A Run for the Border with Diamond Dave

Flashing back to the one time I interviewed David Lee Roth

I’ve loved David Lee Roth-era Van Halen ever since April 1979, when “Dance the Night Away” first burst through the tiny speaker of my clock radio and rather forcefully demanded that I sing along. I willingly complied…

I had no idea at the time that the band was partly named for its guitarist, or that said guitarist was the most innovative hard rock axeman to come along since Jimi Hendrix, or at least Brian May. (One of the perversely brilliant things about “Dance the Night Away” was that its brief guitar break basically consisted of Eddie Van Halen making steel drum noises.) But I could tell from the get-go that the singer had some serious presence; maybe he didn’t possess the best pipes in the world, but his outsized charisma came through loud and clear, jovially inviting anyone within earshot to join what sounded like an incredible party.

While Eddie Van Halen’s six-string genius would soon become readily apparent to me and my friends, it was David Lee Roth’s good-time persona that really sealed the deal for us. On record and in concert, Roth came across as a high-kicking, hard-partying carnival barker whose raunchiness and obnoxiousness were perfectly aligned with our own callow sensibilities. One moment, he sounded like your mischievous best friend imploring you to shotgun just one more beer; the next, he was howling like a satyr who’d just chased a week’s worth of boner pills with half a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. But I also liked that he never seemed to take anything too seriously, himself included.

I’ve long believed that DLR is as much of a genius in his own way as EVH. Not musically, of course, but conceptually — he created his whole “Diamond Dave” persona by grafting Louis Prima’s lounge-friendly razzle-dazzle to the groinally-enhanced swagger of Black Oak Arkansas’ Jim Dandy, a bizarre combination that somehow turned out to be exactly what a vast swath of American teenagers wanted. Plus, there was something wonderfully transgressive about a Jew from the Midwest (take away the Lee, and he was just none-more-Jewish David Roth) coming on like a shirtless, bleach-blonde California rock god in flamboyant bandanas and ass-less pants.

Diamond Dave wasn’t for everyone, of course. I remember my mom — who usually enjoyed most of the records I brought home — telling me in no uncertain terms that she didn’t want to hear any more of Van Halen’s self-titled debut, which was of course all the proof my 14 year-old self required that Van Halen totally ruled. Four years later, as I was watching the band’s “Panama” video on Channel 66 out of Joliet, my mom walked into our TV room and let out an involuntary hiss of disgust. “Reach down between my legs and ease my seed bag?” she asked, incredulously.

Of course, the line was actually “ease my seat back,” but DLR’s delivery of it was so saucily suggestive that I couldn’t blame her for the misinterpretation, which quickly became a running joke in our household.

I continued to follow Roth’s career after he not-so-amicably parted ways with Van Halen in 1985. Nothing he released as a solo act approached the greatness of the first four VH albums (though 1986’s Eat ‘Em and Smile was actually pretty good), but he remained fantastically entertaining. I was there in June 1994, when he played the opening night of the House of Blues in West Hollywood, and while the quality of his set swung wildly as the night went on — I wouldn’t have been at all surprised to learn that his band had been randomly selected that afternoon from guys hanging out at the Guitar Center up the street — the dude still had star quality coming out of every pore.

In June 2006, my editor at Guitar World Acoustic called and asked me to interview guitarist John Jorgenson about his contributions to a new record called Strummin’ With the Devil: The Southern Side of Van Halen. The album featured various country musicians of note playing bluegrass arrangements of Roth-era VH tunes, and was about as appetizing as it sounds. But unusually for a tribute album, this one actually featured a member of the band being celebrated — Jorgenson, who’d produced the album, had somehow managed to lure Roth into the studio to record new, down-home versions of “Jump” and “Jamie’s Cryin’”.

I’d been a big fan of Jorgenson since first seeing him with the Desert Rose Band about 15 years earlier, so I was stoked about having the opportunity to speak with him, even if I was less than stoked about the project in question. We had a lovely chat on the phone — I even got to slip in a few questions about his contributions to the Sir Douglas Quintet’s wonderful 1994 album Day Dreaming at Midnight, an experience he recalled quite fondly — and just as I was about to hang up, he said, “Hey, do you want to speak to Dave for this? I can probably get him for you.”

Well, duh. I’d never interviewed Diamond Dave before, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to turn down this chance, even when the topic was a forgettable record like this one. Arrangements were made, and three or four days later my phone rang. “Heya, Dan,” a gravelly and familiar voice exulted on the other end. “It’s Dave!” And off we went…

“Van Halen music, melodically, lyrically and structurally, is quintessential Americana,” Dave told me, recalling his roots in rural Indiana where “the only thing you ever heard at the hardware store, at the restaurants, on the radio, or on the local TV commercials was country pickin’.” He went on to explain that he learned to play guitar by listening to Doc Watson records, “and I brought that Indiana training with me to Van Halen. The harmonies, the sense of humor, the way we’d modulate from the intro into the first verse — all those things were influenced by the music I heard growing up. But you’re much more aware of those things once you take the tinsel off the tree.”

It was a great quote, quintessential Diamond Dave, and it was pretty much all I needed for the piece. But as I should have known from all the interviews with him that I’d read and watched through the years, once you wind David Lee Roth up, he doesn’t stop until he runs out of gas — and now that he was running at full steam, he didn’t even need my questions to prompt him. He would ask himself a question, deliver a punchline, howl with laughter at his own joke, and then riff on the joke even further.

For example:

“Ya know, Dan, people ask me, ‘What do you expect to find in the country world that you didn’t find in rock n’ roll?’ And I say, ‘Better catering!’ HAHAHA! C’mon, you’re gonna go to a U2 concert or a Kenny Chesney concert — which one’s gonna have a better buffet afterwards? And which one’s got the best chicks? HAHAHAHAHA!”

He went on and on like that for a good twenty minutes. That the guy could single-handedly generate such a blinding blizzard of schtick was admittedly impressive, but it was also seriously fucking exhausting to listen to. He was sucking the air out of the room without even being in it! I could now understand why the Van Halen brothers wanted nothing to do with him anymore — legendary frontman or no, being stuck backstage and on tour buses with the guy for years and years must have been absolute torture…

I have done hundreds, maybe even thousands, of interviews over the years, and I pride myself on my ability to always stay focused on the conversation, ask pertinent follow-up questions, etc. But DLR’s one-man comedic assault was so brutal and unrelenting that my mind actually shut down, like it just couldn’t absorb any more. I was looking over at the plant in my home office window, wondering if my cat Shadow had been peeing on it again, when I suddenly realized that Dave had stopped talking — and that I had absolutely no idea what he’d been saying for at least five minutes.

I panicked. How do you ask a follow-up question — or even introduce a new topic — when you’ve spent the last five minutes of the interview completely spacing out? Scrambling to get my head back into the game, I asked the lamest, most cringe-inducing interview question I’ve ever come up with, involving an expression I’ve never actually used before or since, except in the re-telling of this story.

“So basically, Dave,” I ventured, “what you’re saying is… the whole enchilada?”

In that moment, Diamond Dave could have quite reasonably asked me what the fuck I was talking about, excoriated me for not paying attention while he spouted his pearls of wisdom, or simply hung up the phone. But he did none of those things, presumably because he was content in the knowledge that he had successfully infiltrated my brain, indelibly imprinted his DLR jive upon my frontal lobe, and left me with no choice but to speak to him in his own language. His reply was simple, to the point, and so loud it practically blew out my eardrum:

“YEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!”

---

Thanks again to (in the words of David Lee Roth) all you beautiful people who have subscribed to Jagged Time Lapse thus far. I’d love to get to the 100-subscriber mark this week, so if you’re reading this and digging it and haven’t subscribed yet, please consider doing so.

And if you really dig it, please spread da woid to other like-minded souls! Thanks!