Van Halen 2004 Tour
Eight years after his split with Van Halen, Sammy Hagar has rejoined the group for a summer tour that comes to the Hartford Civic Center Monday night. Two performances last weekend at the Worcester Centrum Review Centre offered proof that Van Halen hasn’t lost its magic.
With a stage setup second to none, the “winged VH” logo features “inside” seats for two dozen fans, the boys just rip it up.
Huge monitors, showing Eddie Van Halen doing his famous “flying Eddie” jumps, laughing and having a lot of fun on-stage with Mike Anthony and Hagar, hangs in the middle and on each side of the stage. The camera work is awesome, with some shots coming right from the drum kit (Alex Van Halen’s hi-hat) and the guitar (on the end of Eddie Van Halen’s ax).
The band sounds good, looks good and appears to enjoy its time together.
Playing live brings technical problems, but when a guitar or a microphone stops working, the boys just give it a laugh. Even when a particular song, played 1,000 times before, goes awry, no one notices.
“Up For Breakfast,” one of the band’s new songs, featured Eddie Van Halen on a red striped “Frankenstein”, the guitar that put him on the map with fans.
Similar to the “VH3″ tour, Anthony, equipped with his signature Jack Daniels bass, sings lead vocals on “Somebody Get Me A Doctor”, with Hagar and Eddie Van Halen backing him up. Hagar climbs up into the rigging again for “Dreams.”
Eddie Van Halen’s solos these days are meaner, with a lot of bits and pieces from years back, culminating with “Cathedral” and “Eruption.” His 13-year-old son, Wolfgang Van Halen, came out on-stage to play “316″ with his dad.
Hagar’s solo, “Where Eagle’s Fly,” was first done acoustically, then transformed to a harder, meaner electric version that morphed into “Deeper Kinda Love.”
With a few David Lee Roth-era songs thrown in for good measure (“Unchained,” “Jump,” “Panama,” and Eddie Van Halen starting his solo out with “Spanish Fly”), the band cuts into tracks like “Humans Being,” “Seventh
Seal,” “Runaround,” “Poundcake,” (featuring Eddie Van Halen’s striped cordless drill) “Finish What Ya Started,” and a new song “It’s About Time.”
Watching Eddie Van Halen jump around, hearing Anthony hit the notes only dogs hear, seeing Alex Van Halen play his drum kit faster than anything you’ve ever seen, and watching Hagar throw his arms around everyone in the band makes you forget, at least for a couple of hours, that there is a crueler world outside.
The magic is happening this summer and Van Halen is out to prove that, according to Michael Anthony, “We’re back!”
Copyright 2004 MassLive.com. All Rights Reserved.
Author: MATTHEW G. PHANEUF
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