Shortly after his victorious sit-in with Teddy Swims’ on Coachella’s main stage, David Lee Roth strutted into the media tent. He was still in his stage wear — leather vest, form-fitting silver-and-black-pants, wraparound shades, and the massive smile that’s been his trademark since his early days fronting Van Halen — and still on fire, buzzing from having just played “Jump” for the Coachella crowd.
In a rapid-fire back-and-forth with the 71-year-old, who’s currently in the midst of his own solo tour with what he’s calling the Roth Show band, we try to get a word in edgewise about his first-ever Coachella experience.
You played with Van Halen at the Hollywood Bowl back in 2015, and now you’re at Coachella on the main stage with Teddy Swims.
What we do here for a living is steeped in history. If you join West Point, you join the long gray line. And if you do police work, you join the long blue line. And here, what we do goes all the way back to [1930s dance groups] the Nicholas Brothers and the Berry Brothers. And long before there were even microphones or PA systems, it’s the long hi-tone, two-tone line. [Points to his two-toned shoes.]
This is what we look at every night before we do our rehearsals with the Roth Show band. I have nine people in the band. I got a killer-ass power trio playing the most nonstop white-trash superstar riffs that you could never master in the first three years on guitar. And on vocals, every stop is the Five Tops — oh yeah. The Glendale Inglewood Baptist community’s finest. I’m a product of the busing program. And that’s in every Van Halen songbook contribution. Our stuff is like West Side Story. You can play it on a ukulele. You can play it in an orchestra. You can play it alone on a harmonica. And each variegated rendition reveals a different kind of an emotional content to it.
Something like “Jump” can be very, very, very sad, and it can be very, very upbeat and celebrated, depending on the context and the tone. And the music’s timeless. “Jump” is on every NFL franchise playlist in this country. If you play proper football, soccer — Marseille, the most vicious team, is the equivalent of what Boston is to New York — their theme song for halftime for 40 years is “Jump.”
So, is this your first time at Coachella?
I actually worked around the corner a couple of New Year’s Eves as an EMT about seven, eight years ago. I’ve never been a one-job type of fellow.
You’ve been to the Coachella Valley before, but you’ve never been to the festival?
Coachella is way more freestyle, sexy, art-centric… I play shows where a lot of my colleagues and contemporaries look virtually identical – obligatory amp line, hair extensions, devil horns. Nobody smiles. The Rolling Stones started that one. [Laughs.]
I don’t know — Mick smiles sometimes.
Yeah, now that he’s a millionaire, but on those first eight records… Drop the smirk. That’s what dignified the Rolling Stones. Everybody else, the Beatles, Dave Clark Five wore big smiles. And then going even farther back, all of my heroes wore suits to work. Whether it was when you mounted the jazz stand, like one of the jazz greats, you smiled. It was my Uncle Manny who owned a really famous club downtown in Greenwich Village who told me, “There are two basic rules, Dave: Number One, smile and let everybody know you’re damn glad to have the job. And Number Two, perhaps more importantly, always without fail, keep your wallet in your pocket onstage.” [Laughs.]
How did the collab with Teddy come together?
We rehearse at a very famous place called Third Encore, which is near the Van Nuys Airport. Most of Coachella rehearses there because it’s got giant facilities with all the power requirements and the proximity to all the tech resources, all within bicycle distance. And we’re all across the parking lot from each other. There, I am the old gray wolf. Keeper of the tribal knowledge. Ancient rabbi. My best opening is, “You look important. Who are you?” And you can say that to the Queen of England and she’ll say, “Well, this is my castle.” “Well, I’m not inaccurate. Call me Dave.” And that’s how it always starts.
Three of Teddy’s fellas came over from his crew: “Hey, can we stick our head in? We heard some songs.” I said, “Certainly. Come on in. ” Two days later, they brought 36 of his crew over. Teddy got FOMO.
He’s a longtime fan [of mine]. And he asked, as soon as he found out that I was in there, can he come over and watch the rehearsal? We got along like pirates. We had a few drinks well into the night. And our voices are very much the same. We have a cantankerous sense of humor. We come from a working-class background in music. A lot of places where there’s sawdust on the floor. Today, there’s a generation who does not know what that is. Teddy knows what that is.
It’s to soak up the beer…
He came over and there’s a history. He knows every word of my classic Van Halen songbook. As a vocalist, every word I sing in the Van Halen songbook, I wrote. I wrote every word. I wrote every line, every melody, every harmony stack, organized everything that the vocals do. For better or worse, if you’re singing it — Roth was bringing it.
