The Beat Patrol

Written by Dave DiMartino for Creem, July 1980…

One thing that’s always bothered me about myself: I enjoy offending people. I’ve done it for years and see no need to stop. I have offended people by the way I look, the way I speak, the way I act, the films I see, the hamburgers I eat, the people I know, and the snotty, elitist music I most often listen to. This is not a healthy way to live and I realize it. I can’t explain the essential why behind it all, so I don’t. And I guess I’m an asshole.

But you aren’t reading this magazine because of me and I’m going to shut up in a minute, so don’t worry. Just consider the above paragraph and answer the following question:

Why do I love Van Halen? 

First of all, let’s round up some names. Ted Nugent, UFO, Judas Priest, Scorpions, Rush, Foghat, Aerosmith, Black Sabbath, maybe Foreigner. Next, let’s consider the ONLY reasons this trainload-o’-turkeys will be remembered 10 years from now. Ted Nugent: funny guy, song titles like ‘Wang Dang Sweet Poontang’: UFO: covered a song by Love; Judas Priest: funny clothes, did ‘Diamonds And Rust’ the way it should have been done: Scorpions: offensive album covers; Rush: I’ll think of something; Foghat: Dave Edmunds – produced debut LP; Aerosmith: big lips; Black Sabbath: the phrase “I am Iron Man”; Foreigner: new racist slogan, not much else.

Basically this music shares one really important quality: it’s BORING as hell. It also functions at two important social levels – 1) it scares the hell out of parents who hear it blaring out of their kiddies’ bedrooms, and 2) played loud enough, it fills in the gaps of silence between the conversations of kids who really don’t have anything to say to each other. It provides release, albeit a flawed one, and considering how screwed up the world is right now, who says that that in itself is “bad” or not entirely appropriate?

Hey, this isn’t a flat out dismissal of current HM music, it’s just that there was (and is) so much BETTER music-to-bang-your-head-to than the current Nugent sludge. Before I took this assignment, I decided that if there wasn’t some kind of Positive Message behind it, I wouldn’t even bother with it. Honestly. So I went through my records and pulled out what meant the most to me as pure, bona fide Heavy Metal music, and came up with a pile of records that puts Judas Priest & company back in the Bozo Leagues where they belong Though I usually listen to this stuff when I’m flat-out drunk these days, it still sounds just as good right now, while I type, completely sober:

1) BLUE OYSTER CULT – ‘The Red And The Black’, from their live EP.

2) MC5 – ‘Looking At You’, first version.

3) IGGY POP – ‘Gimme Some Skin’ 45.

4) PINK FAIRIES – ‘Do It’.

5) YARDBIRDS – ‘Stroll On’ from Blow-Up, the best Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page ever have been.

6) VELVET UNDERGROUND – ‘European Son’ and Side Two of White Light/White Heat.

7) BLUE CHEER – ‘Doctor Please’ from Vincebus Eruptum.

#8) RORY GALLAGHER – ‘Laundromat’ from Rory Gallagher.

9) GOLDEN EARRING – ‘Radar Love’.

10) LOVE – ‘August’ from Four Sail.

You think I don’t realize how dopey ‘Radar Love’ looks up there? The point is that this is the kind of music that used to make me lock my bedroom door when I was a kid and jump up and down in front of the mirror and pretend I was playing lead guitar. This music excited me at one point in my life and continues to excite me today. And I don’t think that someone else will be writing in CREEM in 10 years (ignore obvious joke) about how they used to jerk off in front of a mirror playing ‘Fly By Night’ or something from the fourth Aerosmith album. I don’t think it’ll work like that, and the basic reason is quality. Nugent, Judas Priest and all their buddies simply can’t write songs, songs that mean anything or songs that aren’t mere platforms for their meager playing ability – and therein lies all the difference in the world.

Which, of course, brings us to Van Halen.

I’ve tried but can’t precisely explain the power of Van Halen’s appeal, let alone why I like them so much. I’d be tempted to call the band “America’s Led Zeppelin” if I thought that would be a compliment – and here I’m talking about magnitude and ability, not style. Fact is, Van Halen surpassed Led Zeppelin on a pure artistic level when their debut album came out, back in ‘78. As everyone intelligent surely knows by now, the last and only great Led Zeppelin album was their first one. And that’s over 10 years old

REASONS WHY VAN HALEN ARE A GREAT BAND:

1) Playing Ability – Guitarist Edward Van Halen plays the best Stun Guitar around. He’s one of the few good HM guitarists with chops who truly realizes that Excess Means Success; in his case, he couldn’t be more excessive if he tried. You know what “Eruption” is? It’s that almost two-minute guitar intro to ‘You Really Got Me’ from their first album. You know what “Tora! Tora!” is? It’s the minute-long guitar intro to the new Van Halen album’s second side. And do you know what both those cuts sound like? Buzzbombs. Or the inside of an Oldsmobile plant.

2) Songwriting Ability – Like I said before, songs are what it all boils down to, and Van Halen, as much as they’d hate to admit it, write great pop songs. ‘Jamey’s Cryin’’ and ‘Dance The Night Away’ are about as far removed from ‘Cat Scratch Fever’ as you can get. And they don’t make a heavier song than ‘Runnin’ With The Devil’. ‘The Iron Butterfly Theme’ comes close, but look what happened to those guys.

3) Sense of Humor – Face it, these guys realize what they sound like. That’s why David Lee Roth laughs all over the place on their three albums. And that’s why “I need ‘em, gotta have ‘em,” from ‘Beautiful Girls’ sounds just as cool as “Here comes one now/umm-Ummm!” from the O’Kaysions’ ‘Girl Watcher’. Plus, they really do like girls.

4) Obnoxiousness – Hey, there’s no two ways about it, Van Halen is as obnoxious as it gets. On one side of the stage there’s Edward Van Halen pumping away Dinosaur Death sounds, on the other is obvious-cool guy David Lee Roth making Arnold Ziffel-ish “EEEAAGGHHH!!” war whoops. And most people think Roth is either God’s Gift To Women or a Total Jerk-Off, one more sure sign that he knows what he’s doing. The full-length Roth-in-bondage poster that comes with the new album is the finishing touch. A great move.

5) Great Records – Ted Templeman, who produced Captain Beefheart’s Clear Spot, has given Van Halen the best recorded sound any HM has ever had, bar none. State of the art production for, no kidding here, the state of the art band. And according to both Templeman & the band, it’s almost all done live in the studio. And why would they lie?

Van Halen have booked two nights in Eetroit’s Cobo Arena, and I, for one, am happy to hear it. Sad Van Halen fan confession: I’d never seen the band before. Offered a chance to talk to the guys, how could I turn it down?

So I get to Cobo Arena a few hours before the show, hang around a little, and then hook up. A woman who works with the band brings me outside and a waiting limo delivers us to the front of the Detroit Plaza, at the new, big-bucks Renaissance Center. We walk inside and take an elevator up.

The first thing I see on the Van Halen Floor is a robot. Really. Someone steers it by remote control, back and forth through the corridor. Already I can see that these Van Halen guys like fun. We walk into a room and I am introduced to the band: David Lee Roth, heavily-tanned, shirt off, just like all the pictures; Edward Van Halen, short, not quite as flashy; his brother Alex, muscle-bound, wearing sunglasses, grinning; and bassist Michael Anthony, short, not at all the total bull his pictures make him out to be.

Big Question: Are these guys pricks?
Big Answer: Nope.

I tell David Lee Roth he should have read the letters we got about his CREEM DREEM shot. They were filthy. And mostly written by females. And the band loves it, happy with Roth’s cutey-pie image, as they probably should be.

I ask them how they hooked up with Helmut Newton, the hot-to-trot sicko photographer who shot the David-in-chains poster included in the new LP.

“Well,” says Roth, the natural wheeze in his voice just like on the records. “We jus heard he was in town.” He’s proud of it.

“Helmut Newton is like what Andy Warhol was seven years ago. He did The Eyes Of Laura Mars – all the pictures that Faye Dunaway supposedly took are actually Helmut Newton’s. They’re really kind of way-out stuff,” he says. “You know, kinky. It’s different. It’s upsetting. We heard he was in town. He shoots for a lot of fashion magazines and had turned down the Rolling Stones because he’d never shot rock ‘n’ roll, it wasn’t his thing. We went down to the Beverly Hills Hotel, sat and talked to him, and after an hour or so he said, ‘Yeah, I’d love to shoot you,’ so he shot the session.”

Why the poster?
Roth smirks. “We put the poster in because it upsets people. It’s disturbing. It’s one of those beautiful things where there’s actually nothing going on in the picture and you’re forced to use your filthy little imagination, which is always gonna be better than any picture.

“Helmut Newton is into creating tension, really, creating tension wherever he can. And that’s what rock ‘n’ roll is all about. A lot of tension.”

“And its release,” says Edward. And everybody laughs. I wonder why for a minute ’til it’s obvious these guys are laughing at some kind of dirty joke (!) and I realize that they weren’t kidding about this Beautiful Girls business.

Roth looks over at Edward: “Hey, you got somethin’ in your mouth?” Edward opens his mouth and shows Roth some kind of mint while someone else dirty jokes: “It’s from last night!!” And the joke is: not only do these guys Love Beautiful Girls, they love ‘em as often as possible.

Okay, what do you guys think about critics and what they say about your music?
“They have to compare it to something,” Alex says, still grinning.

“We love to read the reviews,” says Roth. “The worse they hate us, the more colorful adjectives they have to use, the more scenes they have to paint to explain why. It makes great reading!”

Yeah. The worst thing of all is getting no attention at all, don’t you think?

“Yeah,” says Edward.

“Hey, the worst thing in entertainment,” says Roth, “is to be boring, and there’s a whole lot of boring people out there, who have to come up with reasons why they don’t like something.

“England is great. We’ve been over there three or four times, we sell a lot of records over there and the kids go nuts.”

“And you should read the reviews over there,” says Alex.

“People go crazy,” Roth says, “and the reviews are just horrible.”

“It’s great, man,” nods Edward. “They’re collector’s items…”

“They are, man, Roth enthuses. “They should be framed.”

This is great, I say. What do you guys like best about ‘em?

“Oh, they describe the crowd as ‘Neanderthal,’” says Roth. “This and that, screamin’. groupies…”

“And that Mike is a Mack truck on bass,” says Edward.

“And that the ceiling fell in, and that it terrified the reviewer,” says Roth. “All I got to say is: the reason why so many critics dislike Van Halen and like Elvis Costello so much is because they all look like Elvis Costello.”

This gets the biggest laugh of all. “It’s true!!” he says.

We talk a little more about the band’s early days, how they used to pack in huge L.A. audiences before they were even signed to a record label. Back then, they did cover versions of other people’s material until their natural momentum got them signed and, three LPs later, headlining Cobo Arena for two nights. Two of their best (or funniest, take your pick) tunes have always been ‘You Really Got Me’ and ‘You’re No Good’, and I ask them if there was any conscious decision on their part not to include any non-original material on the new LP.

“Nah,” says Alex, “a song is a song is a song. ‘You Really Got Me’ goes back to the bar days. We used to play it then, we still play it now, and everybody likes it. We like it, the audience likes it, and everybody’s happy. Even Ray Davies.”

A big Van Halen royalties laugh.

You guys especially pleased with any cut on the new LP?
“Nope,” says Roth. “It all sounds the same to me.” More big laughs.

“It’s really heavy metal, man,” says Edward. “You know it all sounds the same…”

“Hey, it’s called ‘Big Rock,’ ” says Roth. “Where we’re coming from is ‘Big Rock.’ ‘Heavy Metal’ means that you play a jam that lasts 10 minutes and you have words about outer space and ‘the eternal revolving circle of your love’.”

Right, I tell ‘em. Suddenly I’m thinking of Rush…

“You’re thinking that,” Roth says, laughing. “Print that. It’s tough enough out there that we don’t have to hassle other musicians. You can.”

Everyone’s laughing now. Even me. Wait a minute though, I say, why don’t you guys try to explain it to me. How come I have such a great time listening to you guys but hate bands like Rush and Journey?

“We have a motto,” says Alex, “that there’s a little bit of Van Halen in everybody, and that we’re just there to bring it out And you just proved it.”

“Wait a minute, though,” says Roth. “‘Heavy Metal’ to me, as we keep saying the words, conjures up a specific image, a certain person. If you say ‘a heavy metal person’ I picture a person who looks a certain way, treats women a certain way, and looks a certain way onstage. They’re looking at their feet. We call ‘em ‘coke stars.’ That is heavy metal.

“Van Halen is not that; Van Halen is entertainment. Van Halen is entertainment delivered at maximum impact, but it’s entertainment.”

You bet.

I’ve got a question for you guys, I tell ‘em. Why don’t you guys just cut off all that hair?
Alex, the only Van Halen with short hair, speaks up:

“First of all,” he says, “let me say this. I don’t care about the length of anybody’s hair, but mine burned off.” Much laughter. “Yeah, it’s true. In one of those spontaneous moments, we all decided to torch the drum kit, and I was just torched with it…”

And Roth, often referred to as what Sylvia Miles would look like were she a male, continues:

“I had a terrible dream that one night I woke up and walked out of the dressing room and everybody said ‘You can’t go out there with your hair like that. You look like Robert Dandy or Jim Plant!!’ So I ran back into the dressing room and cut off my hair, real short an’ everything, and when I came out, they said ‘Jesus Christ! Now ya look like Johnny Rotten!’ So I went back there and colored it – what else could I do? – and I drew lines on my face and put on make-up. And what they said was ‘Alice Cooper is dead!’ And I woke up screaming.

“You just do what you feel,” says Roth. “Ya know? And if you do it honestly, people are gonna pick up on that. You fake it, and they’re gonna find out. Sure ya can fool people for a little while, make a great record, put on a great show – but it won’t last. And we’re talkin’ about something that’s gonna be the decade here, ya know?”

I’m about to leave, but a few necessary questions remain.

I talk to Edward, who’s just been voted Guitar Player of the Year by the readers of Guitar Player magazine. Eddie, I ask, do you ever run into people who tell you to cut the rock ‘n’ roll shit, get serious and do your own project?

“What shit?” asks Edward. “This is serious business. People have said that, and I’m doing exactly what I want. They ask me if I wanna cut a solo album and I say what the fuck for? Playing with Van Halen is like doing a solo album. Complete freedom to do what I want.”

Okay.

Hey, do you guys have any major plans for the future?
“Nah,” says Eddie. “We just do it as it comes up!”

Ha-ha-ha.

“Which,” says David Lee Roth, “is a whole ‘nother interview with a whole ‘nother magazine, folks.”

Bye.

I walk back over to Cobo Arena a little later, use a backstage pass, and decide to sit in front of the stage for the hour or so before the show starts. Roadies and security I guards buzz around, preparing for the massive throng of HM freaks who’ll soon be smuggling their bottles in.

While I sit, smoking cigarettes, taking a few scattered notes, I realize that people are gradually walking in. But something’s weird: they’re coming from behind the stage. And they’re girls! I mean it, girls! Who can’t be much older than 16 or 17! And they’ve all got backstage passes!

Hey, I think, those guys weren’t kidding around…

And the girls sit in groups of two and three, planning after-show strategies. Who gets David Lee Roth? Who gets the Van Halen brothers? Who gets the bass player?

I didn’t think things still worked this way. And to top it off, Van Halen’s road manager – a real nice guy, incidentally – walks by me and then turns around. He pulls out an extra backstage pass and hands it to me.

“Here,” he says. “In case you wanna press some pussy after the show…”

And the show was great, of course, but I figured it would be. Didn’t you?

After the show I went home.

Dave DiMartino

Written for Creem magazine, Oct. 1986. At the time, the new VH (with Sammy Hagar at the helm) and DLR were taking constant potshots at each other. This was DLR’s side of it. As we all know, DLR & EVH have finally made up (once & for all??).
As a teenager at the time & devout VH fan, it was traumatizing to see them split. I can’t believe that was over 20 years ago…

The system of law in New Guinea involves a concept loosely defined as “payback,” which means if one village has wronged another, that village is duty-bound to extract revenge. Once that indiscretion has been avenged, the entire cycle starts all over, the back and forth skirmishing fueled by the fact each tribe speaks an entirely different language.

As Bwana David Lee Roth explains this law of the jungle, I immediately focus on how accurately it reflects the current feud ongoing between the lead singer and his ex-mates in Van Halen. In the weeks leading up to the release of his own solo effort, Eat ‘Em And Smile, the media heats up with the success story of his former band, chortling over Diamond Dave’s misfortunes and expressing their relief about being rid of his overbearing presence and media manipulation.

If the effervescent toastmaster general of rock has been affected by the barbs, he’s certainly not letting on. Preening and fluffing his hair, he greets me in the Sunset Boulevard headquarters he shares with partner/video collaborator Pete Angelus wearing his full stage costume, including his patented, skin-tight spandex pants. His new band – lead guitarist Steve Vai, bassist Billy Sheehan and drummer Gregg Bissonette – is a full-throttle rock ‘n’ roll outfit designed to show all of Dave’s Van Halen fans he doesn’t intend to merely play the gigolo. In fact, when he places the needle on the LP’s first track, ‘Shyboy’, a torrent of insane metallic guitar blasts announces that a new axe hero is about to be born in the highly-touted Vai, who played on the recent PiL album and starred as the devil challenging Ralph Macchio in the Walter Hill film Crossroads.

“I stumbled into Steve Vai about 60 days after ‘The Big Guitar Search’ started,” explains Roth about his new collaborator. “I know I can work with anybody, but finding the ultimate rock band I figured would be a difficult task. I went after Billy Sheehan first. He’s a white tiger. You don’t recognize at first what you’re looking at when you see one. Same thing with his work on the record. You’re not immediately aware of what you’re listening to. There’s a lot of action in the bass and that gives the music layers. Plug in the ole Walkman and the CD and you’ll be amazed at what’s going on beneath the surface. Then, I listened to records of different guitar players, and I just thought Steve had the most potential.”

Talking about the similarities between his new outfit and vintage Van Halen, Dave flashes some of his famed modesty. “I was responsible for a great deal of Van Halen’s sound,” he boasts. “That kind of rock ‘n’ roll is my driving wheel. So, you’ll hear elements of this record which sound like great, old Van Halen. You can hear the difference in the band since I’ve been gone. Which is not to say it’s any better or worse, but it is different. What people will hear out of this is what sold the old Van Halen, and is nowhere to be found in the new Van Halen. They’ve taken their approach, God bless, but my heart was always in the same place. I’ve just got my money where my yap is now.”

The unflappable one even insists he wasn’t too surprised at the commercial success his old band experienced without him.

“Van Halen’s been hammering away at this for many years,” he says. “The name has come to symbolize more than just a type of music. People were curious how the new band would sound and you can’t detract from Edward’s guitar-playing. They accomplished what they set out to do, which was make a #1 record. It’s a different kind of music, though. Perfectly acceptable, but it’s not what I want to play for a living.”

Dave gets on a roll when he’s asked about the in-concert antics of his replacement, Sammy Hagar. “What kind of person draws a sign that says, ‘Screw David Lee Roth’ and carries it from show to show to hold up in front of the audience? Many of you have already seen that sign. It’s in orange magic marker. He doesn’t open up any of the other signs unless he’s sure they say ‘Screw David Lee Roth,’ because I understand, earlier in the tour, he opened one up that said, ‘Where’s Dave?’”

Roth also noticed how in the Rolling Stone cover story on the band, they spent more time bad-mouthing him than they did talking about themselves.”

“I guess I’m still the frontman,” he laughs with an infectious guffaw that sounds a little too boisterous. “David Lee Roth: Big Enough For Two Bands, America!!”

Confronted with the article’s implication that Van Halen’s following has abandoned him, he suddenly warms to the task. “I take the football approach,” he smiles. “When it seems to be getting darkest, I go, ‘Men, we’re just gonna outwork they ass!!’ “

In fact, Roth insists the band split occurred mainly because he wanted to work while the rest of the group preferred staying in bed. But his competitive fires have been stoked, with a summer-long blitz, including the release of the new album and a world-wide tour commencing in August.

“I can understand how the Van Halens would be pissed,” he admits. “Whenever you have a big, ugly divorce, there’s hurt feelings. On the other hand, Sammy’s angry because he knows I’m better than he is.”

Dave denies he ever woke the others up in the middle of the night to go roller-skating, but he does cop to the fact he insisted the wives be nowhere in sight when Life magazine showed up to do a piece on the band.

“I was tired of the boys fighting with their wives, not talking to the press and then making up with their wives and refusing to come out of the bedroom for two days,” he says. “They’d always blame that on me because I had that romping, crazy image. Fact is, when one of the wives wanted to know why they couldn’t come, they’d always go, ‘Dave won’t let ya.’ I was the bad guy.”

Is he anti-marriage?

“That’s a lot of bullshit coming through clenched teeth and squinted eyes,” he claims. “I guess I’m just a case of arrested development. I skipped a groove when I was 15 and it’s been repeating ever since. I may get married one day. If I fall in love, I’ll be the first one to stand up and say, this is it. But it hasn’t happened yet. And now it’s time for the road again – and maintaining some kind of relationship over the telephone is ridiculous. You’re asking for trouble with that.”

Actually, the only time the effervescent Roth shows any sign of introspection is when he’s asked about his own family. The flamboyant clown prince of metal refuses to show you the Dave behind the mask – what you see of the media-savvy, larger-than-life rock star is what you get.

“Well, there are elements you’re not going to read about in the press,” he agrees. “When you put on a show, it’s a big magic trick. And the audience will always scream to see the mirrors and wires. They just want to know how you did the trick. If you show ‘em that, you’re out of business. If I’m guilty of any sin, it’s the sin of omission. I’m not lying when I tell you something, it’s what I don’t tell you. I mean, who wants to hear about the hard work, the slaving in the studio and the political problems you have to go through? You can read about that in every other interview in this magazine.” (Heee! – Ed.)

Dave also insists he has no problems maintaining his antic, party-hearty image, mostly because that person is really him.

“It all comes right from my very own mouth and heart,” he says. “I’m not a prisoner of any persona. I do all the talkin’ and I think I express myself pretty clearly. It’s not like I’m trying to make you think something, although I do remember one of my uncles once telling me, ‘Dave, the key to success is sincerity. Once you can fake that, you’ve got it made!’ “

Commenting on whether his new outfit will be a band in the Van Halen mode, or merely a back-up assemblage, Roth is most adamant. “I see it as a team,” he says. “And as long as I’m in the backfield somewhere, I’m happy…as long as I get to handle the ball at least every third play. You hear these guys represented. You see them in the video quite liberally. These are constant characters. I’m best when I have somebody to bounce ideas off of, somebody to argue with.”

Asked about comparisons with his old group, who have gotten off to a headstart with a #1 album and single, Roth flashes a cheshire grin. “I’m built for distance, not for speed,” he laughs heartily. “If this is, in fact, a race, the outcome will be decided a year from now.” For those, like me, who didn’t really like Van Halen until they realized David Lee Roth was lampooning himself, the new video for ‘Yankee Rose’ is a bit of a disappointment, concentrating as it does on Dave’s buns and crotch in a fairly-straightforward performance clip.

“You have to show the band off to its best advantage,” says Roth. “Because that’s what’s going on the road. We had to put ‘em on the screen because, pretty soon, we’re going to be asking people to buy tickets. So, you’ve gotta see what you’re gonna get, unlike another act we all know…”

As for his narcissistic preening, Dave insists he’s not pandering, though it seems pretty ironic Roth’s body parts will be paraded on MTV for every impressionable young mind with access to a television set, while poor Jello Biafra gets busted for including an H. R. Giger poster in one of his albums.

“I do what comes naturally to me,” says Diamond Dave. “At the time, I felt real sexy. So, I throw it all around, I point it into the camera and I make it to the chorus by the skin of my teeth. But then, just like you, when I sit back after 14 days of editing and color correcting, it looks like a 12-year-old mugging for the nation’s TV sets. I guess we’ll just have to write it off as ‘charming.’ People giggle and squirm when they see it. It’s that kind of humor and sexiness. It all reminds you of yourself, making believe you’re a rock star in front of your bedroom mirror. You see yourself reflected in my eyes every time I stick my booty in the camera. And a little bit of you goes, ‘I’d like to do that, but I shouldn’t…’ So, you squirm and that squirm is worth whatever it costs to turn on that TV to find it, to buy the ticket to see it live, to get the record and put it on your turntable. It’s worth it to me, at least…”

With the aborted Crazy From The Heat film project tied up in court after CBS Theatrical Films, the original backer, went out of business, Dave insists forming a touring band was always on the agenda.

“I wanted to go on the road, that was the main thing,” he says. “The movie was just icing on the cake, part of the whole program.”

What about those Van Halen fans who are convinced he abandoned the band to go Hollywood?

“I think the music may yell at them for that,” he giggles. “I’m delirious with this record and this band. We’re going for the Guinness Book of World Records with this tour. ‘97 Tons of Fun.’ We’re taking it all over the continental U. S., Canada, Japan, South America, Europe, Australia, Hawaii, you name it. How can you beat it? Everything’s been coming up roses so far. We don’t even have a real manager around here anymore…haven’t for about a year. So, without any real adult supervision, we’re allowed the opportunity to be creative and think ahead.”

If the redeeming grace of the old Van Halen was David Lee’s self-mocking sense of humor, the canny veteran is more than well aware the average metal fan takes his music very seriously.

“The lyrics of the new stuff are funny, but the sentiments are hard-felt,” he points out. “They’re very sincere and severe at the same time. It’s balanced. And that’s more human than anything else. I’m having a blast at what I do and I think people, especially the kids, pick up on that first and foremost. There’s conviction there. When I laugh, I’m really laughin’. I’m not faking it. When I make fun of the industry or what it is I’m doing, I point at myself first. Because there is a sense of humor to it. I just refuse to go too far uptown.”

Again, when the conversation turns towards Dave’s personal life, the jocularity seems to cover up deeper feelings he refuses to confront.

“Somebody once asked me what religion I followed, and I told ‘em sugar, refined sugar,” he laughs. “Somewhere along the way, I drove off the road and kept on going. The whole idea of that is a little ironic, a little laughable. That someone could do this and actually make a career out of it. ZZ Top does the same thing. Somebody asked Billy how he would define his music and he answered it sounded like ‘four flat tires on a muddy road.’ It’s that kind of sentiment that tempers the real metal stuff.”

The conversation turns to the current crop of El Lay glam-rockers, like Poison, Guns ‘N Roses and L. A. Guns, who have taken their cue from the rags-to-riches success of groups such as Van Halen and Motley Crue.

“Well, I feel like a shining example, Roy, but I’m not sure of what,” he cackles heartily. “I think the key is to steal from more than one influence, though. Van Halen’s computer program wasn’t written by any one programmer. We lifted from a variety of places, everything from Black Sabbath to Motown, from Deep Purple to the Ohio Players, and what you get is something you don’t recognize instantly. You recognize parts of it, though you’re not exactly sure what you’re listening to. And that’s going to be a lot more intriguing for somebody than shelling out eighteen bucks for an album knowing what to expect, getting it, then simply moving on to the next record.”

Certainly, the sturm und drang of Van Halen was put into perspective by the inclusion of off-beat ditties like ‘Big Bad Bill’ (featuring the Van Halen’s clarinet-playing dad), ‘Ice Cream Man’ and ‘Could This Be Magic?’ just as the thunder and lightning of Eat ‘Em And Smile is relieved by the playfulness in Dave’s faithful cover of the Chairman of the Board’s ‘That’s Life’. Don’t think Roth’s turning into some Catskill crooner just yet, though…

“I have no idea what kind of music I’ll be making in the future, but I know I’m going to be making music,” he says. “I’ve always been into doing ’20’s and ’30’s blues send-ups (like the jumpin’, jivin’ ‘I’m Easy’ on the new LP). Most bands have to make the decision how to temper their albums one way or another. You can blast your way straight through, but I think the greatest bands in history always do something a little different to balance that. Rolling Stones albums, for instance, always had great rock ‘n’ roll, but there was always a bit of country, a bit of blues, something to put it into relief. So you know what it is you’re looking at. You don’t know how big something is until you have something little next to it to compare it to. Bands have to make a choice. Are they going to be creative or are they just going to play power ballads? Obviously, I chose the former, something with more spirit to it, something with a little bit more pizazz.”

Yes, VH fans, don’t give up on Diamond Dave just yet. In Steve Vai and Billy Sheehan, he’s got two monstrous musicians capable of achieving quite a rock ‘n’ roll din. Like the tractor pulls he now attends for entertainment, David Lee’s new group can make some noise.

Payback. The still-simmering VH/DLR feud has been going back and forth for months and now it’s Safari Dave’s turn to fight out of the corner. Tell the CREEM readers what your new band will do to those Van Halens, Dave!

“We’re gonna eat ‘em and smile,” he roars, his head rearing back so that his hair resembles a lion’s mane. Roth’s Revenge has begun.

Roy Trakin

Written for Creem magazine, March 1986. This was VH’s side of the whole VH/DLR split. Sammy Hagar had just recently joined the band and they released their first hit album with him, 5150. I still remember reading this article as if it were only yesterday.
Next up: DLR’s take on the whole debacle…  

“You do it one of two ways: either spectacle or personality.

“If you have spectacle, that’s great – that’s like the circus, a spectacle. But you’ve got to change that spectacle every year, people get bored quick. This is the ’80s. I grew up on a heavy diet of television, as a kid and as a big kid. And it’s like there’s no dead space on television or radio, everything turns real quick. Every 10 minutes you’ve gotta have a commercial. And that’s how we write our songs, and that’s how we live our lives.”
– David Lee Roth, said in a Detroit hotel room, in 1980.

“Dave is a, quote unquote, star type of person. I’m a musician. That’s the difference. And he went off to be a star. And I wanted to continue making music, you know?

“And the best way to be a star is to be in the movies, right? So that’s what he’s pursuing.”
– Edward Van Halen, said in his backyard, by the pool, in late November, 1985.

Funny how things change, isn’t it?
“Here, gimme five, pal,” says a grinning Alex Van Halen, in that same backyard. You give him five. “See,” explains the affable drummer, “I just went to the bathroom. You feel a little wetness there? I’m a lousy shot.”

How utterly fascinating, you say. Is your curiosity aroused in new, strange ways? Very good. For you must understand: you are sitting with the four members of Van Halen around the pool of guitarist Edward Van Halen’s house, and you are trying to make an adjustment. You are trying to adjust to the newest member of the band, vocalist Sammy Hagar, who is seated across from you and wearing sunglasses and looking like nothing so much as Sammy Hagar. Distinguished vocalist with Montrose, with his own band, with Hagar, Schon, Aaronson and Shrieve and now – quite unexpectedly – with Van Halen. Van Halen.

It’s enough to make one use obscenity, many times, onstage at Farm Aid with Edward Van Halen!

It’s true, it’s true: David Lee Roth has gone, off giving casting calls for beautiful Women in skimpy bathing suits, off in search of the screen fame that is certainly his for the taking, off on his own, leaving his three former bandmates with a career that could use some revving up. Indeed, 1984, the last Van Halen album, bears a copyright date of 1983 – and one need not master calculus to deduce that in early 1986, there is desperate need for a new record from the Finest Obnoxious Rock Band That Ever Was.

And, not incidentally, making a new record is precisely what Van Halen and Sammy Hagar are doing.

So you ask the four members of Van Halen – the VH brothers, bassist Michael Anthony and Hagar – about their new record. You ask them if, as you were told, the record will hit the stores in mid-February.

ALEX: What?

EDWARD: Who told you that shit, man?

YOU: Huh?

ALEX: What?

EDWARD: Who told you that shit?

YOU: You mean it might not?

ALEX: Huh?

SAMMY: Probably.

ALEX: What?

MICHAEL: Maybe.

EDWARD: Who told you that?

YOU: The people that got me out here to talk to you.

EDWARD: Oh yeah, maybe, then.

SAMMY: [pointing to the nearby recording studio] Are they in there? Are they in there right now? I’m gonna go talk to them.

ALEX: Huh?

YOU: Is the record coming out in mid-February or not?

EDWARD: Yeah, we’re shooting for that.

YOU: Is anything finished yet?

ALEX: Sammy? Sammy? What’s he talking about?

SAMMY: I don’t really know.

In short: David Lee Roth left Van Halen. The remaining Van Halens considered pulling a Jeff Beck – that is, hiring random vocalists to sing on various tracks until, thanks to “a guy named Claudio who sells exotic Italian sports cars,” they hooked up with their current Sambo, Mr. Hagar. “See,” explains Edward winningly, “what we all wanted was a band – at least that’s what I wanted – but we couldn’t think of anybody who would complete that until I thought of Sammy.” And think of Sammy he did!

We should all think of Sammy. He’s not exactly in an enviable position. Oh sure, of course he is, you say – because Van Halen are so cool you have all their albums, and chances are you’re going to get the next one even if you don’t especially like Sammy Hagar, simply because you like Van Halen and now he’s in it. Well said! Nonetheless, replacing anybody in a band is no fun; comparisons will be made, as they always are, and replacing the veritable rock god that David Lee Roth willed himself to become, as Hagar is doing, might be judged the toughest task of all by those in the know. The man had fans, after all. And unlike Hagar, he never admitted that he was incapable of driving 55 and thus an admitted lawbreaker. Or parachuted onto the front lawn of the U.S. Capitol! Or worse! Would you feel comfortable in such a position?

Of course not. Furthermore, consider that Van Halen have, in the past few years, been deigned a “hip” band by knowledgeable writers. Hee-hee. The sad truth is that Samuel Hagar has never been a favorite with the critics – and the look of slight dread/mild resignation in his eyes as he performs his interview duties with you confirms it. You ask Sammy himself about it. Sammy, you query, do you think you’ve been given a fair shake by the press? “Oh, fuck no, man” is his instant reply.

But. But. The warmth the man exudes, the candor, the honesty, are a far cry from what the poisoned rock press – what the heck, even this magazine itself – has led the public to believe. He is a workingman’s rocker. He fills stadiums, has plenty of gold and platinum albums to his credit, and essentially gets his support from the audience, since most critics seem unwilling to give him theirs. He has been shunned by leftist critics worldwide for embracing the glory that is America. Says he of his New Rightist designation:

“Here’s the thing: I’m not political, and I don’t like to make political statements. It’s just that all of a sudden, right before the Olympics, right when I was writing for my album, the Olympics were down here in L.A. I live in the vicinity, so therefore I got all caught up in all this shit – that the Russians pulled out. So I got pissed, I got real pro-America all of a sudden. I don’t go around doing that all the time – it’s just that that was a period of my life, and I wrote an album right before that, and it happened to come out in it.

“But any political things I have – I am very pro-American, and I hate when people down it, when our own country starts marching against us, you know? When the Russians are over there with cocked guns, and doing these big displays with tanks and missiles…Them bastards are scary, you know? And I hate seeing our own people going against themselves. So I just, once in a while, I get real ‘right’ about that. And to be honest with you, I think Reagan is the coolest fucker we’ve had in office for a long time!”

Miles overhead, spy satellites continue sending photographs of the five of you clustered near the Van Halen pool. It is good. “We’re gonna be serious here for a second,” confides Alex Van Halen. After a brief pause, his face lights up. “OK, time’s up!”

Farm Aid. What’s been the feedback Sammy Hagar has received since his memorable appearance?

“Uh, real bad,” notes Sammy. The other members of Van Halen laugh. “Everybody thinks I really fucked up there. And those people are so full of shit.”

“But the actual gig was great,” says Edward. “We’re talking about the three-piece-suiters, complaining about his language.

“It was incredible,” Sammy continues. “It was one of the highlights of my career, walking out onstage. The audience was fuckin’ frantic. When Edward came on, it was unbelievable. It was a huge success, it really was. Everything except for the fact that a lot of people didn’t get off on the fact that I cussed, and then some radio stations shut down because of it.

“But I just couldn’t think of that when I went out onstage, you know? In all honesty, I’m being naive about it, but I wasn’t thinking, ‘Hey, this is going out all over the world.’ All I saw was 90,000 people, and I said, ‘I’m gonna rock these fuckers… they ain’t rocked all day like this!’ “

So the other members of Van Halen didn’t reprimand Sammy, or take him aside and ask him to say “darn” in the future?

“Hell no!” insists Edward. “Hey, Sammy and I were both freaked out that anyone got uptight, because it went by me like…”

“Yeah,” says Michael, “in fact, Ed was the one who told Sammy to say most of that shit onstage!”

“It was my fault,” says Edward, “half of it!”

“Shit,” says Sammy, “it’s the way I talk, you know? Would you do me a favor and print this? Anyone that took offense to that: fuck you too. No, fuck you again. Because that’s honestly the way I feel.

“If anybody doesn’t like the fact I walk onstage and say ‘fuck,’ well then, don’t come to a concert of mine, you know? And I don’t feel we’re gonna lose any customers that way, you know?”

In 1980, if you interviewed Van Halen, you took part in the David Lee Roth Show, co-starring Alex and Edward Van Halen with a special appearance by Michael Anthony. It wasn’t planned that way, understand; that was just the Order Of Who Talked Most. So perhaps it comes as no surprise that with the absence of Roth in late 1985, everybody moves up notch or so, with Sammy Hagar now somewhere in the middle. What does seem strange to you today, though, is the manner in which the former lead singer is talked about. There’s almost a sense of relief in his absence that you can feel.

YOU: Are you three still friends, or is just convenience for you now, business – because [to Edward and Alex] you’re brothers and [to Michael] you’ve been with them for a while?

ALEX: No, not at all.

EDWARD: No. We’re friends. Dave was convenience.

YOU: Really?

EDWARD: Yeah.

YOU: Don’t you feel kind of weird saying that?

MICHAEL: No, why?

ALEX: I wouldn’t say it in quite those terms. It was basically a situation where we felt that the four of us – the previous model, the Model T as opposed to the SST right now – that we wanted to get the world to be able to listen to the music that we were making. And Dave was just one step in the chain, so to speak, to be able to facilitate that. And that’s basically what we did. There was no real camaraderie, even though in the press there seemed to be…

YOU: Yeah, it really did seem that way.

ALEX: There was no real camaraderie. I’m not saying that we fought all the time or anything like that, or that we hated each other, because that’s not the truth at all. It was basically a cut-and-dried, black and white situation. We looked at the structure and said, “Hey, this works – OK, so let’s do it.” Well, now we have something that feels right. And works.

It’s ironic, then, that mere days before this interview transpires you hear from a respected source that David Lee Roth, while working on his movie, has put together a new band. Ironic? Only in that in the band is Billy Sheehan, virtuoso bassist with Talas and dubbed “the Eddie Van Halen of bass guitar” by publications just like the one you’re now holding, but different. Also along for the ride is guitarist Steve Vai, a superb player who’s spent time with Frank Zappa’s band and replaced Yngwie Malmsteen in Alcatrazz. Not a shoddy pair by any means.

You thus suggest to the current members of Van Halen the hypothetical scenario wherein the new records by Van Halen and the David Lee Roth Group come out simultaneously. Might it not be possible that most listeners would tend to hear the Roth Group on the radio and say, in astonishment, “Wow, this must be the new Van Halen album”?

EDWARD: Then they’ll come and buy our record!

SAMMY: They’ll say, “I want the new Van Halen record!”

EDWARD: Put it this way: I mean, he can’t hurt us. You know? The shit we got is…way beyond…

ALEX: Everybody’s gonna compare, it’s obvious. Whether it be, just hypothetically speaking, if we would’ve made another record with Roth, they would compare that record to the previous one. It’s inevitable. So it doesn’t matter. The bottom line is…

SAMMY: The truth of the matter is, there’s no mistaking Van Halen’s sound. I’m just a singer in this band, you know? And if they would’ve put somebody else in my place, this stuff would still sound like Van Halen. It’s amazing how much identity the music in Van Halen has. Like, I never looked at it that way – you always look at Van Halen as an entity with Roth in it, right?

YOU: Sure.

SAMMY: Now, you hear it with me in it, and it still sounds like Van Halen.

MICHAEL: It does.

SAMMY: I don’t sound like Roth singing, by any means, but it still sounds like Van Halen. There’s such a strong identity in the sound, in the way Donn Landee engineers this band, and the way he makes the records sound.

EDWARD: And the way we play.

SAMMY: The way these guys play their instruments, the way it just comes out with a sound. But I’m telling you, it’s Van Halen, and there’ll be no mistaking it. When you do hear Roth’s voice, it’s gonna be like ‘Just A Gigolo’ – you knew that that wasn’t Van Halen, that that was just him singing. Even if his music is more geared towards old Van Halen-type stuff, it still ain’t gonna sound like Van Halen. If it does, it’s gonna sound like a thin version – people are gonna say, “Man, their new record stinks!”

THE PROOF

The proof lies in the pudding, and when you do not eat, you must make do elsewhere. Therefore you now sit with the four members of Van Halen in the studio directly behind Edward Van Halen’s house. They are playing you three tracks from their forthcoming album, and you’ll be darned if each track doesn’t sound like a potential hit record – as is probably the intention.

Yes, it’s true. As Edward himself confided earlier: “You’ve never heard Sammy like with us.” First and foremost, each of the three tunes sound like Van Halen. Van Halen with a new vocalist, maybe, but a lot more like Van Halen than anything from Roth’s Crazy From The Heat or Sammy Hagar’s own albums. The guitars are crazy: as always, Edward Van Halen knows there’s a fine line between taste and excess and does his best to physically shatter it. One new track features what sounds like a constant drum solo by Alex, accompanied by the usual whoops, shrieks and maimings; another sounds like something from 1984 but is incredibly refined in its fierceness; the third, a ballad, could be a huge hit in finished form, and probably will be since the guys are calling in Foreigner’s Mick Jones to help oversee proceedings.

Mick Jones?

Funny how things change, isn’t it?

ALEX: In the previous things that we did, we were always open to suggestions as far as variety, such as ‘Big Bad Bill’ and ‘Dancing In The Streets’ – but Jesus Christ, who wants to dance in the streets? That song is fuckin’ 20 years old. Leave it…

EDWARD: We want to do our own stuff.

ALEX: That’s not our gig.

EDWARD: I’m sick of doing cover tunes. Fuck that. I’ve got enough inside of me…

SAMMY: I have no idea what these guys went through with Dave as a singer in the band – but with me, I tell you, being a former guitarist, I can see a guitar riff that Edward has in a song or something, and maybe appreciate it a bit more than a guy who doesn’t play guitar. So like maybe someone else would overlook a really great lick just because they weren’t a guitarist and couldn’t say, “Hey, that’s a really great lick.”

EDWARD: I don’t think Dave could get a handle on that as much as Sammy can.

SAMMY: When Edward presents something to me, I go, “Shit..”

EDWARD: You can relate.

SAMMY: Just about anything the guy plays is amazing, so you go, “Yeah, that would be a good song!” And then he plays this next thing – “Yeah, that could be a good song.” I have this real positive outlook on almost anything he plays.

EDWARD: And that’s the difference! It is. He’s positive about everything.

ALEX: The bottom line is…

EDWARD: No tampons allowed in this city.

Dave DiMartino

Article written about VH in their early days, this comes from Sounds magazine, May 13, 1978. They were just about to conquer the world…
 

Columbus, Ohio. Van Halen, just called back for an encore, are basking in the unexpected adulation. The support band takes a bow. “Thank you Cleveland”, yells their frontman. Cleveland? Silence. You could hear a piece of popcorn pop.

Van Halen’s collective face drops further still, as insults and hard objects are tossed at the stage. The man whose job it is to keep the band informed on such trivia as where exactly they are playing has reportedly been given his marching orders.

But anyone can put their platformed foot in it once in awhile; and for every one of those, Van Halen has been takings a bigger step forward. Today Hollywood – as they said back in the days of movieland glam – tomorrow the World.

Kicking off with an extensive tour of America, supporting – and at times upstaging – Montrose and Journey, the band are now in Europe and Britain on the Black Sabbath tour, before heading east to the Orient. They might get some time off in October, but the Puritan work ethic, the cornerstone of the Land of the Free, goes down fine with Van Halen.

I mean, this is the band that not long ago played five sets a night, 24 nights in a row, for a bit of loose change.

“Now we’re on the road, everyone’s saying: Van Halen First World Tour. And we’re going out there and doing a 45-minute set or something like that – man, this is like Van Halen World Vacation”.

Spoken in the true spirit of rock and roll by Jim Dandy/Robert Plant hybrid, bumping-and-grinding frontman Dave Lee Roth, who goes on to say: “It’s been going great. Everybody’s been eating it up like crazy. Because it’s good rock music. It’s straight-ahead stuff, really passionate, really intense stuff with none of this dumb blues-rock or anything.

“We put a lot of effort into it and people are responding real well – because it translates so much more beautifully live than on the record; because you can really feel the bass. You get the tight pants and all that extra.”

Not to mention lightshows, dry ice, sweat, blood and white-hot physical excitement. Good old rock and roll; wine, women and song. None of this Malibu lie-with-you-in-a-hammock-looking-at-the-highway-laid-back trash. This is the real McCoy. Groupies form a quiet line by the door.

Van Halen are from California. The land that gave you love and peace and long-legged girls with freckles and braces, and Linda Ronstadt and the Eagles. California seems to do something to its bands. A week in the sun and they turn laid-back and mellow. Look what happened to Fleetwood Mac…

It’s not as if California hasn’t any heavy metal fans – it’s swarming with them. Just none of them home-grown. Until Van Halen came along – and it took them four years to get out of the bars and into a recording studio. Van Halen are not laid-back, but they like California. They used to judge wet T-shirt contests.

The band’s line-up is Dave Lee Roth on lead vocals, Michael Anthony on bass, and brothers Dutchmen Alex Van Halen on drums and (excellent) Edward Van Halen on guitar. Formed four years ago, they originally called themselves Mammoth, until a few choice words from another band of the same name led them to choose ‘Van Halen’. Theirs has been called “the most auspicious hard rock debut since Led Zeppelin.”

“We were all in rival bands in the LA area”, Roth tells the story. “And once you play a circuit of so many square miles, you become familiar with the other musicians who are playing around. People who weren’t terribly, terribly into it, who wanted to drop off and become a lawyer or a junkie or something, would do that, and the four of us were kind of stuck with each other. It’s because we were very intense about wanting to get a band together and make a record and go on the road and all that entails.”

They started out playing parties and graduated to bars. At Gazarri’s on the Sunset Strip, they were paid to keep the kids dancing – and thirsty; and they had to run a dance contest twice a week.

“I had to talk to the kids while they all lined up”, recalls Roth. “I’d do a Monty Hall (the American equivalent of Hugie Greene), ask them ‘where do you come from, what do you do for a living’, all that kind of stuff, or make a joke about quaaludes and the audience would crack up. And then they’d get up and dance.

“We worked everywhere, see, because we just loved to play. We figured what we’d do is play as far and wide as the car would take us in a one-night drive, and eventually enough people would see us and enough of them like us and we’d be discovered.”

America is the land of commercials. You advertise everything, from deodorant and hamburgers to plastic surgery, voodoo dolls and religion. Van Halen set about advertising itself.

“After playing the bars for a while we began promoting our own shows. We would make up flyers and rent a hall and start to put on our own shows around the local high schools and junior colleges, wherever young people would be. We were barred from just about everywhere in Pasadena (their locality N.E. of LA) so we started drawing in other Southern Californian areas. The first show we drew maybe 800 people. The last show – about eight months ago, before the record came out – we drew 3,200 people just with posters. We had no money for radio advertising or newspapers or stuff like that. The local newspaper couldn’t stand us anyway. We represented to them the classic rock-and-roll-band bad guy image.”

Their next venture was to rent a bunch of semis (flat-deck trucks), put them together and make a stage; put on a sow, keep enough to pay their bills, and invest the rest in a PA system, then some lights, the works.

“You can’t expect to knock on someone’s door with a demo tape and get a lot”, explains Roth. “We just wanted to be discovered. It took about four years but we did it.”

The first step on their road to discovery came in the form of one Rodney Bingenheimer, LA hanger-outer, who spotted them bashing out top forty hits at one club, and transported them to another – the Starwood (mecca for heavy metal fans), the only club in Hollywood where the walls actually sweat. The second step was an offer by Gene (Kiss) Simmons to pay for a demo tape session. The third was a visit to the Starwood by producer Ted Templeman (of Doobies and Montrose fame) accompanied by a top bod from Warner Records.

“It was a crummy Monday night, just like any other”, recalls Roth in a scene so dramatic it could have come straight from the movies. “They just showed up, came backstage after the show, and said ‘hey you guys are terrific – wanna sign up?’ And it felt real good. We’d been campaigning for it for so long, and then we got it. So we said: ‘Ah, now stage two. The rest was just eliminations, now you’re in the race’.”

Their first album, Van Halen produced by Templeman, came out in December. It’s an impressive debut. Each song has a great riff, written, says Roth, for “instant appeal”.

“The whole Van Halen concept is that we’re very straight ahead. No studio wizardry, no magic of multiple overdubbing or stuff like that. We just wanted to do a real solid, pure product without being too simplistic – that same old boring blues riff. Recording the album actually took two weeks. All of that stuff on the record is live. It’s all first take or second take stuff. I sang while the band played.

“Maybe three out of ten songs have a – one – guitar overdub on them. That way it translates real well live, and it makes for a very different sound in this day and age when everybody seems to be ’soaring vocal harmonies over a progressive background overlay’ stuff. It’s great to make that music, but I’m not sure if that’s rock music.

All but two of the songs on the album are communally-written originals. The exceptions are the Elmore James oldie, ‘Ice Cream Man’, and their hit single, a remake of the Kinks’ classic ‘You Really got Me’; a throwback to their top 40-playing bar days.

“We had a repertoire of about 300 songs”, says Roth, “So don’t be surprised if there’s any old stuff on the next album, or the one after that, or whatever. Because there are a lot of great old songs we used to do that translate well into the 1980 sound.”

That, by the way, is the message they’d like passed on to you.

“This is the 1980s, tell them, and this is the new sound. It’s not the ’60s, and it’s not a reflection of the ’70s any more. It’s hyper, it’s energy, it’s urgent is what it is. Our music is exuberant and strenuous to play – so we’re really in shape.”

A glance at the supple body on the album cover, and you believe him. By the way, don’t expect them to cancel a tour if they come down with flu, anything less than death.

Says Roth: “I can’t stand nerks who complain: ‘Oooh, I have the sniffles. I can’t go on’. There are, say, 10,000 fans who are in love with the act and have been waiting months to see him, and He’s Got The Sniffles! Bars really shape you up. So when your monitors screw up or you get flu or something you don’t O.D. on it. We don’t go to pieces.”

Sylvia Simmons