“This is my first interview in nearly 10 years,” David Lee Roth said one recent morning.

The Van Halen frontman’s trademark mane has been shorn to a bleach-blond crop, but neither time nor the long interval between interviews has mellowed Roth much. He shoulder-shimmied in the middle of Harry Cipriani and, in short order, suggested shots of Patron.

Specifically, Roth had come to talk about his newly introduced skin care line, called Ink the Original, which was created for people with tattoos. He came up with the idea himself, he said — a passion project born of his dissatisfaction with the options in the marketplace.

Roth worked with labs on various formulations to develop the products that make up the Ink line: an SPF stick ($28); an SPF spray ($24 and up); and a tattoo-brightening balm with vitamin C ($40). Moreover, he obsessed over the utilitarian packaging and clear satin finish.

He also showed a surprisingly practical side. “If you use something with an oil base, it’s going to reflect back in your eyes,” he said, noting that a person with a tattoo wants to show off their ink, not blind viewers with oily sunscreen.

The side grips on the packaging? So you can easily pull out the SPF stick and use it when you’re rock-climbing, another Roth pastime.

Roth has tattoos all over. While living in Japan in 2013 and 2014, he became thoroughly engrossed in the culture. He took daily language lessons and spent almost 300 hours getting tattooed with Kabuki masks and traditional Japanese artwork. Tattoos cover his chest, upper arms and his entire back.

“I don’t want to tell you how much I spent on my tattoos at $300 an hour,” he said. (At those prices, assuming no bulk discounts, the damage would have been close to $90,000.) His products must safeguard his investment. They are, he said, “designed to protect a Rembrandt, really.”

Roth would prefer to distance himself from “cheesy” celebrity lines, he said. To that end, he is adding tattoo-­world cred to the brand through Ami James, a “Miami Ink” tattoo artist who has signed on as Ink’s brand architect.

“The product has to be right,” said James, who is also the founder of ­Tattoodo, an online tattoo directory with 2.2 million followers on Instagram. “It has to be nourishing to the skin, safe for the environment and dry clear.”

© 2019 The New York Times Company