David Lee Roth Quotes
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'It's not about money right now. My ambition is to further create a signature sound, a signature spirit, that makes some kind of contribution to music in general.
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What I do is dangerous for sponsors, dangerous for editors. But I'm really a radio kid. I grew up on radio, not TV. Ultimately, I'll probably do radio.
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Maybe I'm like acts of Congress or your favorite chinese restaurant - you don't really want to know what's going on behind the door. I'm a real study in contrast, I expect, looking from without. But it adds up to what you get on stage.
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Somebody asked me the question not too long ago: 'Dave, do you think the music business has turned corrupt'. I said: 'Absolutely not - it has always been corrupt.
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You gotta learn the alphabet, backwards and forwards. And then the choice is yours, 'cause last I looked, the Bible is written in the same words, the exact same alphabet, as my favorite pornography. Choice is yours.
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I change as the times change. I'm a reflection of what's around me without trying at all.
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Nine times out of 10 when people do a tribute album or tribute songs for somebody, it's what I call 'white boys playing reggae'. They know they can't, we know they can't, so they sing like they can't and play like they can't. They gently make fun of the idiom or sing in a false accent.
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For the last 30 years, I've been leading a life of crime and international intrigue that's involved 40 stamps in my passport, love affairs, and broken hearts to go with each one of them. You would have to live three lifetimes to catch up with just the allegations that follow me!
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You want to know if we're animals? When I'm on stage with the volume rippling my body like a glass of water and thousands of people are generating heat in my direction, there's no time for thought. My basement facilities take over completely. Sure it's animal. People might like to talk about art, but look where art is, in the gutter.
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I believe more and more that this business is about people. People, people. The idea is to make friends at the retail level, the warehouse level, let people see you exist, can form sentences and have an interest in something other than yourself.
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Of course building a kitchen makes all the symmetric sense in the world because everybody's burning calories at 120 beats a minute. You could even register it on a graph at the DJ booth. "How fast are they burning calories, sir?" "126 a minute." "Are you sure?" "Oh, I'm very sure." You can meter that out.
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You've got to roll with the punches to get to what's real.
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The only thing I'm allergic to is criticism.
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I'm gonna abandon my spirit to them, which is actually what I attempt to do. You work yourself up into that state and you fall in supplication of the demon gods.
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Classic Van Halen made people want to dance and f**k. Modern Van Halen makes you want to drink milk and drive foreign cars.
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The Breakfast of Champions isn't cereal, it's the competition!
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Music videos are like girlfriends. I'm constantly amazed on what other people doing...
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What's missing is the testosterone. What's missing is the fury. What's missing is the passionate convicted commitment. And I got a lot of mine from my religious background. So y'all best stop imagining the way Dr. Zorba looked, or some defenseless Hasidic Jew with a little yarmulke on his head, 'cause that ain't here for you.
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You can really bring so much more to rock'n'roll. Rock'n'roll is the most accepting, is the most fertile ground for creating hybrid forms of music and hybrid forms of show, if you draw from many, many different wells. It's just unfortunate so many rock'n'roll stars only bother to learn how to play like Led Zeppelin and/or the Rolling Stones and that's what you get, disc after disc and show after show.
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You know what rock musicians are? They are hung up, neurotic, over-weight hippies with sex problems.
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The only people who put iced tea in Jack Daniel's bottles is the Clash baby!
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My visions and fantasies are pretty standard. The only difference is I got to do it, while most of us haven't. Beyond that, I'm a pretty standard guy. Give me a gal with a sense of humor, acidic wit, who's read a few books and has a body like a Swedish speed skater, and I'm quite content.
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A song without a hook is like a train without rails. It skitters all over the place, bangs into everything. Boom! Crash! There goes Grand Central Station. Crushed by a train.
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Ya know, I always admired Ray Kroc, the man who invented McDonald's. Ray had a vision of the most commonplace thing - a hamburger and fries to go - but to him it was just the greatest thing ever, and he was going to make it the greatest thing ever for everybody else, and he did.