\n<\/p>\n
\n\tShortly after his victorious sit-in<\/a> with Teddy Swims<\/a>\u2019 on Coachella\u2019s main stage, David Lee Roth<\/a> strutted into the media tent. He was still in his stage wear \u2014\u00a0leather vest, form-fitting silver-and-black-pants, wraparound shades, and the massive smile that\u2019s been his trademark since his early days fronting Van Halen \u2014 and still on fire, buzzing from having just played \u201cJump\u201d <\/a>for the Coachella crowd.<\/p>\n \n\tIn a rapid-fire back-and-forth with the 71-year-old, who\u2019s currently in the midst of his own solo tour with what he\u2019s calling the Roth Show band, we try to get a word in edgewise about his first-ever Coachella experience.<\/p>\n \n\tYou played with Van Halen at the Hollywood Bowl back in 2015, and now you\u2019re at Coachella on the main stage with Teddy Swims.<\/strong> This is what we look at every night before we do our rehearsals with the Roth Show band. I have nine people in the band. I got a killer-ass power trio playing the most nonstop white-trash superstar riffs that you could never master in the first three years on guitar. And on vocals, every stop is the Five Tops \u2014 oh yeah. The Glendale Inglewood Baptist community\u2019s finest. I\u2019m a product of the busing program. And that\u2019s in every Van Halen songbook contribution. Our stuff is like West Side Story<\/em>. You can play it on a ukulele. You can play it in an orchestra. You can play it alone on a harmonica. And each variegated rendition reveals a different kind of an emotional content to it.<\/p>\n Something like \u201cJump\u201d can be very, very, very sad, and it can be very, very upbeat and celebrated, depending on the context and the tone.\u00a0And the music\u2019s timeless. \u201cJump\u201d is on every NFL franchise playlist in this country. If you play proper football, soccer \u2014 Marseille, the most vicious team, is the equivalent of what Boston is to New York \u2014 their theme song for halftime for 40 years is \u201cJump.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tSo, is this your first time at Coachella?<\/strong> \n\tYou\u2019ve been to the Coachella Valley before, but you\u2019ve never been to the festival?<\/strong>
What we do here for a living is steeped in history. If you join West Point, you join the long gray line. And if you do police work, you join the long blue line. And here, what we do goes all the way back to [1930s dance groups] the Nicholas Brothers and the Berry Brothers. And long before there were even microphones or PA systems, it\u2019s the long hi-tone, two-tone line. [Points to his two-toned shoes.<\/em>]<\/p>\n
I actually worked around the corner a couple of New Year\u2019s Eves as an EMT about seven, eight years ago. I\u2019ve never been a one-job type of fellow.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Coachella is way more freestyle, sexy, art-centric\u2026 I play shows where a lot of my colleagues and contemporaries look virtually identical \u2013 obligatory amp line, hair extensions, devil horns. Nobody smiles. The Rolling Stones started that one. [Laughs<\/em>.]<\/p>\n