If you have a higher reason ... than just to make money... it will bring you longer fulfillment. And it won't feel like work.
I always liked a good love song and I dig being in love.
I was really wanting to be a rock star. I was saying, "I am going to have a fancy car, I got to have fancy clothes, and I have got to play the whole role." Obviously, I meant business.
We always sold 4 or 5 million records no matter what we did.
Yeah, yeah, I've been Beatled, I've been Rolling Stoned.
All he cares about is going out there with his Jack Daniels bottle. Nothing has changed. That's kind of sad. If David was doing better than he used to be, then that would be different. But it was a joke and he made it that way.
That song ["Don't Tell Me"] didn't take us anywhere, and I know why now. It wasn't what Van Halen fans wanted. It showed the darkness of Van Halen, and basically the end of the band.
I was going through troubles with my marriage, and I was just trying to focus and center myself. I was already rich and famous. I've got to figure out where I want to go and just get this thing aimed. I wrote this song ["Right Now"] and I kept singing it every day .
I had written lyrics to a song called The Silent Extreme, which Alex later renamed Humans Being.
I'd say it ["I Can't Drive 55"] has probably been the most successful song I've ever been involved with, including any Van Halen songs.
Overall, we had about 50 meetings where the brothers would say that I couldn't do any solo records, I couldn't write for other people, I couldn't do this and I couldn't do that. These guys were trying to nail my feet to the ground.
Those are the magical songwriting moments, when you have a partner that clicks like that. That's a dream come true, man.
The good thing about breaking up is that you have nothing else to lose.
I'm still raising kids myself, so I don't feel like a grandpa.
I feel it's such a tragic thing [Kurt Cobain's suicide]. Here is a guy, a young guy, that had everything in his hands. He could have had a great life. He had a wife, he had a child, he had a fantastic career. He was important to a generation. And for him to do that - I didn't like that. I thought that was just wrong.
I've never met or spoken to David Lee Roth, yet it's rather ironic that even he's saying Eddie's lying about things. I'm saying he's not telling the truth, yet Eddie insists that the two of us are lying! You be the judge.
Sometimes you're afraid to fall in love with a chick, but she sucks you in anyway.
If you don't ever stop singing, your voice stays in shape. It's like the marathon runner. You've got to run, run, run to stay in shape.
Everything that Eddie has said about me is the total opposite of what really happened. Eddie says I wanted to be a solo artist. No, Eddie wanted to be a solo artist.
I'm a songwriter. I've got ideas in the closet that just didn't work out with my band, that I think, "This is a great idea, it's just the wrong guys."
Ruth Montgomery had a book I was reading called Aliens Among Us. She was an automatic writer. She used to go into a trance, and she would just start typing information, and then she would come out of her trance and read it and go, "Wow," and that was just the way she wrote her books.
"Love Walks In," it was the same thing. That song is about aliens, by the way.
I'm a co-writer, publisher of that song ["Right Now" ], so for it to get accepted, we had to sign off on it. I signed off in a second. "You bet that anyone can use this. I don't care. You can use it for anything." If it is to inspire people in the positive sense.
And for him [Kurt Cobain] to do that [suicide] - I didn't like that. I thought that was just wrong. It just sent a bad message to a troubled generation.
I wish I would have known Kurt Cobain. I would have been the first guy there to get him help, doing anything I could have. I just felt like the people around him kind of let him down.
