David Lee Roth has made it clear — if you're looking to catch the spirit of Van Halen in concert — he's the man to see. Roth spoke to The New York Times and gave an in-depth interview regarding, the state of Van Halen, his painting, and the pandemic, among other things.
Regarding whether Van Halen will ever join forces again after a five-year hiatus — especially with Eddie Van Halen's reported cancer battles, Roth said, “I don’t know that Eddie is ever really going to rally for the rigors of the road again. I don’t even want to say I’ve waited — I’ve supported for five years. Because what I do is physical as well as musical and spiritual — you can’t take five years off from the ring. But I did. And I do not regret a second of it. He’s a band mate. We had a colleague down. And he’s down now for enough time that I don’t know that he’s going to be coming back out on the road. You want to hear the classics? You’re talking to him.”
Roth — who had briefly served as a licensed EMT in New York City during the 1990's — had been on the road opening for Kiss when the pandemic shut everything down, believes that he might actually have had the coronavirus: “I’m not so unconvinced I didn’t have the corona. Man, they gave me enough prednisone to put boots on the moon! We left a trail of groupies, rubble and incandescent reviews. But I don’t want to go back through it.”