The Last Rockstar

Great read, thanks for posting this. Highly recomended. Some highlights:

But Roth is envisioning bigger things. He is only starting to sift through and digitize and catalogue a dozen or so hours of no doubt incriminating video and Super 8 footage he shot backstage and on the road during Van Halen’s bacchanalian prime that can serve as the springboard for future episodes. (There has never been an authorized Van Halen documentary; he’s taken it upon himself to be the band’s de facto archivist.) He seems no less consumed with chronicling himself than a teenage livestreamer, and not just for the benefit of fans he has in the bag.

Even a casual music fan might feel intimately familiar with Eddie Van Halen’s recent medical chart: oral cancer, hip replacement. Meanwhile, David Lee Roth has been quietly paying the price for a lifetime of hard landings. He’s undergone two major lower back surgeries in recent years. The office chair is missing its right armrest — Roth also had his shoulder reattached in four places and needed to be able to sleep in the chair when it was too uncomfortable to lie on his back. “See that?” He points to a framed picture of Elvis Presley mounted on the wall just a foot or two off the floor, between two open French windows. “I had to move that down because I slept with my head against that wall. Dog is here, dog watches door.”

Roth had never met Van Halen’s current bassist Wolfgang, Eddie’s 22-year-old son, until they were bandmates; they have yet to so much as step out for a coffee together, which is understandable given that he grew up knowing Roth only as that guy Daddy f*cking hates. Roth fully admits that Wolfgang’s involvement was never negotiable and that he hasn’t spoken to original bassist and odd man out Michael Anthony in “years.” “I had no choice, it was Edward’s decision, but luckily for all of us, the kid is very good,” he says. “If there were a lacking in the program, I wouldn’t participate; I have very high standards of musical excellence. But I do feel a little like Sammy Davis Jr. in the Rat Pack.”