The David Lee Roth Awesomeness Meter

More than 20 years later, there’s very little that I don’t remember about my first rock concert – Van Halen on the “5150” tour at the Cow Palace in Daly City.

I was 15 years old, and drank cans of Budweiser in the parking lot while listening to “Led Zeppelin II” on the stereo in my friend’s two-toned beige and brown Dodge conversion van. Some older dude with a black beard walked up and said, “I’m going to have to give you a citation … for not partying hard enough!” I was so relieved that he wasn’t going to send us to jail, I paid him $10 for a bumper sticker.

Once inside, I stopped some guy trying to pick my front right pocket, and later went to the bathroom during Michael Anthony’s bass solo – which still hadn’t ended by the time I got back, and may be continuing to this day. I even remember the encores that the opening act played. (Bachman-Turner Overdrive: “And when we come to San Francisco, California, we take … care … of … business!”)

Next to the birth of a child, loss of virginity and maybe getting married, a first concert has to be the most indelible moment in a music lover’s life – especially if paired with one of the three previously mentioned events. Forget genetic histories, influence from peers and your relationship with your mother: As much as any other single factor, a person’s life is shaped by their initial exposure to live music.

Did you go with a parental chaperone, or sneak out the bedroom window and hitchhike? How many encores did the band play? Did people boo the opening act? Did anyone in the band wear spandex? Did you wear spandex? Chances are that you can answer all these questions, even if the event happened 30 years ago.

Whenever I meet someone who is super awesome, inevitably their first concert was something cool like Miles Davis at the Blackhawk in San Francisco, or Prince while he was touring for his “Sign O’ the Times” album. And if you run across someone who is kind of annoying or wussy, nine times out of 10 their first concert will be Kenny Loggins on the “Danger Zone” tour.

I’m not a scientist, but I’m pretty sure that the details of everyone’s first big concert somehow get embedded in their DNA. If I were an employer, I would require every potential job applicant to include this information on his or her resume. It should also be mandatory in all online dating forms, newspaper feature profiles and voter information guides. Because I’m pretty sure that Barack Obama’s first concert was something really great, like UB40 at the Circle Star Theater with Fishbone opening. And I’m equally convinced that Rudy Giuliani’s parents drove him to see Ray Stevens.

Your first concert also shapes the rest of your life. My initial live-music experience was nearly Rush on the “Grace Under Pressure” tour, but I didn’t go at the last minute because of the flu. And a day doesn’t go by where I don’t thank God, because while I continue to love the band, I would almost certainly be single and writing bad science-fiction novels.

That said, Van Halen on the “5150” tour wasn’t the perfect scenario, either. If I was born a few years earlier, I might have caught them on the “Diver Down” or “1984” tours – and God only know how awesome I would be.

Still, I have some good stories to tell. While Van Halen kind of sucked that day, I witnessed the most epic beat-down I’ll ever see in my life: a scuffle involving maybe eight young teens, which was quickly and mercilessly extinguished by four huge guys in black “Security” T-shirts. One rule to follow if you ever time travel back to 1985: Don’t screw with the Cow Palace security staff.

I was also at the concert where Sammy Hagar, angry at Chronicle senior pop music critic Joel Selvin’s accurately negative review, read the critic’s phone number to the audience – the one part of the evening that I only vaguely remember. No big surprise, Joel remembers that event pretty vividly. There’s no way I can do the story justice, so we’ll just have to hope he writes it himself some day.

The David Lee Roth Awesomeness Meter: