Diver Down was one of the first rock albums I ever owned. “Mean Street” was the first guitar solo to blow me away. “Hot for Teacher” was the best video ever made (at least from the perspective of a 13 year old male, but it’s not too shabby at 37 either). I loved Van Halen and then David Lee Roth left. Enter Sammy Hagar and you know the rest of the story. Even though I bought 5150 and OU812, Van Halen was dead to me.

Other than Led Zeppelin, there is not a band on earth that I have wanted to see reunite more than Van Halen with their original front man, Diamond David Lee Roth. After two postponements earlier this year, the show finally went on last Friday, May 2nd at the John Paul Jones Arena in Charlottesville. My expectations were low, very low. The postponements left me with a sour taste, but not sour enough to miss this event.

Show time was 8:00. We rolled in about 8:45 without tickets. There were plenty available at the box office and after dropping serious coin to see The Boss on Wednesday, I was not going to pay top dollar for Van Halen. Instead the plan was to buy from a scalper and sneak down to a better section if necessary. We did just that. A pair of $35 tickets in the upper tier were used to get us in the door, but we ended up watching the show about 25 rows from the stage. The arena was about 3/4 full, which was more than I expected given the size of Charlottesville, the high ticket price, and the postponements.

We missed “You Really Got Me” as the beer garden called once we made it in the door, but were settled into our seats one song later for “Runnin With the Devil”. The volume was cranked up to 11 all night long. Since we sat on the side of the stage, it wasn’t as crystal clear as the Springsteen show the other night and you’ll hear that on the video we captured.

The night was filled with nostalgia, cheese, comedy, and kick ass rock and roll. Diamond Dave is all cheese, but he still can sing. His leg kicks aren’t as high, but he has some 6 pack abs. Not bad for a 54 year old rocker. He told a couple stories, the first was about an ex-girlfriend who lives in Staunton. Unfortunately, the story sucked and to add injury to insult, Dave butchered the pronunciation of Staunton. If you are going to go local, then make sure you know how to speak like the locals. He redeemed himself with the second story of the night as he recalled memories of Saturday nights in Pasadena during 1972 (see “Ice Cream Man” video below).


Ice Cream Man - Van Halen from The Butter Room on Vimeo.

Dave’s antics at the end of “Mean Street” and beginning of “Jump” were just plain stupid, but you expect to take the good with the bad from the original Van Halen front man. He walked around the stage pretending to aim a gun while wearing white sunglasses at the end of “Mean Street” and then wore some revolutionary style hat while waving a large red flag at the beginning of “Jump”. Fortunately, he finished the song on a much better note by wearing his classic sea captain hat while riding an inflatable microphone (video below).


“Jump” - Van Halen from The Butter Room on Vimeo.

The crowd, at least where I sat, was eating it up. We sat right below a luxury box and it was not your typical suite stuffed with corporate types. There was one twenty something male wearing a black headband and an old school VH tee-shirt that had a nice rip at the arm pit. He was doing his best Eddie Van Halen impersonation on a bottle of Budweiser, leaning over the railing and head banging like nobody’s business. As you would expect, males outnumbered females 10 to 1, but the crowd was much younger than I would have guessed. It was good to see a younger generation taking in one of the classics of rock and roll.

While the cheese and people watching were worth the price of admission alone, it was expected. What I didn’t expect was Van Halen to put on an over the top performance. Highlights from the night included “Beautiful Girls”, “Dance the Night Away”, “Everybody Wants Some”, “Jamie’s Cryin’”, “Hot for Teacher” and “Panama”. But the best segment of the night was Eddie’s guitar solo, which featured “Eruption” (of course), followed by “Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love”. Eddie was on all night long. There was no signs of fatigue, frustration, or carelessness. He was having a great time and so were the rest of the band members. While it was weird seeing another bass player other than Micheal Anthony, I got used to Wolfgang rather quickly. He filled in rather nicely on the bass and was a great addition to the background vocals. The band got better and better as the night went on and they rarely strayed from the original versions, which was one of my biggest complaints of The Police tour. “Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love” was a perfect set closer as the band sounded best on those songs with strong background vocals. The crowd helped out with the vocals at the end of the song, which was the most energized point of the show.

I had forgotten how great of a rock and roll band Van Halen was in the late 70s and early 80s. They took the torch from Zeppelin as the best hard rock band of their era, and their performance on Friday night showed they still have enough to light the flame (sorry for the cheezy ending, but I figured I would do it in the spirit of Diamond Dave).

More videos from Friday:


So This Is Love? - Van Halen from The Butter Room on Vimeo.


Beautiful Girls - Van Halen from The Butter Room on Vimeo.