#1256 - David Lee Roth

Joe Rogan (0:04)

4, 3, 2, 1 And we're live, Mr. Roth.

David Lee Roth (0:12)

As live as ive we'll ever possibly get on the Intergrid International.

Joe Rogan (0:17)

Good to see you, man. You really do look great. You look healthy. You look vibrant.

David Lee Roth (0:21)

You look surprised.

Joe Rogan (0:22)

No!

David Lee Roth (0:23)

Don't look so surprised. I haven't been to sleep since the late 80s. I didn't miss a thing.

I'm a little groggy, but I'm good to go. In my job, you expect dissipation and illness, right? It kind of goes along with, you expect a disintegration in my kind of job.

Joe Rogan (0:40)

Lemmy for Motorhead style.

David Lee Roth (0:43)

Do you know the term Wabasabi? Do you know what that is?

Joe Rogan (0:45)

No.

David Lee Roth (0:46)

Wabasabi is a Japanese term that succinctly put means that which is perfect because it's a little fucked up.

Your favorite jeans. Very Wabasabi.

Joe Rogan (0:54)

It's like a patina on an old car.

David Lee Roth (0:56)

And the guitar player in the Rolling Stones. Very Wabasabi.

Joe Rogan (1:01)

Yes. He's very Wabasabi.

David Lee Roth (1:03)

Yeah. In New York City, for example, the old that starts to fall apart right next to the new, that's part of the beauty there. Your favorite leather jacket.

Joe Rogan (1:13)

Yeah.

David Lee Roth (1:13)

Is that, can you expect that to increase? But I don't know. I'm not really an athlete. I don't really train. I'm kind of a singer who always traded his celebrity to, you know, hey, show me how you do that. And how many times should I lift this? And what happens if I fall off of this going this fast?

Joe Rogan (1:32)

But you used to train, right? You used to, didn't you train with Benny Arquitos?

David Lee Roth (1:35)

Oh, yeah. I went through martial arts the first time.

Let me go back. I lived in student housing up until I was just about a teenager, okay? And it was a time when you bought one paintbrush at a time, okay? And most of my values come from that. Public library, I learned to swim in a public swimming pool. And my dad finished medical school, okay? I happened. I wasn't planned. In the 50s, that happened a lot, okay? And so we had a lot, a lot of patients who were kind of on the periphery of Pasadena, California, which is where we came, okay? I was born in Indiana, lived in Massachusetts. He was a resident, grew up around the hospitals, dinner meant going to the hospital, meet dad, you know? And when we came out to LA, the Japanese were kind of peripheral. Spanish-speaking people, curiously enough, you know, the running story was that there were six Spanish-speaking people at UCLA and three of them were in gardening.

No, really, back in the 60s, that was the case. Today, easily, you know, massive amounts of percentage is a yablo suficiente espanol también, okay? It's not the second language. It's kind of the first and a half now.

Things have really changed a mental.

And I grew up in those neighborhoods, okay, so I can gang sign the whole alphabet.

Joe Rogan (3:03)

Can you really?

David Lee Roth (3:03)

Yeah. I have two low riders.

I've got a 51 Mercury that's chop, drop, low and slow.

Joe Rogan (3:10)

Do you drive it?

David Lee Roth (3:11)

Oh, yeah. I've got a 66 VW Bug with a Chevy engine, a 383 up in the front, and I can roll my R's.

What do you drive those things? No, we drive them all around. It's Southern California, of course, is different. A lot of you are listening in with five layers and going, hey, I'm not driving anywhere for the next three days according to the weather map.

But here, for example, it's T-shirt weather. So, you know, the great outdoors means, wow, how's that sound over the headphones?

Joe Rogan (3:47)

Good. Sounds like an engine.

David Lee Roth (3:49)

Yeah. But I always, the first time I ever, we were just playing with a sword there. And that's not a summarize sword. That's like calling a nine-millimeter, a police gun. Yeah, it kind of is, because they use, but that's a katana, huh? Right. And we were playing with that a little bit. The first time somebody handed me those, we were at the Buddhist temple in Pasadena, 19, you bet I remember, 1965 And there was a demonstration of the Japanese culture, thank you.

And a fella came out and demonstrated Aito and, you know, the sword arts and stuff. And then he said, I'm going to take somebody from the audience. And my dad pushed me.