Van Halen seems to have this legacy tour thing all figured out. Now that original frontman David Lee Roth has been back on the mike for a few years and Eddie Van Halen's 24-year-old son, Wolfgang, has settled nicely into his bassist role, the four-piece looks and sounds confident and even excited on stage.
The renewed enthusiasm could have to do with the fact that Van Halen is still able to command packed arena crowds, when so many others from its era are relegated to theaters and, gulp, bars. But Roth, Eddie and the boys have plenty of monster hits to carry them -- the kinds of juiced up, power-chord pop-rock anthems passed down through generations. So we weren't surprised to see men, women and children pumping fists and standing up throughout Wednesday night's Van Halen show at Gexa Energy Pavilion.
Even if Roth, Eddie Van Halen and drummer brother Alex Van Halen are all in their early 60s, it was possible to close your eyes during the show and imagine you'd traveled back to 1984. That year found Van Halen at the peak of its MTV-assisted powers, having released the sixth and ultimately best-known crossover album also dubbed 1984. The singles "Jump" and "Panama" were resurrected, of course, to punctuate Wednesday's setlist.
The songs before those mostly came from 1984 and everything before it -- early classic "Runnin With the Devil" was the second pick out of the gate, "Everybody Wants Some" was the first to elicit a singalong, and the speedy staple "Hot for Teacher" reminded us of the namesake guitarist's uncanny abilities.
Inimitable axman Eddie and his bassist son worked from the sides of the stage to serve as Van Halen's crucial foundation, not only playing their instruments with precision but also providing the steady backing vocals and harmonies needed to offset Roth's vocal unpredictability. We're not saying the lead singer's inconsistency was a bad thing -- that and his stage antics constitute his particular charm, in fact.
When Roth couldn't belt out a note the way he used to decades ago (understandable), he just went for a melodramatic bit of vibrato, which worked fine on the big Gexa stage. Mainly the dude gave us someone shiny and bigger-than-life on which to focus while the three Van Halens around him did the musical heavy lifting.
No disrespect to Sammy Hagar, but to us, Van Halen just isn't itself without Roth dancing, kicking and ad-libbing out front. Wednesday night found him in a goofy mood -- he got very creative with scarves and shiny jackets, changing his look as frequently as he could. And when the band slowed down or pulled back, Roth took opportunities to do comedic monologues.
His best bit came during "Dance the Night Away," during which he taught the crowd to do the many dances one would need to learn in order to go as David Lee Roth for Halloween (since it's around the corner).
Holding both arms up to the sky, Roth proclaimed, "This one is called the full Jesus. Nobody does it better than Bono."
Needless to say, the Gexa crowd got more than its money's worth on Wednesday.
