Sluggish night for Van Halen
By Brad Kava
Mercury News
By the end of a two-hour, 10-minute set in San Jose, Eddie Van Halen looked ready for an intervention, not an extended tour with his namesake band.
The 49-year-old guitarist has survived surgery for tongue cancer, hip replacement, alcohol rehab and a divorce from his longtime wife, actress Valerie Bertinelli.
On Tuesday night at HP Pavilion, he stood shoe gazing, his long hair obscuring his face. When ever-jubilant singer Sammy Hagar hugged him and tried to get him to join in the show-closing revelry, the surly guitarist pushed him away and glared. Van Halen seemed to have all he could handle just standing up.
Van Halen was shirtless the whole night, and he looked fit and studly, to say the least. But there was something wrong that the good looks couldn't hide.
Midway through a squishy solo set, Van Halen told the crowd he was just messing around. On a good night, 10 minutes of his ``messing around'' would be worth $90. But on this night, he sounded like any amateur flailing on demo equipment at the local guitar shop.
The show started strongly with Van Halen smiling, jumping and singing. But something clearly changed a few songs into the set. During ``Pound Cake,'' he took the novel approach of playing his guitar with a power drill. His trademark guitar licks -- once shiny, blazing and flashy -- were sloppy, out of time and haphazard, as if he couldn't hear himself or the band.
Off-kilter solo
By the encore, ``Panama,'' someone had thoughtfully turned him down, so the audience couldn't hear just how off-kilter he was during the centerpiece solo, a moment that usually pushes the 1984 hit into space. His hiccuping, confused line wouldn't have earned him a spot in a high school Van Halen cover band, although a die-hard fan might argue that the guitarist was taking this chance to break into jazz.
For most of the audience, a subpar guitarist didn't seem to hinder the reunion of the 1980s and '90s incarnation of the classic rock band.
Hagar, the Cabo Wabo tequila and nightclub magnate from Marin, carried much of the night. Sadly, he picked up a guitar only during his own solo set, another bad decision from the group that hired singer Gary Cherone in 1997. Hagar might have covered for his mate's sloppiness. As it was, that solo set was one of the night's high points. Hagar covered Bob Dylan's ``Rainy Day Woman #12 & 35,'' with its seemingly apropos chorus, ``Everybody must get stoned,'' and did a magnificent version of his own ``Eagles Fly.'' It was everything the rest of the night wasn't: disciplined, tight and musical.
That's sad. Frankly, you go to a Van Halen show largely to hear the Dutch-born, L.A.-raised lead guitarist. Fans chanted ``Eddie, Eddie,'' before he came on, and he drew the loudest cheers all night long, despite his struggles.
And at first, it looked as if the night might be a pleasant surprise during a summer drought of good hard rock. The band opened with ``Jump,'' the 1984 song made famous by Van Halen's first lead singer, David Lee Roth. Hagar did a solid Roth impression, and the crowd was on its feet. On the third song, ``Humans Being,'' from the movie ``Twister,'' it seemed that the band might have some new life in it. The song, as churning and electrifying as the storms it celebrated back in '96, is an overlooked hit.
Boring new single
But the doldrums soon set in.
Hagar chided local radio for not playing the new single ``Up for Breakfast,'' on the band's latest greatest-hits album, ``The Best of Both Worlds.'' Sorry, Sammy, for once I'll agree with radio. The song is almost as boring as bassist Michael Anthony's stock solo on his Jack Daniel's bass. The main musical message here was that he could walk around and chug whiskey while he played semi-competent, workmanlike musings.
Workmanlike was the theme for the night, for which the band reportedly earned $750,000. There was no magic and little joy, although other nights on the tour have reportedly been better. The tour continues Friday at the Oakland Coliseum Arena.
This seemed to be the perfect time for the return of the later-era Van Halen, a band that peaked in the Reagan era, with the group's obvious, catchy but forgettable songs that seemed to have been produced on an assembly line (``When It's Love,'' ``Love Walks In,'' ``Why Can't This Be Love?'').
Its first incarnation, as a beach-house garage band, is sorely missed and destined never to return, but a not-quite-sell-out crowd was prepared to make due with second best.
Unfortunately, they got a lot worse than that.
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