Diamond Dave on tattoo skin care and the future of Van Halen.
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I did that with my pot gummy.
My mom still wonders.
I wanted you to meet the Coen brothers of the most exciting industry since sneakers, Roth tells me.
And then we talk for two hours.
David Lee Roth:Crack a window if you would.
Will somebody get a hand towel?
Thatll keep the window open.
Everybody says these windows are to prevent suicide.
No, no, no.
People who want to commit suicide here, they dont jump out of a window.
The most popular way, and I learned this as an EMT … Kinda like a prayer flag.
Lane Brown:You volunteered as an EMT in New York in the 2000s.
He was on a corner, a slight OD.
This was 12 years ago.
In my back pocket, I had, No, Im his cousin, Randy.
But I was only recognized twice in maybe 200 or 250 visits.
I made a contribution there.
If I had to pick one word for myself, that would be it:contribution.
Sometimes to my own detriment.
It was me who said we should name the band Van Halen.
They [Eddie and Alex Van Halen] wanted to name it after a Black Sabbath song.
I hear you invested $7 million of your own money in it.
Thats not nothing.Thats quite a poker game, even if you dont play cards.
The money for this came from the last couple of Van Halen tours.
We artists call thatart-centric.
My forte is finding big minds and spirits and connecting them with even bigger ideas.
Ill call Ami in in a few minutes to help explain this.
Hell illuminate a lot of things, plus hell contrast with my New York art-critic identity.
I have my own drivers.
I operate like an art director for your magazine orVanity Fair.
The Eddie Van Halens of my career are a marvelous contrast theyre industrial strength.
Thats Git Er Done, spelled G-I-T. Any Springsteen lyric will do.
Hang on one second.
[To his publicist] I think I forgot my wristwatch in the photographers studio.
Did somebody pick up my watch?
Ive lost entire automobiles before.
Lets assume I dont know anything about tattoos or skin care.
Sell this stuff to me.
Yeah, if its a Bengal tiger.
The experience is daunting.
You dont take it lightly.
You just got some new ink yourself, right?Yes.
I almost never show my gear, you follow?
It shows a respect for their art style.
There are a lot of neighborhood styles.
Justin Bieber is building a mural ofplacas.
That kind of positioning is the alternative to the Japanese style.
It took about 300 hours over two-and-a-half years.
Those characters from the short are in a script that has now been worked into a graphic novel.
And it is by our accounting the worlds first graphic novel with a full soundtrack.
Ive been working on it for four years.
Hes been over at my shop three times a week.
Working with stellar talents is part of the luxury of being Diamond Dave.
Im smart enough to know these folks, so how much smarter doIneed to be?
We dont think about the price.
Are you telling me that Van Halen will play Yankee Stadium next summer?
You promised fourNew Yorkcopy editors free tickets today.Yeah, but I cant …
If I say something on tape here and everybody goes, Oh, this leaked…
But, the band will be I cant say.
Come on.Well, I dont know how far this privacy actually goes.
But the band is solvent.
And they all said that, if everything happens, they would certainly be involved.
So this would be a festival?No, all I talked about was a phone call.
Your voice is still in good shape.
Its probably gotten more character, more personality.
Every person that youve ever met is in your music, every experience …
I promised no metaphysics before happy hour, but I lied to you.
Anybody thats had their heart broken a few times, they can play that for you.
That also goes for the entire range of emotions.
The big five: anger, denial, fear, bargaining, and acceptance.
And, if youre Jewish you have renegotiation, too.
But for some musicians, experience is a fatal funnel.
You say to them, So, youre making a new record but whats new now?
And they say, Weve been on a tour.
And that always becomes the same story, and youll hear it in the music.
Its like the opposite of the 14th minute ofThe Wizard of Oz.
Instead of the color coming in, the color goes away.
How did that happen?
Because the life of a rock star is a limiting existence.
Actually, it closely resembles that of a federal witness: Youre inside a hotel room with handlers.
Youre transported urgently to a waiting vehicle.
And then youre taken upstairs and judged.
Is that true?It was a general fear of heights.
You must have flown thousands of times.
How did you get over that fear?Well, theres no such thing as born tough.
Most of being tough is being able to stay cool under stress.
Youre always gonna be scared.
I called it Be Cool School.
The stick and rudder of it, the actual technical parts, came not easily, but they came.
It took me two years to stop sweating through my gloves.
Now I know how to do a lot of things.
I know how to do a mixed-martial-arts triangle choke.
And I know how to go camping in the rain.
And I know how to deal with the snow and really enjoy it.
I had another question about the Monk book …Id really rather focus on some other stuff.
When Van Halen happens, Im willing to answer all of these questions.
And thats around the corner by a hundred days.
The spotlight has been wildly entertaining for 50, 60 years.
Theres a time-capsule element that goes along with my kind of music.
You cant keep serving it every year.
and then wed start selling fewer tickets.
That happened with the thirdPiratesmovie.
Johnny Depp was scarred, emotionally.
But classic rock is great.
It funded everything were doing today.
I said, Give me the budget to record my music in Spanish.
Which, I did.
Its horrible Spanish, but I was the first, so to speak.
It made an impression.
They loved it down south.
Thats not the future of ink.
Its all going to be on the internet.
Luckily I had some people with brains who said I should meet Ami.
Im going to bring him into this for a minute, because most people dont know what Tattoodo is.
Wait until you hear these numbers.
Okay.Ami James: Tattoodo is the biggest online community for tattoo content.
And we reach 1.5 billion people a month.
Roth: Say that number again.
I think your tape recorder skipped.
I used to interview people, too.
I was Howard Sterns replacement for four months until they fired me.
1.5 billion people a month.
Were the only ones giving Pornhub a run for its money.
You didnt think that was possible, did you?
Anyway, Ami didnt even realize it was me when I first got in touch.
James: It was somebody else working with David who contacted me first.
But then I read the email and was like, sunblock for tattoos?
Artists from Canada will visit us and theyre like, This is the worst place Ive ever tattooed.
And its all due to the fact that we dont use sunblock.
I surf, too, and your skin cracks from the saltwater.
Roth: I have great outdoor experience.
You know what else I used to do?
This was in 1991.
All of my ex-girlfriends are married now, by the way.
Nobody wants me in the family sleeping bag anymore.
James: Especially not the husbands.
Hey, are we good with the product stuff now?
Ami, give us a minute.
But thevenue overcrowded and the fire marshal shut it down.
Is that reunion still a possibility?The fellas put together a show and contacted me afterwards.
It would have been a fast jam, but it didnt take place.
At some point we might put something together.
You quit Van Halen in 1985 to make a quasi-autobiographical movie youd written,Crazy From the Heat.
The screenplaysurfaced on the internet this summer.
When was the last time you thought about that script?Crazy From the Heatwas not my life story.
It was about two managers named the Picasso brothers who managed somebody named Dave.
For some baffling reason, the movie never got made.
What was Hollywood thinking?Oh, they werent.
But my day job will always be singing and dancing.
The Frank Sinatra paradigm.
How many movies did he make?
Some of them won great awards.
But he always knew it adds up to the concert ticket at the end of the day.
That was his driving wheel and that is mine, all right?
I read it before the movie, too.
I bought it at the airport.
Suddenly theyve reissuedThe Godfatherin the airports.
Why would a character like that be so popular again right now?
I can think of a good reason.
Because quite honestly, I have fans on both sides of the Punta Gorda delta.
Are you familiar with theRedneck Mud Park?
But guys, you elected a billionaire.
Youre never going to be able to convince him of anything.
I just want to go from philandering to philanthropy.
Will there be a David Lee Roth wing at Mt.
Sinai?This is my time.
So, whatever happens from this interview on, youre looking at a free man.
