NYC- David Lee Roth proved in his morning-radio debut yesterday on the new WFNY (92.3 FM) that, if necessary, he can talk for four hours.
We never doubted that, of course, and as skills go, it's not a bad start toward becoming a successful radio host.
Nor does it hurt that Roth sells the "Diamond Dave" sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll persona as smoothly as Van Halen fans break into air-guitar solos.
But as with many first dates, Roth's opening show in Howard Stern's old time and place didn't immediately find its rhythm.
Diamond Dave reported that in the '70s, "I slept with any girl who had two legs in her pants - and one who was an amputee."
But when a caller asked who he was dating now, Roth told him, "My love life is not part of the public spotlight, because [a relationship] always changes when the spotlight hits it.
"That's why Nick [Lachey] and Jessica [Simpson] never had a chance. It changes your behavior when someone's always watching. You never have an opportunity to become intimate."
It will be interesting to see if listeners will be satisfied with one-liners about Diamond Dave's conquests while David Lee Roth's life stays off-limits.
He was nipped a few times by operational glitches that should work out. There were dropped and missing phone calls. At least two other people in the studio, including "Animal," were heard but never really introduced.
Roth also forgot that New York and L.A. are in different time zones, and when he said the first record he ever played was Ray Charles' "Crying Time," most listeners probably expected to hear a few bars. They didn't.
What they did hear was an hour with his uncle Manny Roth, longtime proprietor of the Cafe Wha? in the Village. Manny's stories about flying bombers in World War II and thinking the young Bob Dylan was a musical stiff were entertaining, though you wondered if they had maximum appeal to the under-30 males Free-FM hopes to attract.
Roth's best monologue came after he suggested that to some listeners, "freedom" on the radio means being able to curse.
He called that attitude "retard nonsense" and suggested the real problem with popular culture today is that its content is limited by what nervous parents think 12-year-olds should hear.
"I'm tired of having to behave as if we are all 12 because parents don't have the capacity to explain things" to their own kids, he said.
His guideline, he said, would be, "Do whatever you want, do it three times, but don't do it in the street and scare my horses."
David Lee Roth didn't scare anyone's horses yesterday. But he's just started the hard work of filling the corral.
