When did you start becoming interested in tattoos?

I got my first tattoo 40 years ago, a little seahorse on my ankle, at a place called Cliff Raven Studio on Sunset Boulevard in ’77, ’78. That was very outré then—the only people who got tattoos then were bikers, rock ’n’ rollers to a small degree; the gay community was into it. Eventually, though, I took a much more gentrified approach: I waited until I was 60 and got the whole Japanese tuxedo. It took me 300 hours of sitting over two years. But I planned it for the 30 years prior, and it’s my design: kabuki faces, the original showbiz, rendered Edo style—it looks like a woodblock print.

Here—I brought this for you. [Roth presents to me a gift of Japanese water-based dyestuff ink in an elegant glass bottle.] When you look at a tattoo, that’s a finished dream identified. But when you look at a bottle of ink, you think of all the possibilities. You think of all the things you can do with it. [Roth’s manager hands him a beautiful wooden box, which he opens up to reveal various incarnations of quills and nibs and fountain pens.]

Eddie Van Halen looks at me with the same non-understanding stare that a parrot has for a ringing telephone when I start talking about this, but I paint and draw routinely. Routinely. Most recently, I took lessons in Japan—I moved there to get the liberal arts education that I never had. After music school, we went on the road—ta-da!—and I never looked back, but now that I have the time and the wherewithal, I’m always taking lessons of various kinds. I mean, I always loved school; I always got along really well with my teachers. At any given time, I have at least one course of study that I’m involved in. Lately, it’s Go. I have a Go teacher.

Go?

You know, Go—the game [the Chinese strategy game that predates the Zhou dynasty]. I started that five, six years ago, and I’ve had three different instructors—professors. Oh, and it’s called Go training—it’s not lessons.

Are you some kind of grandmaster?

No. I’m just working toward my first thousand hours. That’s a lifetime thing. But when I moved to Japan, I rode my bicycle through the snow to lessons two and three nights a week with a sensei to practice sumi-e and shodo painting with ink. I spent the better part of two years with four shades of gray and two shades of black. I thrilled to it. But let me tell you what I got for the first six months [a long silence fills the room as Roth stands up and paces and stalks around the perimeter of the table]: “No.” After about six months of that [ibid]: “Better.” Not long after that—I was the only one in the room—he sat down, didn’t even look at the painting, and said, “Dave-san, I think you are my best student.” And I said, “Am I best painting?” And he said, “No. You are most serious. You enjoy the most. You really mean it the most. I wish to invite you to director’s meeting.” And I was thinking, Whoa—some national society of whatever the fuck? And he pulls out a bottle and two glasses and says, “Welcome to director’s meeting.” And we got drunk.