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CONCERT REVIEW: Van Halen @ Wells Fargo Center, 3/5
The nearly 38-year-old Van Halen road show made its way to the Wells Fargo Center on Monday night, not as a nostalgia review but as a full-blown opportunity to showcase new material and prove how stealthily healthy its members sounded despite its various ravages, bust-ups and dust-ups.
CONCERT REVIEW: Van Halen @ Wells Fargo Center, 3/5
Tempers calmed and egos tucked aside (at least until each show is over) the nearly 38-year-old Van Halen road show made its way to the Wells Fargo Center on Monday night, not as a nostalgia review but as a full-blown opportunity to showcase new material (A Different Kind of Truth) and prove how stealthily healthy its members sounded despite its various ravages, bust-ups and dust-ups.
With this VH.4 (or 5) Van Halen has found its dazzle without a hassle and sans the usual schmaltz that comes with anything attached to Lee Roth, the once-libidinal growler with a tendency toward hamminess. Maybe Roth can’t kick and twirl as often as he once did (now he shimmies around on a parquet floor hoisting jazz hands throughout the night) or hit all the scuffed high notes he used to. Instead he relies on a scratchy warbling croon and hacking cackle that made “Runnin’ with the Devil” come across as eviler than it once did and “Hot for Teacher” chattily lascivious. Roth showed his six-gun ass tat before his chipper Bowie-like take on “Tattoo” (“hey I’m a Jewish Buddhist” he announced) and did a mean-talking blues on several occasions. Roth’s melodious cough sounded strong on the strutting “Beautiful Girls” and VH’s crackling cover of “Oh, Pretty Woman,” as it tap danced atop new bassist Wolfgang Van Halen’s hearty harmonies. “She’s the Woman” absolutely soared with that mix of hack-n-harmony — raw silken pop metal at its finest.
Anybody who thought they would miss bassist Michael Anthony’s thump-pluck rhythm and high-harmony background vocals should have been surprised to find Wolfie so adept and musical. The kid stays in the picture, not because he’s Eddie's son but because his chops are solid. Drummer Alex Van Halen — sure he’s thundering. Yet you couldn’t help but wish his consistently rumbling tech-heavy thud didn’t vary itself, swing more, take to each guitar thrum and finger-tap blister with intuition and sensitivity. Alex’s thump didn’t help iffy new songs like “China Town” be better and added little to cutting VH classics like “Somebody Get Me a Doctor.” On the other hand, he propelled “Panama” with a heavy snare attack. In the same way that its new album sounds like vintage VH re-fashioned for the present with Eddie and David finding up-to-date ways to approach pop metal, so too must Alex catch up.
This leaves me, happily, with Eddie Van Halen. Whether it was the poppy fresh “She’s the Woman,” the power-punk crunching “You Really Got Me,” or the demonic dirge-dancing “Runnin’ with the Devil” Eddie Van was epic — economic and inventive during his solos, boldly histrionic during his riffing hard chords. On stage alone, doing his usual near-set-ending solo bit mixing "Eruption" and "Cathedral," Eddie Van Halen was genius, speedily finger-tapping and effortlessly creasing the air with bent and noodling notes that took into consideration Blackmore, Page and Segovia while never forgetting his own six-string legacy. Plus, Eddie never stopped smiling — heck, he even looked happy to see Roth.
SIDE NOTE: Eddie didn't stick around Philly for long. According to TMZ, he was spotted soon after walking around NYC with his pooch.
(a_amorosi@citypaper.net) (@ADAmorosi)
Photos by Scott Weiner
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