A (somewhat recent) interview with David Lee Roth is currently making the rounds on music news websites. The interview one one that David Lee Roth did with Jim Florentine (from That Metal Show) for Ozzy’s Boneyard on SiriusXM. In it, David mentioned that the four members of Van Halen were beginning to work on new music. He implied that Van Halen could possibly release new music and begin a tour in around 18 months time. (You can listen to the interview below).
The interview was posted online a month ago and has been getting a lot of attention. It seems that all the websites who mention it are under the impression that it’s a recent interview. However, this interview was actually conducted on Aug 23rd, over 3 months ago.
When the interview was uploaded a month ago, we decided not to report on it, because it was already old news, as David had been saying pretty much the same thing in other various interviews that we featured over the summer.
We are featuring the interview now because a lot of people think it’s new. And, let’s face it, people really get excited when a member of Van Halen mentions the possibility of new music, even when the news isn’t particularly fresh. After all, Van Halen’s 2012 album, A Different Kind Of Truth, was a critically acclaimed masterpiece. Rock fans loved it, as they gave it an average of four or five star rating everywhere that album reviews are written online.
Roth told Jim Florentine, “I’m writing; I write lyrics routinely. And the band plays together routinely — at least three times as week. They’re up at Ed’s place, routinely.”
“I was up at Edward‘s house, maybe three days ago – just before I came here to the city – and we’re starting to put music together. Not to give away exactly what the package will be, it’s gonna be about 18 months, I think.”
“We start way, way, way in advance. ‘Cause we are eminently art-centric, which is a really fancy way of saying we really do generate all the artwork, the graphics, etc. We don’t hire out and have somebody design a bunch of album covers for us and then choose…. we start from scratch ourselves. Same thing with the merchandise – if you buy a t-shirt, that was designed, literally, in my living room. On and on… stage design, lighting rig, putting the show together – it takes about a year and a half, 18 months, because any idea that you have is 85 phone calls. Anybody can go, ‘I got an idea, it’s a stage that’s shaped like, uh, like a square on top of a circle’. Great, my question never was, ‘were you able to dream up a stage design’, my question is, ‘are you prepared to do the 87 phone calls that are about to follow now, to make sure it came out the way we decided’. And then there’s another 80 phone calls that are gonna follow that because we have to figure out how to take the fuckin’ thing apart and put it in the trucks and buses. And, and, and. So if you really want to generate the ideas from scratch and bring them all the way to the finish, you’re gonna have to learn a few other languages, and you’re gonna have to speak those over a lot of extra phone calls. And that’s usually the break point for most artists.”
If you were to take Dave’s “18 months” estimate as gospel, that would mean new music could be released in February, 2015, exactly three years after the release of their critically acclaimed A Different Kind of Truth. But keep in mind that this is an extremely rough estimate. So time will tell.
“I think we’re one of the few acts, at our age and in our position in the music industry, who still enjoy doing what we do. Everybody will tell you that they live and breathe and die to play their drum sets, and they are lying. (Laughs.) Mostly, you get in a point in your life where you have been playing for how many years, how many decades, and you probably don’t play it on the weekend. This is where Van Halen in the anomaly, or the aberration. We still enjoy what we do for a living.”
Listen to Dave’s interview from Aug 28th here: