David Lee Roth
Often referred to as "Diamond Dave", is an American rock vocalist, songwriter, actor, author, and former radio personality, best known as the lead singer and lyricist of Van Halen.
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"It's not about money right now. My ambition is to further create a signature sound, a signature spirit, that makes some kind of contribution to music in general.
You can really bring so much more to rock'n'roll. Rock'n'roll is the most accepting, is the most fertile ground for creating hybrid forms of music and hybrid forms of show, if you draw from many, many different wells. It's just unfortunate so many rock'n'roll stars only bother to learn how to play like Led Zeppelin and/or the Rolling Stones and that's what you get, disc after disc and show after show."
For the last 30 years, I've been leading a life of crime and international intrigue that's involved 40 stamps in my passport, love affairs, and broken hearts to go with each one of them. You would have to live three lifetimes to catch up with just the allegations that follow me!
Maybe I'm like acts of Congress or your favorite chinese restaurant -- you don't really want to know what's going on behind the door. I'm a real study in contrast, I expect, looking from without. But it adds up to what you get on stage.
Nine times out of 10 when people do a tribute album or tribute songs for somebody, it's what I call 'white boys playing reggae'. They know they can't, we know they can't, so they sing like they can't and play like they can't. They gently make fun of the idiom or sing in a false accent.
I change as the times change. I'm a reflection of what's around me without trying at all.
Somebody asked me the question not too long ago: 'Dave, do you think the music business has turned corrupt'. I said: 'Absolutely not - it has always been corrupt.
I'm not conceited. Conceit is a fault, and I have no faults.
I believe more and more that this business is about people. People, people. The idea is to make friends at the retail level, the warehouse level, let people see you exist, can form sentences and have an interest in something other than yourself.
I think that there is a whole lot turning upside down at rock radio -- not -- excuse me, talk radio particularly. Radio as we know it is pretty much changing completely. You know, the diversity of the taste of the folks that are watching the show right now is way more than what is available in the little Motorola in your car today. And where are the new personalities? Where is the new Stern, somebody who has that much impact? Where is the new.
What I do is dangerous for sponsors, dangerous for editors. But I'm really a radio kid. I grew up on radio, not TV. Ultimately, I'll probably do radio.
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