He could have been the poster child for living the typical rockstar lifestyle: Booze, beauties, and blow out parties.

Some say he ran with the devil, and pointed to his rowdy, and often raunchy persona on stage.

He had high-octane energy, and his appetite for the ladies (read: lust) bordered on the obscene. Exhibit A: His “Diamond Dave’s Bonus Program“).

He is a rock star legend, one of the greatest lead singers of all time for one of the greatest rock bands of all time, Van Halen.  He is David Lee Roth, and if the name means nothing to you because you weren’t into hard rock,  you still might have heard Van Halen’s biggest hit as you were scrolling through radio stations. See if the song in the music video below sounds familiar:

Sex, drugs and rock and roll probably wasn’t the lifestyle his ophthalmologist dad and teacher mom had in mind for him, but by his late teens, Roth was singing solo and for the rock group, Red Ball Jets. The die was cast.

Photo from Wikicommons

We leave it to you to do a deeper dive into Van Halen because in this post, we are focused on David Lee Roth, and how a person can surprise you.  The same person we described above is the subject and narrator of the video below:

That’s right. David Lee Roth, former bad boy, became a sheepdog owner and herding trial competitor.

You have to admire someone who packs a lot of living into one life; our cursory research tells us that Roth learned Japanese, got into kenpō and Brazilian jiu-jitsu martial arts, trained and became state licensed as an emergency medical technician in New York, painted and drew, and after he bought a place in the country, became interested in sheepdog training and trials. His Border Collies, Ben and Mike, made him a fixture at trials in North America and the U.K., and Russell, an Australian Cattle Dog, not only joined the pack, but toured with Roth in 2013. Sadly, Russ, whose bark was immortalized in the track “HoneyBabySweetieDoll” on Van Halen’s last album, “A Different Kind Of Truth,” passed away in 2019, the end of his life marked by terrible arthritis in all four limbs.  Roth shared some stories about Russ in a video you can listen to here (swear word alert).

David Lee Roth is, as we write, is closing in on his 70th birthday, and his legacy is firmly in place, if not his influence on other musicians (including Billy Sheehan who credits a David Lee Roth album for influencing his career).  Despite his having forgotten lyrics and having an overall bad sound during a recent stint in Las Vegas, one writer felt that “Dave has some gas in the tank” if not swagger.

Good on David Lee Roth!

Image by Vishnu R Nair on Unsplash