Review: Led by a re-energized Eddie Van Halen and the hammy howling of David Lee Roth, the original VH served up fierce nostalgia at its homecoming show.
By BEN WENER
The Orange County Register

Pardon a bit of nostalgia, but two dozen songs in two hours from Van Halen tends to bring out the gawking 8th grader in me. All it takes is a few seconds of Eddie Van Halen's feverishly tapped arpeggios at the start of "Mean Street" and I'm right back at El Rancho, summer '81, wasting afternoons away with my fellow dweebs, wearing out Columbia House cassettes of VH's "Fair Warning" until David Lee Roth sounds as if he's singing underwater.

Mind you, I wasn't the only one who grew so wistful during the recently inducted Hall of Famers' first major-scale show on home turf in 23 years Tuesday night at Staples Center, the first of five Southern California dates on this once-unimaginable reunion tour. (The band plays Sunday in San Diego, then returns in mid-December for a Staples repeat and two shows at Honda Center in Anaheim.)

At the outset, Roth, donning the first in a multicolored series of ringmaster jackets and oversized top hats, declared himself "revved-up in my get-up with no letup." That wasn't just boasting as usual -- the barrage of blasts from the past came at a relentless pace here. Virtually every classic-rock fixture in the band's catalog (from "Runnin' With the Devil" to "Hot for Teacher") was revived and smartly balanced by a brace of dusted-off gems (from "Romeo Delight" to "Little Guitars") that surely satisfied long-suffering original-VH fans, for whom Sammy Hagar's "Cabo Wabo"-ing presence in this swaggering sex machine of a band remains as sacrilegious now as it did in '85.

But by the 20th tune and his fifth or sixth roundhouse kick -- the dude sure can leap for 53 -- Roth had calmed down enough to give his gape-mouthed carnival-barker shtick a rest and get pensive for a minute. Doodling around a blues figure in anticipation of "Ice Cream Man," he journeyed back to a misbegotten Thursday night in '72, back when the Van Halen brothers were forming their surnamed outfit by playing backyards in Pasadena. ("You know," said the showman, "the suburbs -- where they tear out the trees and name the streets after them.")

Back then, Roth pointed out, "Everyone had a friend named Kenny." Diamond Dave's Kenny used to roll him spliffs, then brush the pot seeds off Pink Floyd LP covers. Mine camped out with me in front of Music Plus at the Orange Mall for the better part of a weekend before tickets went on sale for Van Halen's 1984 Forum shows -- the last local shows the proper lineup played before Roth's buffoonish persona, increasingly at odds with Eddie VH's quest for six-string and studio wizardry, took him away from a group at its commercial peak and into a solo career of steeply diminishing success.

Like so many other lifelong devotees, then, I've waited 23 years for this oft-rumored return to materialize. Was it worth pining for, you wonder? Mostly yes.

It helped that by some stroke of good karma I had ridiculously sick seats, so close I think Roth could tell I was taking notes, and with my boyhood crush (and Eddie's ex) Valerie Bertinelli a head-turn away, singing along to "Panama" and radiating motherly pride over the impressive accomplishment of son Wolfgang. (All of 16, yet clearly infused with his father's virtuosity, the younger Van Halen skillfully assisted his Uncle Alex in anchoring these heavy rockers, often with more fluid finesse than I imagine former bassist Michael Anthony can muster these days.)

Given that vantage point, it would have been difficult for this already well-reviewed hype to come up short. Not that Roth kept from undoing things. It's funny: When Van Hagar played the Pond three years ago, Sammy was up to snuff but Eddie was haggard and huffy; now, physically robust after a stint in rehab earlier this year, the smiling boyishness having returned to his 52-year-old mug, Eddie is in superb form -- but Dave is, well, if not haggard then definitely huffy.

He's simply not up to the task of carrying such a long haul of hits, songs that decades ago could push him to his vocal limits and which he hasn't the stamina for now, much less the capability to conjure the outrageous screeching howls of yore. Instead, after the first half-dozen tunes, Roth -- whose sense of tempo is, to put it kindly, loose -- resorted to fragmentation that emphasized choruses and his patented wailing yet left key verses drastically clipped.

He rarely responded with a hearty "I want some too!" whenever Eddie and Wolfgang would holler the title of "Everybody Wants Some!!" Nor did he fill in many of the intentional gaps in "So This Is Love?" or "Unchained," though he was never so off that any song was unrecognizable. Strangely enough, he seemed to coast through the final third of the set as if just gaining a second wind, coming across especially strong on "I'll Wait" and "Jamie's Cryin'."

Granted, it didn't hurt to have thousands of fans (including teenagers who weren't alive the first time 'round) chanting every word of every song and covering up Roth's fumbled phrases, anymore than it was harmful to have Eddie and Wolfie's backing vocals sweetened by tapes, presumably of Anthony's considerably high harmonies. (Note, too, how the barbershop-quartet bit from "I'm the One" was excised.) Call that impure if you wish, but with such a scattershot frontman, such behind-the-scenes bolstering was welcome.

Whatever persistently hammy Roth lacked, however, the rest of the band compensated for with power and precision. Where Alex was so slack as to seem bored during the 2004 reunion, here he hammered away with the fleet force of a stickman half his age, motoring the atomic punk of "I'm the One" and "Hot for Teacher" unerringly and thundering through "And the Cradle Will Rock ..." and "Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love."

Eddie's recovery, however, is a marvel that extends well beyond his toned physique. His playing here -- lightning-fast yet never mushy, still teeming with new tricks -- was a stunning reminder of his largely unparalleled expertise, his stormy sonic squalls surpassed only by what few greater giants of the instrument (Hendrix, Zappa) there are. His spotlight turn, a composite of his most famous solos (from "Eruption," "Cathedral," "Women in Love" and more), was at times positively mesmerizing. All these years later, you still watch the guy astonished at how effortlessly such complex fretwork comes to him.

To see him doing split kicks and tearing up so many monster riffs on his custom-made striped Charvel after such a long, rocky period out of the limelight was not just nostalgic but heartening -- and, I suspect, well worth the admission price to many attendees. That Van Halen served up a generous, few-frills set in which the quartet played nearly all of its 1978 debut while touching on almost all of the high points from every record that followed undoubtedly added value.

Where it all goes from here, well, that really doesn't matter. There's talk of a new album next year, and there's reason to think such an endeavor wouldn't be lame. Yet let us not forget that it was only a year ago that Eddie was calling Roth "Cubic Zirconia" and "a loose cannon." (Hagar? "The little red worm.") Eddie seems like a changed man, and this outing (with Bob Marley's son Ky-Mani capably warming up with racked-up reggae) is obviously re-energizing.

But I'd almost rather it all flame out once more. Keeps things in character -- and makes these shows that much more special.

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