The Dirt Behind The Dirt – David Lee Roth Scene

In Motley Crue’s biopic, The Dirt, there is a scene of David Lee Roth sitting on a couch snorting coke with a lovely lady next to him.

The true story behind this scene began hours earlier. I was in a relationship with a lady named Lonnie. She was 18 or 19 and living at home with her parents (see picture of Lonnie above).

One night I invited her to go with me to a Motley Crue show. I picked her up at her parents house and drove her to the club. Near the end of the show, I like to go backstage to the dressing rooms before the crowds.

To get backstage you need to walk up the stairs to the second floor. On the steps of the stairs are people standing and watching the show so you have to walk up the stairs single file, not side by side.

As we walk up these stairs, I pass this girl standing there. I had met her one afternoon when I visited the Motley House. I found her, Vince and Tommy the only ones there. We all sat at the kitchen table and she was topless with Vince and Tommy sucking on her breasts. I tried to reach over and grab one but she slapped my hand.

Now the trio get up and proceed to the bedroom where I follow. I walk in the room and the girl is bent over with Vince going down on the rear while Tommy was in the front. So there I sat watching this trio have their fun.

Anyway, back to the David Lee Roth scene, as I pass the girl on the stairs she reaches out and slaps my ass (or grabbed my crotch), don’t remember which. She was very outgoing. My girlfriend Lonnie is right behind and sees it and blows her top. She ditches me at the club.

Later that evening, the show is over, the club empties and I can’t seem to find Lonnie. I assume she took taxi home or something. Back then no cell phones so you just can’t call and ask where they are. I head over to the Motley house and as I’m walking up Clark Street, there she is. Lonnie was walking up the street holding hands with Diamond Dave.

The story is true, don’t leave your girlfriend around Motley Crue OR Diamond Dave.

I go into the Motley apartment and Dave is sitting at the kitchen table snorting coke, Lonnie is sitting in his lap. Tommy comes running over, all excited. “David Lee Roth is here dude”. That was the first time David was there.

There were other times Dave dropped by. One other occasion, as related to me from Motley Crue’s roadie Mark Ramirez, David was in the bedroom snorting coke when the closet mirror was about to fall on him but Mark stopped it in time from crashing on Dave and sending the coke flying.

In the movie, it appears they took these two stories of David’s first time visit and the mirror nearly crushing him and put them together in one scene with them on the couch with the mirror crashing down there. They had to use the couch instead of the kitchen table because they needed a reason for the mirror to fall.

In the part where the guy walks up to the table and asks Motley if he can get a line, that’s where Dave would have been sitting. Instead they put the beggar there so they could shove him into Dave on the couch causing mirror to crash.

I left the party early around 3am. I lived about 1 hour away. Half the way home I noticed that Lonnie had left her purse in my car when we went to the club. Hell if I was going to drive back to Hollywood, pay for parking, walk to the house and give her the purse.

Instead I drove to her parents home. Banged on the door till the parents answered and I gave them the purse. When they asked where their daughter was, I told them the line no parents wanted to hear in 1981, “Your daughter ran off with David Lee Roth”.

There you have the dirt behind the new Netflix biopic “The Dirt”. Kudos to casting. The actress playing Dave’s date looks a lot like Lonnie.