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David Lee Roth Cocaine Anecdote Will Totally Move Copies Of This MTV VJ Memoir
By
Christopher Robbins
Published Apr 21, 2013
Modified Apr 21, 2013
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By
Christopher Robbins
Published Apr 21, 2013
Modified Apr 21, 2013
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The original crew of MTV VJs have finally written a memoir together, and the big reveal seems to be that David Lee Roth did cocaine—with people!
VJ Alan Hunter describes the totally off-the-wall vignette backstage at a major rock & roll concert with his colleague Mark Goodman and David Lee Roth:
I knocked on a door, opened it up, and Mark was in there with David Lee Roth. “Hey, come on in, close the door.”
We partook of the coke and had a grand time. And then people started knocking on the door: a producer or a friend or something. And one by one, they came in and sat in another part of the trailer while the three of us stayed seated, chatting, having a beer, doing another line. Before we knew it, the trailer was packed. No one was sitting with us, because they didn’t know David—we did. And they were all just watching us do blow…People in the TV world, publicists, people we didn’t know. Any of them could have gone out and said, “Man, we’re watching two VJs sit there with David Lee Roth doing blow.” It was like people at orgies watching other people have sex.
Know what would make for a notable, scandal-rich memoir? An account of people at orgies, watching other people have sex. But doing cocaine with the man who would play Cocaine in a movie about cocaine was probably pretty weird.
In case anyone at Simon & Schuster is reading: we once dropped Dramamine with the guys from Guster. Email us for our 30-page proposal.
Oh, and don't forget about the time that Eric Clapton was kind of cranky on an airplane! Martha Quinn describes the encounter as best she can, digging through the fog of all that '80s hedonism:
I’m normally hesitant to approach celebrities out in public, but he was sitting by himself, three feet away from me, looking bored, so I threw caution to the wind: “Oh, are you Eric Clapton?”
He conceded that he was, and I introduced myself. And then, because I couldn’t help myself, and what the hell, I said, “Hey, can I ask you a question? Is it true that you played Dobro on Corey Hart’s album and you’re uncredited?”
“Uhhhhh, yeah.” They had the same manager, or something like that.
I tried to keep the conversation going: “Oh, is it true you didn’t start playing guitar until you were seventeen?” He yelled, “I’m not going to do a fookin’ interview!” And I just shrunk into nothingness. I was completely humiliated. The whole plane flight, I was afraid to get up and go to the bathroom, because I would have had to go past him, and I thought he might jump up and yell at me some more.
Right. Call us when you've crashed the MTV Music Awards.
Tagged
david lee roth
memoirs
memories
mtv
MTV vjs
Music
nostalgia
van halen
Christopher Robbins
Christopher Robbins is a New York City reporter covering transportation, affordable housing, local politics, and criminal justice. His work has also appeared in New York Magazine, The Village Voice and The New York Times. Chris is a graduate of Patrick Henry High School in Roanoke, Virginia, and enjoys biking to Fort Tilden in the summertime.
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