David Lee Roth
The most important part of any rock song is the guitar solo.Collection: Song
It's not who wants to sleep with you; It's who wants to sleep with you again.Collection: Sleep
Music journalists love Elvis Costello and hate me because they look like Elvis CostelloCollection: Hate
I can teach you to jump up in five seconds-it takes years to learn how to land properly.Collection: Years
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.Collection: Occupation
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.Collection: Choices
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.Collection: Book
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.Collection: Art
Give me a glazed doughnut, and a bottle of anything... to go!Collection: Giving
Rock & roll is not so much a question of electric guitars as it is striped pants.Collection: Rocks
The only people who put iced tea in Jack Daniel's bottles is the Clash baby!Collection: Baby
I'm a family man. I personally started 3 or 4 families last year.Collection: Men
People say that life is a cesspool of darkness and dispair. Well we of Van Halen are sailing through it in a yacht!Collection: People
An ounce of image is worth a pound of performanceCollection: Pounds
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?Collection: Stars
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 $ 8.50Collection: Stories
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.Collection: Kings
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.Collection: Guitar
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.Collection: Years
I change as the times change. I'm a reflection of what's around me without trying at all.Collection: Reflection
I live and breathe and do four times as much four times as fast as anyone else.Collection: Four
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.Collection: Artist
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.Collection: Fall
Audience participation should extend from on-stage to backstage to under the stageCollection: Should
Critics like Elvis Costello because critics are like Elvis Costello.Collection: Critics
You know what rock musicians are? They are hung up, neurotic, over-weight hippies with sex problems.Collection: Sex
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.Collection: Song
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.Collection: Believe
Self-tragedy is always a great way to dramatize yourself - ask any teenager.Collection: Teenager
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.Collection: Cameras
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.Collection: Song
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.Collection: Kitchen
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.Collection: Stars
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.Collection: Religious
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.'Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Kids
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.Collection: Song
On parties it's not about who you are. The real reason to which a party revolves is how good you look.Collection: Real
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.Collection: Advice
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.Collection: Creating
Nobody's going to get a hot dog at my concert!Collection: Dog
Let's play with the career, if we can't find anything else to doCollection: Play
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.Collection: Song
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!Collection: Years
Music videos are like girlfriends. I'm constantly amazed on what other people doingCollection: Girlfriend