On Saturday, October 2nd, my birthday, David Lee Roth decided to call it quits. He apparently phoned in to the Los Vegas Review-Journal and told them, "I am throwing in the shoes. I'm retiring. This is the first, and only, official announcement. You've got the news. Share it with the world."
And of course it made the rounds very quickly.
Whether you like David's music or not, it marks the end of an era. More than that, it's the end of a generation when you get right down to it.
If you were born in the mid to late 60's as I was, you grew up on David. He and Van Halen were about the biggest thing out there all through school and even beyond that. David, in one form or another, with or without Van Halen, just never stopped going.
Going back to the late 80's to early 90's as grunge came in to push classic rock out there were some guys you just new were never going to make it.
Layne Staley wasn't going to make it. Each time you saw him on MTV in the 90's he just looked worse and worse.
Kurt Cobain; well, you didn't think he was going to make it either. Especially after that debacle in France. You didn't see it ending the way it ended, but you somehow knew it was going to end well before it should have.
Scott Weiland, hell. I'm surprised he lasted as long as he did.
But through it all, David Lee Roth kept on keeping on. He marked the time through it all and up until yesterday he still did. I really thought that David would be 102 years old, in a wheel chair, with an I.V. run into his left arm on a stand attached to the wheel chair, a mic clutched in his right hand doing a gig somewhere.
For him to hang it up at 66 is just...I don't know. Gutting. It just seems too early to me. He still seems to have so much left in the tank to pull over and park it now.
Maybe that's the world though, or this country. It's become a really rough place to live in, especially over the last 5 years. It's taken a lot out of all of us I think. Maybe that's the straw that finally broke David's back. Only he knows that for sure.
I hope it isn't because that would be a real shame.
Who knows? Maybe he'll be back someday. I would like to think so.
And of course it made the rounds very quickly.
Whether you like David's music or not, it marks the end of an era. More than that, it's the end of a generation when you get right down to it.
If you were born in the mid to late 60's as I was, you grew up on David. He and Van Halen were about the biggest thing out there all through school and even beyond that. David, in one form or another, with or without Van Halen, just never stopped going.
Going back to the late 80's to early 90's as grunge came in to push classic rock out there were some guys you just new were never going to make it.
Layne Staley wasn't going to make it. Each time you saw him on MTV in the 90's he just looked worse and worse.
Kurt Cobain; well, you didn't think he was going to make it either. Especially after that debacle in France. You didn't see it ending the way it ended, but you somehow knew it was going to end well before it should have.
Scott Weiland, hell. I'm surprised he lasted as long as he did.
But through it all, David Lee Roth kept on keeping on. He marked the time through it all and up until yesterday he still did. I really thought that David would be 102 years old, in a wheel chair, with an I.V. run into his left arm on a stand attached to the wheel chair, a mic clutched in his right hand doing a gig somewhere.
For him to hang it up at 66 is just...I don't know. Gutting. It just seems too early to me. He still seems to have so much left in the tank to pull over and park it now.
Maybe that's the world though, or this country. It's become a really rough place to live in, especially over the last 5 years. It's taken a lot out of all of us I think. Maybe that's the straw that finally broke David's back. Only he knows that for sure.
I hope it isn't because that would be a real shame.
Who knows? Maybe he'll be back someday. I would like to think so.
