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I'm A Natural Behind The Camera... My Attentions Are More Toward Behind The Scenes, More Toward Creating, Producing, And Directing What's Going On Here... When I Finally Do Pop In Front Of The Lens, I'm Genuinely Glad And Relieved To Be There.

-David Lee Roth

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I'm A Natural Behind

David Lee Roth

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I'm A Natural Behind The Camera... My Attentions Are More Toward Behind The Scenes, More Toward Creating, Producing, And Directing What's Going On Here... When I Finally Do Pop In Front Of The Lens, I'm Genuinely Glad And Relieved To Be There.

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Nobody's Going To Get A Hot Dog At My Concert!

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I've Always Been Very Self-motivated.

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I'm A Natural Behind The Camera... My Attentions Are More Toward Behind The Scenes, More Toward Creating, Producing, And Directing What's Going On Here... When I Finally Do Pop In Front Of The Lens, I'm Genuinely Glad And Relieved To Be There.

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.

People Say That Life Is A Cesspool Of Darkness And Dispair. Well We Of Van Halen Are Sailing Through It In A Yacht!

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!

I Used To Have A Drug Problem, But Now I Have Enough Money.

Van Halen Can Keep Providing The Rain And I'll Keep Providing The Parade.

Self-tragedy Is Always A Great Way To Dramatize Yourself - Ask Any Teenager.

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.

Being A Rock Star Is Being A Rock Star, I Don't Need To Go Into The Details. What Would You Do If You Were A Rock Star?

Music Is Like Girlfriends To Me; I'm Continually Astonished By The Choices Other People Make.

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.

I Change As The Times Change. I'm A Reflection Of What's Around Me Without Trying At All.

I Knew Already When I Was Seven Years Old, That I Wanted To Be On Stage And Entertain People. I Sell Laughs. Here, You Got One For Free!

The Perfect Woman Has An Iq Of 150, Wants To Make Love Until 4 In The Morning, Then Turns Into A Pizza!

Classic Van Halen Made People Want To Dance And F**k. Modern Van Halen Makes You Want To Drink Milk And Drive Foreign Cars.

I Know That People Think I'm A Party King; But, Face It, If I Finished The Bottle Every Time I Took A Drink, I Wouldn't Be Able To Do The Aerials I Do Onstage.

We've All Got Out Self-destructive Bad Habits, The Trick Is To Find Four Or Five You Personally Like The Best And Just Do Those All The Time.

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.

I Would Just Like To Say That After All These Years Of Heavy Drinking, Bright Lights And Late Nights, I Still Don't Need Glasses. I Drink Right Out Of The Bottle.

The Light You See At The End Of The Tunnel Is The Front Of An Oncoming Train.

You Know What Rock Musicians Are? They Are Hung Up, Neurotic, Over-weight Hippies With Sex Problems.

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.

If You Put A Van Halen Album In Your Record Collection, It Will Melt All The Rest Of Your Records.

I Just Wanted To Be In Show Biz. I Wanted To Make Music And Sing And Dance, Tell Jokes And Stories, Make Ya Smile, Make Ya Cry - And Charge You $ 8.50

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.

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.

You've Got To Roll With The Punches To Get To What's Real.

I'm Not Conceited. Conceit Is A Fault And I Have No Faults.

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.

An Ounce Of Image Is Worth A Pound Of Performance

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.

I Live And Breathe And Do Four Times As Much Four Times As Fast As Anyone Else.

The Problem With Self-improvement Is Knowing When To Quit.

I'm A Family Oriented Guy; I've Personally Started Four Or Five This Year.

I Don't Get All The Women That I Want... I Get All The Women That Want Me.

I Am A One-trick Pony. If You Tell Most People To Draw A Picture Of A Tree, They'd Draw 35 Branches And 10,000 Leaves. I Will Draw You A Tree With Four Branches And Three Leaves, And I'll Spend The Rest Of The Week Drawing Inside Of Each Leaf. In Terms Of The Grand Gesture, I Reserve That Maximum Turbo Blast Energy For What I Do As An Artist, And I Sing And Dance For Dinner.

Music Videos Are Like Girlfriends. I'm Constantly Amazed On What Other People Doing

I Used To Jog But The Ice Cubes Kept Falling Out Of My Glass.

The Travels Before And After The Tour Are What Add Up To What You're Doing. You Are Really Called Into Service - And It's The Service Industry Man, It's Blue Collar Man, I'm Sweating By The Second Song. It's Construction Work From That Second Song On.

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.

I Think The Two Most Difficult Things To Deal With In Life Are Failure And Success

Success And Failure

I Think Very Frequently, Musicians Become A Victim Of Every Song They Sing. I Like All Kinds Of Recreation. It's Aggressive. I Want To Be Part Of Everything.

I Always Wanted To Be An Outrage To Public Decency And A Threat To Women. And This Is One Of The Few Occupations Where You're Not Only Allowed That, But You're Encouraged.

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.

My Ambition Is To Further Create A Signature Sound, A Signature Spirit, That Makes Some Kind Of Contribution To Music In General.

Let's Play With The Career, If We Can't Find Anything Else To Do

I Can Teach You To Jump Up In Five Seconds-it Takes Years To Learn How To Land Properly.

I Grew Up On Radio, Not Tv.

It Dont Matter What Your Doin, Ust As Long As You Look Good Doin It

It's Not Who Wants To Sleep With You; It's Who Wants To Sleep With You Again.

If You Want To Split A Bottle With A Friend, Then Sammy Hagar Is Your Guy. If You Want To Split Your Friend With A Bottle Than Give Me A Call.

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.

Stick Your Head Above The Crowd And Eventually Somebody Will Throw A Rock At It.

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.

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.

People Ask Me How Far I've Come. And I Tell Them Twelve Feet: From The Audience To The Stage.

If You Subtracted All Of The Great Artists Who Never Drank, Who Never Went To Excess, You Wouldn't Have Any More Art Left. What Kind Of Poem Are You Gonna Get Out Of A Glass Of Iced Tea?

Rap Is Poetry To Music, Like Beatniks Without Beards And Bongos.

The Only People Who Put Iced Tea In Jack Daniel's Bottles Is The Clash Baby!

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.

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.

When You Can Spell Subpoena Without Thinking About It, That's When You Know You've Made It.

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.

I'm A Family Man. I Personally Started 3 Or 4 Families Last Year.

Well A Good Writer Writes, A Good Musician Listens To A Lot More Than He Actually Composes, And If You're Going To Do Lyrics - Well, There's A Freudian Slip. That's Not Even A Slip, That's A Freudian Move: I Said Going To Do Lyrics. If You Really Want It To Ring True, You'll Live It First. Go Really Get Your Heart Broken!

On Parties It's Not About Who You Are. The Real Reason To Which A Party Revolves Is How Good You Look.

The Only Thing I'm Allergic To Is Criticism.

Women Are Great. When They Dig You, There's Nothing They Won't Do. That Kind Of Loyalty Is Hard To Find - Unless You've Got A Good Dog.

The Best Time Is During The Struggle. The Top Of The Mountain Is Usually Small, Freezing And Lonesome. To This Day I'm Continually Reinvesting Myself In Something New. I'm Not Afraid To Start As A Beginner In Anything.

The Most Important Part Of Any Rock Song Is The Guitar Solo.

When I Die, Sprinkle My Ashes Over The 80's.

Radio As We Know It Is Pretty Much Changing Completely.

Many Of The Critics Have Kids Of Their Own. It Scares The Hell Out Of Them To Think That Their Kids Could Be Anything Remotely Like David Lee Roth.

Give Me A Glazed Doughnut, And A Bottle Of Anything... To Go!

Whether I'm On For A Day Or Whether I'm On For A Year, At The End Of The Day, I Sing For My Dinner.

The End Of The Day

They Make This Drink In Brazil Called Cachaca. It's Sugar Can Alcholho. Costs 35 Cents A Quart. One Quart Of That Stuff And You See God. Two Quarts And You Graow A Pair Of Tight Pants And An Electric Guitar.

The Breakfast Of Champions Isn't Cereal, It's The Competition!

Audience Participation Should Extend From On-stage To Backstage To Under The Stage

In Front Of The Camera And In Front Of The Lens, There's No Lawsuits, There's No Agent, And There's Most Frequently No Time Limits... There's A Longevity That's Kind Of Built Into It. I Spend Most Of My Time Behind The Scenes, And When It Is Time To Perform, I'm Genuinely Delighted To Do It.

A Lot Of Rock Bands Are Truly A Legend In Their Own Minds.

Remember, Life Is Just A Game And No One Gets Out Alive

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.

Rock & Roll Is Not So Much A Question Of Electric Guitars As It Is Striped Pants.

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.

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.'

I Take My Personal Upkeep Real Seriously; My Sense Of Organization And Attention To Detail; My Memory; My Business - I Love The Business.

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