Review and photo by Tom Mcelreath

The days of Fair Warning and Diver Down were alive in Reunion Arena last Saturday night. Diamond Dave is back!! I've been seeing Dave since 1980, and if "So This Is Love", "Little Guitars" and "Runnin' With The Devil" felt good to you back then, I can't begin to explain how good it feels now!!!!! Dave is the real deal!!! Rock on!!!!!!!!

Bad Company should fire Dave because they cannot follow him. His show was so much better than theirs. The band was tight and ripped through all the Halen classics. Unfortunately we only heard two of Dave's solo songs and nothing from the new album. A Slam Dunk would have been great.

By the end of the show the crowd of thousands was eating out of Dave's hand and banging their seats for more. Not only did he jump, kick, and make lewd gestures with a bottle of Jack Daniels to women in the first rows, but he also brought back his homage to the martial arts with a crowd pleasing flailing of a mic stand.

If you haven't had a chance to see one of these shows on this tour you will be missing a lot. You owe it to Diamond Dave. Rock On!

Roth is back!! Dallas has always loved Roth and tonight he didn't disappoint. Starting off with two tracks from 1984, Diamond Dave played a slew of VH classics.

During the show, I felt like I was 14 again on my way to the Diver Down tour. However, all the previous shows tame to the one Dallas witnessed tonight. The band was extremely tight and Dave was in very strong voice. Each song kept building on the last until the whole arena was on its feet. The momentum was so strong that people were stomping the ground and banging their seats after Tobacco Road.

The show had a few highlights like when Dave substituted "yellow rose" (of Texas) for "yankee rose" Also there was the infamous "I forgot the f@#@@ words" rap.

All in all this is the show I wanted to see back in the eighties while watching Dave and the boys on MTV. The shows back then were lacking due to the egos involved. Tonight all the bull was gone and what Dallas got was a "damn good time" We can't wait for Dave to come back only this time headlining with a two plus hour show.

I just saw one of the greatest shows of my life.

I've never seen DLR in person before and I have to say that I really wish that VH and DLR could have got together. I loved the show, and while I was surprised and disappointed with some changes (they left out the second solo in Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love...) I absolutely loved the ending to Jump. They kicked ass and taught me how to really rock.

David Lee Roth kicks ass.

Part of getting older is realizing that some of your dreams will never come true. At some point you have to come to grips with the fact that you’ll never play in the NBA, you’ll never be elected president, you’ll never be rich, and, worst of all, Van Halen will never reunite. I like to call these unfulfilled wishes and fantasies "lost dreams", and tonight I was reminded very poignantly of this last one as I watched David Lee Roth open for Bad Company.

I’d heard and read a lot about the show, but didn’t know what to expect. People have made some pretty derisive comments about Dave and his many bands. I’d heard that he was a no-talent, egocentric jerk that made everyone miserable who ever worked with him. I’d heard that in addition to his hair, he’d lost his voice, his looks and most everything else of interest about him. I’d heard that he was still hung up on Sammy Hagar and bitter about his former band-mates. I was ready for the worst, but nothing could have prepared me for what I saw. Dave rocked the house tonight. He tore the place up. He shook Dallas. He was better than any "opening act" I’ve every seen. The rumors and myths surrounding his supposed demise were quickly dispelled about half-way through the first song. Whoever said that he ain’t got it anymore didn’t know what he had in the first place. Dave is not a great singer. He is not a great musician. Hell, he may not even be a great guy, for all I know. But, then again, he never was. What he is is the consummate showman. He started promptly on time, kept the chitchat to a minimum, and literally ran from one song to the next. Why? Because he knew he only had an hour to rock and he wanted to cram as much entertainment into that hour as he could. He gave it 110% and surely no one there doubted it.

From the time the band opened with Hot for Teacher till the final synthesizer hum of Jump, the whole place was on its feet ­ and not in the way that people are usually on their feet during opening acts ­ in the lobby, at the concession stand and in the shitter ­ they were standing, cheering, raving for Dave and his extremely tight band. He didn’t just warm up the place ­ he set it on fire and burned it down. If he doesn’t have "it" ­ give me what he’s got ­ I’ll take all I can get.

All of this, unfortunately, was tempered with a certain amount of melancholy. Melancholy because it seems certain that Van Halen will never re-form. Since Dave left, the band has lost its passion, its calenture, its friction ­ the special ingredient that distinguished it from the hundreds of other wanna-be Led Zepplins in the late ‘70s. For his part, Dave lost the musical innovation, the ingenious musicianship and instrumental adroitness of his former band-mates. The two have never been the same since. Van Halen has become like that big plate of mashed potatoes your mother made you eat where you’d have killed for a slice of butter, a spoon of gravy ­ hell, anything ­ salt, even ­ just to wake up the taste. Dave, for his part, is like a jalepeno between a couple slices of bread ­ it’s pretty tasty, but you sure wish you had something more substantial to go with it. They’re both worse off from the divorce and it’s pretty evident that they won’t ever remarry. Van Halen has lost its ethos, its heat ­ it’s essential Daveness ­ and will likely never get it back. And Dave ­ who knows about Dave ­ I suppose he’ll try phony wrestling next.

Why? Why won’t Eddie and Dave ever kiss and makeup? Because Eddie is a passive-aggressive. He vapidly goes along with things he doesn’t like over and over until the dam finally bursts and he goes ballistic over something relatively minor. He’s neurotically insecure. He feels threatened by people like Dave. If tonight told me anything about Dave, it told me that he still has the chutzpah, the bravado ­ the balls ­ to try to conquer the world one concert stage at a time. And as we learned from the recent VH reunion jilt, this would never fly with Eddie. He has a mortgage to pay and a kid to drive to school. Dave’s too Dave, and Eddie’s, well, too lost to see how lost he really is without his friend.

One final thought: Seeing Dave and Paul Rodgers tonight was like seeing the two extremes of the upper echelon of rock ‘n’ roll lead singers ­ one’s the best frontman ever and the other’s the best vocalist ever. I don’t know how or why they were paired up, but this was indeed historic.

Hot For Teacher
Panama
Little Guitars
Dance The Night Away
Mean Street
Runnin' With The Devil
Eruption
You Really Got Me
So This Is Love?
Yankee Rose
Tobacco Road
Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love
Unchained

Jump

DLR Solo: 02
Van Halen: 12

Total: 14

Dallas Morning News