits that barely cover his beautiful body—David Lee Roth was (in his own outrageous words) born “at an early age” to an eye surgeon father and a high school teacher mother.

April 2, 1987

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David Lee Roth

The one-time lead singer and ring master for Van Halen—not to mention a number uno sex symbol with a wild blond mane of hair and self designed spandex outfits that barely cover his beautiful body—David Lee Roth was (in his own outrageous words) born “at an early age” to an eye surgeon father and a high school teacher mother. His family moved from Indiana to New England, where David spent many summers in New York City visiting his Uncle Manny Roth, the owner of the Cafe Wha? in Greenwich Village. When David was 10, the family moved to California where eventually Roth met Van Halen and friends at Pasadena City College. They formed a band—and the rest is history. Six platinum albums later, Roth took time off to record his first solo EP, Crazy From The Heat, and after a year of “maybe yes, maybe no,” he left Van Halen in 1985 (replaced by Sammy Hagar) and formed his own group with guitarist Steve Vai, bassist Billy Sheenan and drummer Greg Bissonette.

However, a much truer picture of the showman would read closer to the biography he recently submitted to journalists. This is pure DLR: “After a life long on adventure and a short childhood, an incorrigible pre-teen delinquent Roth repeatedly ran away from state owned homes that his poor parents had been forced to resort to. Due to an unbelievable string of prior convictions at what could be considered an early age for any criminal, Roth was relegated to a series of adult work camps in the deep South. These tortured days and lonely nights remain the very soul and spirit of Roth’s music. Those sordid months in his prison hammock are what separate David’s soulful wail from the phalanxes of common blues shouters and microwave rockstars. Roth’s profound religious beliefs in white sugar made him a pariah in a society of musicians indoctrinated in vegetarian ways. Finally David made the crucial decision that all professional criminals make in their career: Whether to pursue a life of crime, greed and animal lusting through violent means or to do it with music!?

David is doing it with music.