David Lee Roth Quotes

1. The beauty of rock and roll is that there are no rules and no schools. You just make it up as you go.  



2. A girl said to me: "Dave, you can't buy love." And I said: "You're right, but I can darn sure pull my yacht right up next to it and walk over."

3. Audience participation should extend from on-stage to backstage to under the stage.

4. 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.

5. Let's play with the career, if we can't find anything else to do.

6. Any kind of rock music is what I call high velocity folk music.

7. Van Halen's up for a Grammy and half of us can't even spell it.

8. I look at heavy metal music, Van Halen's brand of heavy metal music rather, as a combination of religion and hockey.

9. There are only so many letters in the alphabet. When I talk to young musicians or authors and they ask for advice, I say: "You gotta learn all the letters of your own personal alphabet. With music, you need to know all the different kinds of music and everything in and around your given instrument."

10. Chili dogs have absolutely no class, but a great deal of style.

11. People ask me how far I've come. And I tell them twelve feet: from the audience to the stage.








12. I'm a very family oriented kind of guy. I personally started three or four in 1983.

13. When you get something like MTV, it's like regular television. You get it, and at first it's novel and brand new and then you watch every channel, every show. And then you become a little more selective and more selective, until ultimately…you wind up with a radio.

14. The horse will find it's way to the water if the water exists. But if you dry out the pond intentionally, that's it, man, it's gone. All you'll have is a story.


15. The reason the critics all like Elvis Costello better than me is because they all look like Elvis Costello.

16. He who knows how will always work for he who knows why.

17. I'd rather have people walk by my grave and say: "How come Dave didn't get no monument?" instead of "How come Dave got a monument?!"


18. Van Halen can keep providing the rain and I'll keep providing the parade.


19. I am currently running, but not for office.

20. Rap is poetry to music, like beatniks without beards and bongos.

21. I've upgraded from rockstar to action figure.

22. I've always been very self-motivated.

23. You're not a rockstar until you can spell subpoena.

24. I don't do well with support. I do better with abuse.


25. The bible is written with the same alphabet my favorite pornography is.

26. Sammy and I are like fraternity brothers who've been through the same hazing.

27. I used to jog but the ice cubes kept falling out of my glass.

28. The two most difficult things to deal with in life, I think, are probably failure and success.


29. I grew up on radio, not TV.

30. 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".



31. There are many places in the world where being a whore are tolerated. Parts of Nevada. Amsterdam, Holland. Congress.

32. My pop would tell me: "Kid, don't be humble. You're not that good."




33. Just because I'm bitter and cynical does not mean I'm not having a great time.

34. Sam throws a party. I am the party.

35. When you're on the road for nine months a year and you always have these cute little chiquitas running around in their halter tops, it's kind of hard to worry about things like nuclear proliferation.

36. The world is run by people who never feel well.

37. An ounce of image is worth a pound of performance.

38. You want a hero in the music world? James Brown. He brought a feeling to music without really using words. He's just famous for his sound.

39. I say to the guys in the band: "You know what Voltaire said?" They think Voltaire is an air conditioning company.

40. I, myself, am the son of Satan, although my duties here are largely ceremonial.

41. I was with a girl not terribly long ago and she said: "Mr. Roth, I think you're the oldest person I've ever been with." I said: "Honey, I was gonna say the same thing to you."


42. In the United States, you can put on a cowboy hat and join the country-western neighborhood. If you're down below 14th Street in New York City, that's bohemian; that's left-wing.

43. There's nobody who can take my place in that band. There may be one or two who will try and make the effort. Just as there will always be champions there will always only be one ALI. I'm the front in Van Halen and I always will be the front in Van Halen.




44. The perfect woman has an IQ of 150, wants to make love until 4 in the morning, then turns into a pizza!

45. What's rock and roll without a little drama? A little mix it up?


46. The problem with self-improvement is knowing when to quit.

47. I'm an optimist. When I go fishing I take a Nikon and a frying pan.

48. The world's a stage and I want the brightest spot.

49. You hope for the best. I expect it. I'm the toastmaster general of the immoral majority.

50. It doesn't matter the kind of music, it doesn't matter whether it's a cowboy hat or a yarmulke. I don't care if it's outer space or pop, the spirit is the same.

51. My ambition is to further create a signature sound, a signature spirit, that makes some kind of contribution to music in general.

52. I don't get all the women that I want...I get all the women that want me.




53. I'm not conceited. Conceit is a fault and I have no faults.

54. I take my personal upkeep real seriously; my sense of organization and attention to detail; my memory; my business - I love the business.



55. Our motto is "Awwwww, shut up!"


56. I used to have a drug problem, now I make enough money.

57. 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. 

58. It's always irritated me that people say: "Where's the action? Oh wow, there's no action here; let's go somewhere else." These people will never find the action.




59. The only thing I'm allergic to is criticism.

60. Money can't buy you happiness, but it can buy you a yacht big enough to pull up right alongside it.

61. The light you see at the end of the tunnel is the front of an oncoming train.

62. You stick your head above the crowd and attract attention and sometimes somebody will throw a rock at you. That's the territory. You buy the land, you get the Indians.

63. 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.



64. Radio as we know it is pretty much changing completely.

65. 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.

66. Music is like girlfriends to me; I'm continually astonished by the choices other people make.

67. It doesn't get better, it doesn't get worse, but it sure gets different!

68. A lot of rock bands are truly a legend in their own minds.

69. I change as the times change. I'm a reflection of what's around me without trying at all.


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