F*CK YOU, DLR!
I’m reading David Lee Roth’s book called “Crazy from the Heat.”
It’s a collection of like a hundred vignettes, stitched together to try and create something like an autobiography. Or at least as much of an autobiography as you can write/publish in 1997, while still living in 2023.
It’s a collection of memories on a hundred different topics, like starting a massive band, getting cheating through the business side of the music business, the fragility of a pyramid that shatters from the top, petty jealousy, girls, drugs, the whole gambit. Worth an entertaining read. I’m over 50, so I don’t see any sour invective toward anybody, though many folks who bought it when it came out (copyright 1997), could certainly infer the invective that wasn’t really there.
Anyway, in one of his stories, he’s describing his interactions with the vestiges of Van Halen, post-1985 breakup. The underlying message of the story is that the break-up happened because some folks had other things they felt like they wanted to do (all of them had things they wanted to do), and some others of them were annoyed / envious / jealous of the things that the one group of others got done, because they hadn’t waited for the original others to be done with their own stuff, first. [<- I may have oversimplified that summary…]
On page 238 (paperback edition, Ebury Press; UK edition) at the very top. He says.,”So at worst, I’m sad that I have to deal with their whining. But you’re only as big as what aggravates you.” (added emphasis mine)
The second half of that sentence really punched me in the eyeball. “You’re only as big as what aggravates you.” And, you know, that’s so true. It’s so applicable to my own situation.
I gotta say, “Fuck you Dave for telling me the truth about myself. Message received, motherf&!#ker.”
[This video and song were mentioned in the story, so it seemed useful to include a link to it here]