By Mark Brown, Rocky Mountain News

It's the reunion they blew in 1996. Then again in 2000 and '02. Then it was announced last year, but with Eddie Van Halen's son on bass. Then Eddie went into rehab.

The Van Halen reunion has been messed up so many times in so many different ways that it's amazing that the band is rolling across the country in 2008 as a tight unit, ripping through some of the biggest songs in classic rock.

Fans wearing "David Lee Roth IS Van Halen" T-shirts in the crowd saw that it's partially true, partially not.

Having Roth, one of rock's finest frontmen when he wants to be, back with the band and songs he made world-famous is a great, great thing. But equally great is having Eddie Van Halen back on top of his game, looking night-and-day healthier than his last stop through town.

Then again, maybe it's musical comfort food. By definition, the band couldn't play anything past 1984, as Roth left the band a year later, so the show was a throwback to simpler times. Simply seeing EVH and DLR sharing a stage - happily so - is a sight many fans thought they'd never see again.

Halfway through the opening You Really Got Me, the band simply paused and the exhilarated arena let out a lusty cheer, thrilled to see the band in close to its original incarnation.

What was lacking was any sense of a false reunion. Sure they're pulling in the cash on this sold-out tour, but cash has never been enough to make them put aside their egos. At the very least they're willing to put up with each other to make this happen.

Despite the fact that they're endlessly on the radio, one forgets just how many huge hits the original band put out in its six years of fire before implosion.

Favorites like Hot For Teacher and Beautiful Girls were obvious picks to bring down the house, but album tracks like Mean Streets and Everybody Wants Some kept the crowd just as rabid. With the biggest big screen ever and lasers aplenty, Van Halen put on an old-school rock show, fearlessly blasting through hits and rock star poses (though I don't think anyone would have objected to more shirts, less skin).

Teenaged Wolfgang Van Halen was the revelation, handling bass and vocals deftly with a style obviously derived from his father but not cloned. Hard-core fans say it's not Van Halen without Michael Anthony on bass, but no one was complaining Friday night.

At press time, big hits like Jump and Ain't Talkin' About Love were still to come, but with the VH reunion, apparently the fifth time's the charm.

Van Halen
* When: Friday night
* Where: Pepsi Center

SLIDE SHOW: Van Halen rocks the Pepsi Center

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