“Yeah… screw painting cars. This is what I’m going to do for a living.”

He was broke. He was burnt out. And he was about to open a body shop.

Then Jerry Harvey saw Van Halen on the 1984 tour — and it felt like the circus had come to town.

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Moments later, he found himself sitting next to David Lee Roth at a bar in St. Louis. They didn’t talk about music. They talked about martial arts, stretching to Huey Lewis, and how strange the universe can be.

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That night, Jerry made a decision: he was going back to LA. One last try.

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He had no idea what would follow.

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Full Video Transcript below:

‍_{Jerry Harvey: "I was teaching karate at a place called Tracy's Karate in South St. Louis. And this guy came in, I was about 18, maybe 17, and uh, his name was Roger Moore and the name of his band was actually the agents, you know, imagine that.Right?}

_{And he was 30 years old and he couldn't touch his toes. I was like, dude, you're past, you're past prime. You're not gonna be able to pull this off, you know? But, so I was his instructor for a while, and one night he says, Hey, you know, I've got this band. I need somebody to help me load in the, uh, load in the equipment. You think if I talk to your mom, she'll let you come out?}

_{I said, I said, we're gonna be in a bar, and there's gonna be women there. Like, yeah, I'm in. So my mom signed off, let me go. And uh, I started up as a light guy and uh, then the sound guy quit, and I, uh, ended up being the sound guy. And yeah, it was, it was not good in the beginning.}

_{It was, uh, I was definitely not qualified to even run a four channel soundboard.}

_{It was the weirdest thing. The first time I went to LA I worked for Carmine Appice, and, uh, it was a guy named Andre McDougall. He passed, unfortunately. But, uh, he was the drum tech for Carmine Appice.}

_{And I left the Carmine tour because I was starving to death, right? It was like $50 a week. And it was like, you know, it was like, this isn't my life.}

_{I did two things in my youth, painted cars and mixed sound. That was all I knew how to do.}

_{So I'd kind of almost given up on the, the dream of like being a touring sound engineer. I was gonna just open a body shop. And then I remember going to see, um, the Van Hallen 1984 tour at the arena. They played two nights.}

_{And, uh, so I went the first night I remember sitting out in the audience and it was like the frigging circus had come to town.}

_{Like there was these at the front of house, you know, guy's named Pate Angelus, I know him now.}

_{I didn't know who he was, but you know, the place is, is packed. And all of a sudden there are these, these two risers at the front of house, and these two girls jump up on the risers and they start taking their clothes off.}

_{They got spotlights on 'em, and just about the time they're taking their clothes off the house, lights go down and boom, this huge rock show just fires up with all these frigging park cans. It was like, you know, it was like larger in the life, just, you know.}

_{And, uh, it was at that moment I'm like, yeah, screw painting cars. This is what I'm gonna do for a living. This looked like a lot more fun.}

_{So that night it was really strange. Um, go down to a place, uh,}

_{called Bogart's on the Landing, CLE landing in St. Louis. Sitting down at the bar, I hear a little bit of commotion and I looked to my left and Dave Lee Roth sits right down next to me.}

_{I was like, Hey dude, what's going on?}

_{He goes, oh, not much, man. How you doing? I go, good. And so we start talking, not about music
or anything — but about martial arts.}

_{And uh, I go, dude, how do you get so flexible? He goes, he goes, well, he goes, he goes, I smoke a joint and I put on a Huey Lewis, uh, I put on a Huey Lewis record, and I, I just stretch until the record's over.}

_{I was like, really? So that was like, so we talked for about 30 minutes and he got up, kind of just went off.}

_{And I was like, wow. I think that was kind of a sign. So that's when I decided I was gonna move back to Los Angeles and try to be an audio engineer, right?}

_{Gentleman named Patrick Whitley was a production manager, uh, for Dave. He goes, what do you do?}

_{I go, um, I go, I'm a, I'm a sound engineer. He goes, well, I have sound engineers. He goes, but I need a bass tech. You know, 'cause Matt Bissonette had just come into the band.}

_{He goes, uh, can you tune a bass guitar?}

_{I was like, absolutely. I can tune a bass guitar.}

_{I had no clue on how to tune a bass guitar. But I had learned by the weekend.}

_{And then, uh, he goes, show up at, um, Perkins Palace in, uh, Pasadena. We're gonna start rehearsal.}

_{So I showed up and, and, uh, I was on work for Dave from 86 87 from then on.}

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