It's an image I can't get out of my head. I see it night and day. In my sleep. During work. Doing my daughter's homework.... I see it, Dave's Botox'd face. Homeboy cannot stop smiling. He looks like Nicholson's Joker from Batman. It's creepy almost. I relived another part of my youth last night - attending Van Halen's 3rd show of their reunion tour. As Dave put it "We're 3 parts original and 1 part inevitable". Indeed. If you knew me between the ages 13-18, I was a hardcore Van Halen fan. Heard my first cuts on vinyl in my basement playing ping-pong with cousin Boomer after he bought Fair Warning. I was hooked. I put the brakes on my Kiss collection and started buying VH. By the way, that stereo we listened on? My dad took another turn-table apart and build a new cabinet for it and individual cabinets for the speakers......and yes, it had a quarter taped to the arm to weigh down the needle. Now where was I.....oh yes....my foray into VH.... I couldn't believe it when Dave left. I was shocked. I loved his first solo album and the work by Steve Vai, but I also liked 5150 by Van Hagar. However - after the feuding, bad song writing that came later and childishness, I decided to stop buying anything new and I returned to only listening to the original 6 LPs. I've been waiting for this concert since I was in college. Last night was like a dream....except Dave doesn't look like this anymore....
Every note wasn't perfect, but he was more than capable. If I have one complaint about Dave last night, it was that in some places he was too "schticky". He can't stop smiling and he doesn't prowl the stage anymore. He sings a line seriously and when you look up - he's just smiling away like he's so damn happy he just can't stand it. It was amusing. He did kick ass at the end when he performed some martial arts moves with a flag pole after waving it leading into the encore. Dave is still in fine shape but for whatever reason, instead of seeing the Rock God of the late 70's before me, I kept seeing Fraser Crane. Ed - Ed is a totally different story. Cancer free and supposedly off booze - he looks like the crypt keeper these days. He can flat out play his ass off, but he doesn't have an ass to give away. If I had a son, I would show him what 30 years of hard partying and living does to you. Witness. Yup, that's him. From where I was sitting (and I had fantastic seats, 4th row floor risers) you could trick yourself into thinking Ed looked the same....until the Jumbo Screen put up the close ups.
I could still see the very characteristic facial features and smile - but they're hidden under some deep ass wrinkles. His playing is still phenomenal. Other-worldly. Sick. Crazy. At times he willed sounds out of his instrument. With Wolfie on bass and Alex on drums, I was rattled in my seat for songs like "Hot For Teacher" and "Aint Talking 'Bout Love". They played 25 hits. I could have done without two of them. I would have gladly traded "I'll Wait" for any number of songs from 1984. Forced to choose I would have replaced it with "Drop Dead Legs" or "House of Pain". I think I may have yanked "Jamie's Crying" as well. I really missed "Take Your Whiskey Home" and would have loved to heard it instead. On that note, maybe "Jump!" wasn't the best encore song either. To really hardcore VH fans, 1984 is probably their least favorite studio album with DLR on vocals. I think "Everybody Wants Some" should have ended the show as it r-o-c-k-e-d as well. Not sure I can name my favorite song from the night, but again, if forced, I'd say "Unchained" which has always been a favorite of mine. My first garage band "Meltdown" played "Unchained" with Slick Rio not missing a note on the picker, but for whatever reason (youth?) we could never seem to all hit the syncopated beats in the chorus at the same time. I'll never forget that our guitar hero, Rio, wrote the lyrics out incorrectly to this song before we practiced it (no Google in 1987) and we gave him a lot of shit because of it. I remember what he wrote to this day. Instead of "blue eyed murder in a size five dress" he translated "blue eyed murder on a sci fi trail". Those were the days, man. Dave tells a story about growing up with the VH brothers and practicing in bands while strumming blues chords then leading into "Ice Cream Man". He says "I remember it just like it was yesterday and it was September 1972" and the place went crazy. Well, I remember those practices as 4 young guys who loved their rock heroes and worshiped at their feet every chance they had to get together and lay it down. Last night I was the kid again with pictures in his bedroom of Van Halen, KISS, Rush, Judas Priest, Motley Crue, Iron Maiden, Ozzy, AC/DC and many more. Now that I've seen Van Halen live, I've seen all my favorites at least once and that includes Page/Plant tour in the mid 90's doing mostly Zeppelin material. Not quite sure who I'll target next. Oh yeah, here's Eddie 2007
....and that's the BEST picture I could find. I'm sure I'm forgetting some stuff so I'll do more tomorrow on the concert. My boys and I had an All Van Halen day today at work as I played every song from the studio Roth albums in order to the folks in the test lab. I also suggest reading "Crazy From The Heat",Dave's autobiography. It will need some updating, but it's very informative. Borrowed that from Pat Phin who text messaged me last night in the middle of the concert to tell me how "kick ass" it was. Yes, it was. Have you seen Wolfie's grades?
