I like the Quireboys, sure, but with Dave Lee Roth, you're really springing onto a different level: I mean, we're talking megastar. On the other hand, there's a lurking nervousness: will he have any hair left at all? Will he still be cool? Are his band going to be anyone we've ever heard of, or will it be a bunch of Kens? These things spread concern and anxiety.
So the band, sans Dave, come on, and — good start — they look the part: really long hair, proper rock star poses and an initial splurge of widdling guitar soloing noise, like that really pretentious and overblown beginning to Deep Purple's In Rock. Then on leaps Dave. He's got shortish (collar-length) hair, and a bit of a David Soul look, but, hey, he's wearing a sequinned leather jacket and sequinned leather trousers. Cool, he's made the effort. They start off with 'Hot for Teacher', which is very rude and very funny, and definitely gets the crowd smiling. Then we plunge headlong into a set which is notably heavy on Van Halen I, 1984 and Skyscraper: "Just like livin' in Paradise", "Runnin' with the Devil" and "Atomic Punk" all follow in fairly quick succession. Any worries I may have had about the band are dispelled in no time at all. I'm particularly impressed with the guy on lead, Brian Young (no relation, one presumes to Angus and Malcolm ...): he is trying to step into the shoes — or, I suppose, finger the fretwork — of both Eddie Van Halen and Steve Vai, so would be entitled to be perhaps a tad intimidated. But he's great, not just playing the solos like they are on the records, but really putting his own style and imprint on them.
Mind you, almost inevitably, the ghost of a certain well-known American guitarist with an almost equally well-known quarrel with David Lee Roth is hanging about the place. Mr Young at one point actually starts in on something that sounds dangerously like "Eruption", Eddie Van H's tademark thousand-notes-a-minute solo guitar piece from the first Van Halen album. This is lèse-majesté in no uncertain fashion, and he stops after a few screaming bars, although not before doing a bit of the two-hands-on-the-frets thing which Eddie first popularised way back when when the world was new. We get the joke, especially when the point is underlined by immediately playing "You really got me", which follows "Eruption" on VH1.
Actually, though, what makes this show is Dave himself. He is smiling and happy and bouncy and having a marvellous time, chatting up the girls in the front row, throwing one-liners around with utter abandon, and just generally being the consummate cheerful rock frontman we've paid to see. Not only was he right at the front of the queue when they were handing out charisma, but he had an extra large slice and came back for seconds. And thirds. I've never seen one man flirting so entirely successfully with four thousand people simultaneously. He has charm and good humour and wit the way that Thom Yorke has misery and ugliness or Shane MacGowan has bad teeth, and before too long we're doing the equivalent of rolling on our backs and waiting for our tummies to be tickled.
Of course, it's not all fabulous: there are points where we wander far too far in the direction of free-form jazz funk for anyone's liking, and I'm also really not at all sure that the bass solo needed to go on for quite that long, but then Dave comes back and does a blistering "Panama", which more than made up for all of it. And thank goodness he wasn't just constrained by boring old hard rock and gave free range to his showman side too: "California Girls" and "Just a gigolo/I ain't got nobody" were extremely welcome. And he keeps up with the chat, making sure that we're having a good time and keeping us happy. One-handed, and without our realising it's going on until it's far far too late, he undoes our collective bra-strap, and helps us off (so kindly) with our top. But, hey, that's cool, he's a nice guy, and what the hell, it was going to happen some time!
In the encore we get "Ice Cream Man"', one of the most wonderfully lecherous songs I know, and "Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love", and then finally, inevitably, "Jump". The crowd, which has been descending into the land of the stupidly grinning for some while now, of course just goes crazy at this. We're left, at its end, the way you should be after a really good "Jump": sweaty, happy, smiley and dishevelled and only wanting to wait a little while till we've recovered enough and then do it all over again.
Coming away from the gig I talk to about a hundred complete strangers who are every bit as manically happy as I am. All the barriers are down, and we're all friends now, sharing that same waking-up-with-someone-you-shouldn't-have sly grin. We agree: this really rocked.
http://rocknerd.org/article.pl?sid=0...=thread&tid=17
Just found this, thought I'd share.
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Good job you found out about it and got us to go.
