David Lee Roth Quotes

I used to have a drug problem, now I make enough money.

Money can't buy happiness but it can buy a huge yacht that sails right next to it.

I used to jog but the ice cubes kept falling out of my glass.

I can teach you to jump up in five seconds-it takes years to learn how to land properly.

I don't feel tardy.

You've got to roll with the punches to get to what's real.

It's not rocket surgery!

Reach up to the feet of God, looking for a sign...it was right here all the time...

The president’s stump speeches could carry the forced air of a Van Halen reunion tour with Sammy Hagar in for David Lee Roth.

This must be just like livin' in paradise.

money can't buy you happiness, but it can buy you a yacht big enough to sail right up along side it.

Can writing ever be taught? The best answer to that was given obliquely by the rock musician David Lee Roth. When asked if money could buy happiness he said, no, but with money you could buy the big boat and go right up to where the people were happy. With a teacher you can go right up to where the writing is done; the leap is made alone with vision, subject, passion, and instinct. So a writer comes to the page with vision in her heart and craft in her hands and a sense of what a story might be in her head. How do the three come together? My thesis is the old one: they merge in the physical writing—inside the act of writing, not from the outside. The process is the teacher.

Listening to the radio, I heard the story behind rocker David Lee Roth’s notorious insistence that Van Halen’s contracts with concert promoters contain a clause specifying that a bowl of M&M’s has to be provided backstage, but with every single brown candy removed, upon pain of forfeiture of the show, with full compensation to the band. And at least once, Van Halen followed through, peremptorily canceling a show in Colorado when Roth found some brown M&M’s in his dressing room. This turned out to be, however, not another example of the insane demands of power-mad celebrities but an ingenious ruse. As Roth explained in his memoir, Crazy from the Heat, “Van Halen was the first band to take huge productions into tertiary, third-level markets. We’d pull up with nine eighteen-wheeler trucks, full of gear, where the standard was three trucks, max. And there were many, many technical errors—whether it was the girders couldn’t support the weight, or the flooring would sink in, or the doors weren’t big enough to move the gear through. The contract rider read like a version of the Chinese Yellow Pages because there was so much equipment, and so many human beings to make it function.” So just as a little test, buried somewhere in the middle of the rider, would be article 126, the no-brown-M&M’s clause. “When I would walk backstage, if I saw a brown M&M in that bowl,” he wrote, “well, we’d line-check the entire production. Guaranteed you’re going to arrive at a technical error.… Guaranteed you’d run into a problem.” These weren’t trifles, the radio story pointed out. The mistakes could be life-threatening. In Colorado, the band found the local promoters had failed to read the weight requirements and the staging would have fallen through the arena floor.

They were like, ‘Wow, look at this guy! Wow, look at that!’ David Lee Roth was the first local guy to open the shirt, show the hairy chest, and say, ‘We’re here to par-tay. I’m here for sex. I’m here to have sex.’ He looked like a complete Neanderthal, and he moved onstage like a fucking Chippendales dancer, like a stripper. David had a new way of doing things. It was unique. Look at Randy Rhoads during that exact period of time. He was very effeminate. Van Halen wasn’t doing that. They’d play some dance and get fucked up on coke and fuck chicks.

Critics love Elvis Costello because they all look like him.

Having hit on this “theory,” I began to recognize checklists in odd corners everywhere—in the hands of professional football coordinators, say, or on stage sets. Listening to the radio, I heard the story behind rocker David Lee Roth’s notorious insistence that Van Halen’s contracts with concert promoters contain a clause specifying that a bowl of M&M’s has to be provided backstage, but with every single brown candy removed, upon pain of forfeiture of the show, with full compensation to the band. And at least once, Van Halen followed through, peremptorily canceling a show in Colorado when Roth found some brown M&M’s in his dressing room. This turned out to be, however, not another example of the insane demands of power-mad celebrities but an ingenious ruse. As Roth explained in his memoir, Crazy from the Heat, “Van Halen was the first band to take huge productions into tertiary, third-level markets. We’d pull up with nine eighteen-wheeler trucks, full of gear, where the standard was three trucks, max. And there were many, many technical errors—whether it was the girders couldn’t support the weight, or the flooring would sink in, or the doors weren’t big enough to move the gear through. The contract rider read like a version of the Chinese Yellow Pages because there was so much equipment, and so many human beings to make it function.” So just as a little test, buried somewhere in the middle of the rider, would be article 126, the no-brown-M&M’s clause. “When I would walk backstage, if I saw a brown M&M in that bowl,” he wrote, “well, we’d line-check the entire production. Guaranteed you’re going to arrive at a technical error.… Guaranteed you’d run into a problem.” These weren’t trifles, the radio story pointed out. The mistakes could be life-threatening. In Colorado, the band found the local promoters had failed to read the weight requirements and the staging would have fallen through the arena floor. “David Lee Roth had a checklist!” I yelled at the radio.

I too have often pondered the question of whether the ability to bridge the gap between OK art and great art can be taught. When asked if money could buy happiness, Van Halen musician David Lee Roth said no, “but it can buy you a yacht big enough to pull up right alongside it.

That’s how I feel now, here in California, in my little house behind the big house. I have my list of approved players—Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Hemingway, Mark Twain, Virginia Woolf, Melville, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Chekhov, Harper Lee, Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, Homer, Plato, Xenophon, Shakespeare, King David.

On early solo albums like Blizzard of Ozz and 1981’s Diary of a Madman, Ozzy dabbled in cartoon devil worship over the neoclassical guitar wizardry of Randy Rhoads. It was like Van Halen for guys who hated seeing girls at Van Halen concerts. Ozzy even dyed his hair that David Lee Roth shade of blond, but he otherwise kept himself ugly for street-cred purposes.