A CATCHY DAVID LEE ROTH HEADLINE!

It's fitting that here in this unjust world, where rock stars regularly slander one another openly, where newspapers often present one and only one side of the story, where national news networks provide an overly long analysis of a presidential speech by a well-known Soviet spokesperson, where a surprising majority of American rock critics actually vote Talking Heads� last album as 1985�s best, where writers compose extremely long sentences without giving thought to just how they might end, or, indeed, why— it�s fitting that David Lee Roth speak his piece.

Why not? CREEM has never been a magazine to deliberately cause trouble by fanning the flames of controversy when it arises. Sure, a well known platinum recording artist recently told me he was convinced his last album died a miserable death due to his reluctance to allow drugs be an unspoken part of its promotion, another rising popster told me he was gay but I shouldn�t tell anybody and a third admitted to recently buying a gun and hanging out in shopping mall parking lots— but why should / talk? Heck, I�m no better than anyone else. So when a band as internationally famous as Van Halen personally told me all sorts of mean things about David Lee Roth, and when I went ahead and made them public for kicks— and also because it made better copy than the five minutes they devoted to their bowel habits—serious consequences were a-brewin�. CONTINUED FROM PAGE 39