We interrupt your regularly scheduled performer for the Midnight Special. Sad news today from the world of music as we lost a great one too soon. So tonight’s performer will be Eddie Van Halen and the group Van Halen.
Edward Lodewijk Van Halen
On to the music.
At the 1984 concert tour in my town, David Lee Roth stopped three songs not long after they started them. He looked at the rest and said something like “that was terrible, lets do it better”. At the time I thought it was funny and part of the show. Later I figured it was probably a power play by David because after that tour he left/was kicked out. I don’t know the whole story. I should’ve looked at the reactions of the others in the band when he stopped the songs. But I was a wild-eyed kid at my first rock concert and wasn’t paying attention to group dynamics.
At the 5150 concert tour, everyone looked like they were having fun. I always liked Sammy Hagar and thought it was a great choice for him to be part of Van Halen. The thing I remember most about the show was when Sammy Hagar spotted someone in the front row wearing his red jumpsuit from Sammy’s Voice Of America tour. He brought the guy up on the stage and it turned out that this was the guy who won his jumpsuit in an MTV contest. Sammy said he didn’t wash the jumpsuit before the MTV concert and the guy who won it said he hadn’t either. Everyone thought that was pretty funny.