My Summer In The ‘80s, Part 3—

Right Now The Real Van Halen Is Standing Up To The Test Of Time

By John Voket

No matter what sized venue, from the wide open spaces of Giants Stadium to the intimate confines of Toad’s Place, an audience knows when an artist or band is having a good time. And when the act is having a good time, even the most casual attendee can’t help but have a rollicking experience.

It’s even more fun when an act is so tight, and so talented, that they seem to be flying by the seats of their pants from the minute the house lights go out until the crowd starts shuffling back towards the parking lots hours later. It may even leave one wondering whether or not their level of talent gives them the juice to make it look so easy, or are they so intimately entangled as a unit, that they throw all cares to the wind and trust that no matter what they do the show will be a blast.

I guess if you’ve gotten this far, you can tell the recent Van Halen reunion show at the Hartford Civic Center left me more in awe of a group of musicians than I was before those house lights went down on the evening of June 28.

It was a Monday and the group was coming into Hartford following a rare night off, so I was expecting a real fan appreciation night.

But to say the group, fronted by singer/guitarist Sammy Hagar and rounded out by the band’s founding members, brothers Eddie and Alex Van Halen and bassist Michael Anthony, was having a good time is an understatement. From my vantage point about 30 feet from the stage, the non-stop, ear-to-ear smiles on everyone’s faces told the whole tale.

For those who are not up on the roller coaster ride that encompasses the history of Van Halen, I’ll discuss:

The foursome came screaming out of southern California in 1978 with a hard driving but uniquely melodic sound balanced precariously on the in-your-face self confidence of vocalist David Lee Roth, and the trend-setting guitar wizardry of Eddie Van Halen.

As the group racked up a track record including six monster selling albums with Roth, they also developed a reputation as a hard partying, ego-fueled entity with the bombastic presence and personality of Roth and easygoing, show stealing talents of Eddie Van Halen threatening to tear each performance right down the middle.

When the split finally came, no one including Roth, Anthony and the Van Halens were surprised or disappointed. If the group never performed again, all parties involved could probably find a way to live very comfortably on the fortunes of their short-lived relationship.

But it wasn’t a dwindling number of dump trucks full of money driving up to Eddie Van Halen’s home in the Hollywood Hills that inspired a metamorphosis in the band. It was the introduction of Sammy Hagar into the mix.

The substitution of an all too much bark Roth with the laid back but viciously professional Hagar was not unlike finding a second goose that produced golden eggs – or albums as it were.

Dubbed “Van Hagar” by a legion of Roth devotees who resented the sell-out tactics employed to reinvent Van Halen with Hagar as newfound frontman, the band went on to enjoy a ten-fold greater margin of commercial and financial success than they ever knew while Roth was prancing around sucking the energy out of every room his oversized head managed to fit into.

And everybody was happy. Van Halen enjoyed a string of five top-selling albums, and Roth went on to a moderately successful solo career – which coincidentally saw him sharing a co-headlining tour with Hagar some years later – but that’s a horror story for another day.

As was foreshadowed, even Hagar eventually fell out of grace with the brothers Van Halen and departed the partnership in 1995. The band briefly reunited with Roth for a couple of new singles and a greatest hits package in 1996, a move that had many in the music industry holding their breath for a bona fide reunion tour with Roth.

But it was not meant to be. Roth continued on his solo path while Van Halen tried and failed in an attempt to direct lightning to strike thrice. Their one album and tour with former Extreme singer, Gary Charone, was by most accounts a sorry and misdirected effort.

In the ensuing years, all the cast members of Van Halen survived skimming along the surface of the mainstream radar. Hagar and Roth went back to fronting their own bands, and Hagar showed up with several successful singles while also finding business success with his own tequila company.

While Alex Van Halen and Anthony basically went about their business waiting in the wings for whatever was to develop, Eddie Van Halen’s name kept popping up. There were marital stresses with wife Valerie Bertanelli that became tabloid fodder, and an experience with cancer.

Eventually the band got itchy to make another go of it. In late 2003, a rejuvenated Van Halen announced a summer tour with Hagar out (or in) again as frontman.

As the tour rolled out, reports were extremely favorable. And by the time they got to Hartford 11 shows into the trip, the group had apparently hit their stride.

From the moment Hagar, Anthony and the brothers Alex and Eddie hit the stage, it was obvious this was the configuration of Van Halen that was meant to be. From the first few chords of “Jump” to the closing strains of closer “When it’s Love,” the concert was a fan’s dream come true – even if you were a die-hard Roth fan coming in to see if Hagar’s vocals had withstood the test of time.

The majority of material in between was a decent representation of the entire band history, with the inclusion of former Roth-backed tunes “Somebody Get Me A Doctor,” “Ain’t Talkin’ ‘bout Love,” the Kinks’ cover of “You Really Got Me” (from Roth’s first Van Halen album), and “Panama” (from his last).

To his credit, Hagar kept the vocal stylings on these numbers close to the original representation. It was during the rest of the set that he really excelled.

Hagar was the ultimate frontman, high-fiving fans, signing autographs on many hats, shirts, pictures and posters that were offered up, all while providing a seemingly effortless delivery of vocals that were as honed as ever.

No one missed the lack of material from Gary Charone’s tenure, but Hagar’s influences were well represented on numbers including “Runaround,” “Humans Being,” “Poundcake,” “Top of the World,” “Balance,” “Best of Both Worlds,” “Dreams,” and several others.

When it comes to reliving the ‘80s during the Summer of 2004, Van Halen certainly helped reconfirm that many of the acts that galvanized our attention during those MTV years still have plenty to offer today. And while I’ll give David Lee Roth his due for positioning Van Halen as one of the most innovative rock bands coming out of the ‘70s, it was the musical collaboration and chemistry that Sammy Hagar brought to the band during the ‘80s that helped the group endure to this day.

If you happened to have missed the smattering of Van Halen shows in the Northeast earlier this summer, you’ve got one more chance to see them on September 3 when they come back east for a show in Atlantic City, NJ. Otherwise, we fans can only hope this outing will inspire a new studio album and more tours to follow.