Live Entertainment Blog

Wednesday night Van Halen were giving a stunning concert at the Target Center.

A sold-out crowd of the band’s fans of more than fourteen thousand people used their wallets to declare that they did miss the original lineup of the veteran LL metal band that released a half-dozen mostly classic records before booting Roth at the height of the group’s success.

22 years on from that disappointing split, Roth and Eddie Van Halen figured out a way to make it work again.

As some early reports from the band’s tour suggested, David Lee Roth and Van Halen were both trim and grinning, with the latter spending the concert sans shirt, radiating a very healthy glow. David Lee Roth displayed little of the manic athleticism, the one that made him famous.

Much has been made about the decision of Van Halen to replace longtime bassist Michael Anthony with his sixteen-year-old son Wolfgang. However, during live performances the younger Van Halen proved to be a highly competent and charismatic musician.

Anthony was a great fun to watch, but apparently Eddie Van Halen had been trying to oust him as far back as 1998, which can be explained mainly because he remained pals with David Lee Roth’s “permed-and-jumpsuited” replacement, Sammy Hagar.

The absence of Anthony focused more attention on Eddie. It was his seemingly effortless flow of arena-rattling riffs that made the whole night performance. While Eddie Van Halen occasionally cut loose during the Hagar era, the material, which the pair wrote together never got close to replicating the hedonism of David Lee Roth numbers like “Panama“, “Everybody Wants Some,” and “Beautiful Girls.” It was in fact those compositions and another twenty-odd other such nuggets that made up the great 2-hour performance.