DAVID LEE ROTH & THE PHILOSOPHY OF DIVING DOWN

SEPTEMBER '82—What HM special would be complete without the most vivacious, high-falutin, rootin'-tootin', gung-ho bunch of good guys that current-ly exist, Van Halen? Well, ac-tually several might be equally complete—and, in fact, the previous sentence was a rhetorical question asked just for kicks! Anyway, ace-in-L.A. Sylvie Simmons probes for in-timate details about the biggest-band-in-de-land, and—you get to read it!

Those lips! Those eyes! That body! Pale, hard, smooth as marble; solid chest, muscular legs, and hung between them—a Holiday Inn towel? David—the Michelangelo version, a gift from a fan—draped with various souvenirs is the first thing you meet when you step out of the elevator of what was once Rudolf Valentino’s gymnasium. The second thing is a member of the large Van Halen retinue, officed in this Hollywood building. The third thing— mouth in the familiar pout, eyes in the familiar half-lidded stare, hair in the familiar egg-whisk style—is David Lee Roth himself, drinking Dr. Pepper and smoking Marlboros. More magnificent than Michelangelo’s version, almost perfect except for his tastebuds, here before me is the world’s most loved and the world’s most hated human being in the flesh. And he’s talking nineteen to the dozen...“Well as you probably know, Sylvie, this is a Zen principle—two of the most opposite things become the same thing and as you have probably deduced from our previous interviews (many, I confess) and the music etc.; I represent the Zen council portion of Van Halen; not so much because I am a student of Zen but basically because I am the only one who can spell it.”