David Lee Roth Was Happy To Cancel His Shows For A Controversial Reason, Steve Vai Recalls

Steve Vai says David Lee Roth used to be okay with canceling shows for more publicity.

The guitarist told Paltrocast with Darren Paltrowitz about what happened right before the gig:

“There was a curtain on the stage and I was standing behind the curtain and I was about to hit the cords, the opening cord to ‘Yankee Rose’ and I was ready. When I was about to hit it, to have the curtain open and to start it, the guy comes to me and he says, ‘You can’t play. The fire marshal is here. There’s too many people and you’ll get in trouble and they’ll find you.'”

Steve Was Eager To Play Despite The Fine

Vai shared his response to the official:

“I said, ‘Well, I’m playing,’ and he goes, ‘You’re gonna get fined.’ I said, ‘I’ll pay the fine. How much is it?’ He goes away and he comes back it’s $5,000. So I thought, ‘All right, that’s worth it.’ I’m about to hit. He goes, ‘No, but then you’ll go to jail and the club owner will go to jail and they’ll close the place.’ I just never hit the cord and it was funny because I went back and I told Dave, ‘It’s not happening.'”

The Cancellation Didn’t Bother Roth

But DLR was happy with the cancellation as he told the musician:

“He goes, ‘Perfect. Now we’ll get more press out of this than if we played.’ And he was absolutely correct because it was on the front page of newspapers. It went around the world and that was much better than bad clips from iPhones on the internet. So it worked really good.”

Vai was one of the members of Roth’s supergroup that he formed after leaving Van Halen. Still, the guitarist decided to leave after the tour for their second album, ‘Skyscraper.’ This canceled show was actually a reunion they planned for the 30th anniversary, but it got canceled for safety reasons by fire marshals.

You can watch the rest of Vai’s interview below.