Well here is the review from Tampa
Might give you some hope.
Van Halen Leaves Tampa Crowd Happy
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By Bill Dean
The Ledger
bill.dean@theledger.com
A year ago, Rolling Stone magazine inexplicably put
Eddie Van Halen at No. 70 in its list of 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time -- a ridiculous notion of idiotic proportions.
On Thursday at the St. Pete Times Forum in Tampa, the rock trailblazer and his namesake group showed just how asinine the snub was.
If the mighty have fallen, it was straight into a relaxed groove, which ironically focused more attention on the guitarist's virtuosic talent.
Simply put, it glowed, shined and sparkled. And it left an audience of 11,192 awestruck.
With singer Sammy Hagar returning to the group for their first tour in nine years, the show was billed as featuring songs from both Hagar's tenure and when motormouth singer David Lee Roth led the group.
The advance billing was a little disingenuous: 12 songs from Hagar's period of 1986 to 1995 dominated the night's 18-song set. But Hagar himself showed why -- right now -- he's back in Van Halen's driver seat and not his predecessor.
Why? Roth's flamethrowing, frontman gymnastics helped elevate the group to a huge, worldwide audience from 1978 to 1984. But tension between Roth and Eddie Van Halen, in an oil-and-vinegar dynamic a la Mick Jagger/Keith Richards, ultimately led to Roth's departure.
It also led to the guitarist becoming the group's main focus; an evolution that Hagar willingly participates in.
On Thursday, Hagar's vocals varied from the on-the-money takes of "Dreams" and "Right Here" to the raspier screams of "Best of Both Worlds" and especially "Why Can't This Be Love."
To his credit, Hagar delivered respectfully faithful renditions of Roth's "Jump," which started the 21/4-hour show, and "You Really Got Me" and "Panama," which helped close it.
As a stylistic frontman, however, Hagar was even looser and more game to let the guitarist get the night's glory.
So too were longtime bassist
Michael Anthony -- who sang lead on the sizzling "Somebody Get Me a Doctor," from the group's 1978 second album "Van Halen II" -and drummer Alex Van Halen.
Both, in a pragmatic and merciful nod to audience expectations, scaled back their long solos from decades past to fourminute nods that allowed time for Eddie Van Halen to tend to his faithful flock.
In a near-20-minute display of dazzling technique, the guitarist's solo began with a jam with his brother before turning into a one-man show many have copied but few have equaled.
Early in the solo, he danced with delicate, volume-knob approaches, embellishing 1984's "Cathedral" with a more evolved two-handed technique.
Then, he acknowledged the audience's thirst for the superfast style that made his name, blasting through "Eruption" with equal aplomb.
At other times in the show, especially from the Roth era's "Unchained" and Hagar's "Poundcake," Van Halen blitzed, wailed and rocked with free-form abandon that shows the 49-year-old guitarist remains without peer in his genre.
Rolling Stone can put the guitarist in the bottom 50 anytime it <font color="blue"> </font> wants to. But Thursday night, he was No. 1 in talent and delivery.
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