5th May, 2012
Van Halen – A Different Kind of Truth World Tour
Van Halen hit the Tacoma Dome in style tonight with David Lee Roth back in the band and leading the way. Long gone is the spandex, jumps and highwire aerobatics of the 80’s (Diamond Dave is now 57) but it was still a fantastic show with all the big hits, new songs and a lot of hilarious banter from Dave (including discussing that he may have fathered some of the kids who were in the crowd, or at least his music was responsible)!
He may not have been in spandex but Dave was wearing some very snazzy Vegas inspired showbiz outfits! Although there were no big jumps he did manage quite a few high kicks and the splits too!
Eddie Van Halen smiled his way throughout the show and played brilliantly. His epic guitar solo was fantastic! Brother Alex Van Halen on drums also had an epic solo and the whole show was supported very ably by the new kid in the band Eddie’s son Wolfgang on bass (who replaced Michael Anthony in 2006).
We got an interesting and unexpected insight into the personal life of David Lee Roth when on the big screen they started showing dogs herding sheep and cattle. Turns out DLR has a ranch and trains working dogs when he is not touring. This lead to him playing an acoustic guitar solo which acted as an intro to Ice Cream Man.
Overall Van Halen played for about 2 hours (all David Lee Roth era songs). Some of the songs off the new album A Different Kind of Truth included Tattoo and Chinatown, but the highlights were of course the old hits like Runnin’ with the Devil, Hot For Teacher (my favourite!), Panama, and the big finale of Jump. Thanks for an awesome night Van Halen!
Deano In America 