In a recent conversation with The Rock Experience With Mike Brunn, Kiss‘s longtime manager Doc McGhee talked about singer David Lee Roth and his absence from the rescheduled U.S. leg of the band’s farewell tour.
Here’s what Doc said in the interview:
“It was just a year and a half later. He had commitments that he had to do. And we just, ‘We get it. You’ve got stuff that you have to do.’ We talked about it eight months ago. And I said, ‘Listen, don’t worry about it, David. If you’ve got things that you have to do, that you wanna do, it’s been a year and a half later, don’t worry about it.’ And he said, ‘Thanks.'”
About Gene Simmon’s comments on Roth, the manager added:
“The press drives me crazy, because they sensationalize every f**king thing you say or do, and they take things out of context to make it more sensational than what it is.
“In no way did Gene or anybody say — would say anything against David Lee Roth. Actually, if you ask Paul Stanley or Gene Simmons, in the ’70s and ’80s, the best front guy in the entire world was David Lee Roth — by far, hands down. [He] blew everybody away.
”There wasn’t anybody that didn’t look up to David Lee Roth and go, ‘Holy f*ck.’ Robert Plant, anybody — I don’t care who it was. That guy [Roth], he was the sh*t. So we have all the respect in the world [for him].
“I loved listening to all the Van Halen stuff [when David was performing it on the 2020 tour]; I really did. I had a good time with it.”