POP MUSIC REVIEWS : ‘Monsters of Rock’ Opens Monster Tour : Van Halen Headlines 9 1/2-Hour Concert Marathon in Washington

“Yeeeewoooooweeee!”

That’s what Tony DeFlavis, 20, said to himself Friday morning when he awoke and saw the sunshine through his window in nearby Bel Air, Md.

There had been thunderstorms in the area earlier in the week, but it would be dry skies that day for “Van Halen’s Monsters of Rock,” a 9 1/2-hour orgy of hard-rock at Robert F. Kennedy Stadium.

DeFlavis, a driver for a local automobile dealer, and three friends had been waiting weeks for Friday’s concert, and rain wouldn’t have kept him away. “It’s just that this way we won’t get soaked and maybe end up missing three days of work,” he said.

The only thing still troubling DeFlavis as he waited for the concert to begin was that he forgot his home-made “Rockstock.”

“The poster’s like a take-off on Woodstock,” he explained. “This is something special too. Most of the time, you go to shows and they last two or three hours and you want more at the end. But this time: nine hours. Wow! This will fill my day.”

That’s precisely the enthusiasm that Van Halen’s manager Ed Leffler and Texas-based concert promoter Louis Messina foresaw when they designed the “Monsters of Rock” tour, one of the most ambitious concert packages ever mounted.

The stadium tour, featuring f-i-v-e hard-rock bands including Van Halen and the Scorpions, is a traveling rock festival. The package, which includes a July 23 date at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, will be seen by an estimated 1.7 million fans before it ends July 30 in Denver.

But the Woodstock analogy is wrong.

That landmark 1969 gathering on Max Yasgur’s farm in Upstate New York was an exercise in chaos--a lovefest that worked despite everything seeming to be out of control.

Nothing is left to chance on “Monsters of Rock.” The schedule taped to the production office door backstage indicated that Kingdom Come, the opening band, would go on at 1:20 p.m.--and, yes, the group was headed for the stage at that precise moment. Similarly, headliner Van Halen was due to begin playing at 8:20--and bingo!

This is rock ‘n’ roll by the numbers. The only variable in the numbers--or figures--was your perspective.

10,600.

That’s the number of hot dogs Dick Stalder, manager of B & B Caterers, estimated he’d sell at the refreshment stands. “But we’ve got to be ready for anything,” he said, thumbing through a stack of inventory sheets in his office on the ground floor of the stadium.

“A lot of it depends on the weather. The hotter it is the more soft drinks we sell and the fewer hot dogs. When Pink Floyd was here recently, it was 90 degrees, and we didn’t sell any hot dogs. It was all soft drinks.”

One thing for certain: Beer wouldn’t be sold until 4 p.m., when it starts to cool off--and then only for about three hours.

“Otherwise,” he said tactfully, “you can run into a few problems.”

650.

Mary Berkeley, representing the District of Columbia public health commission, shuddered when mentioning that figure--the number of fans treated by the first-aid officials when the Rolling Stones played RFK in 1979. It was their busiest day ever.

As she waited at one of five first-aid stations with registered nurse Midge Moreau, she predicted the number of patients at the “Monsters of Rock” show would be between 200 and 300--most of them for dehydration, drugs, alcohol and falls.

$42 million .

That’s what “Van Halen’s Monsters of Rock” tour stands to gross at the box office alone, if the 1.7-million attendance is met.

Promoter Messina has been staging “Texas Jam,” an all-day rock festival in Dallas, for 10 years--and dreaming much of that time about a similar single-day spectacular on the road. “It’s such a natural idea that I’m surprised no one tried it before now,” he said.

Ticket sales around the country have been “gratifying,” he said, though only about 47,000 of the 55,000 tickets were sold at RFK. “But you’ve got to remember,” he added. “This is a school day. . . .”

250,000.

That’s the capacity, in watts, of the sound system, which pumped out the Led Zeppelin duplications of Kingdom Come (a Los Angeles band whose debut LP is one of the year’s biggest surprise hits), the speed-metal assault of Metallica (a San Francisco band that was the most radical group on the bill), the generally mainstream and colorless offerings of L.A.’s Dokken and the melodic, but also one-dimensional servings of Germany’s Scorpions.

Whatever one’s side in the Sammy Hagar-vs.-David Lee Roth debate, the musicianship of Van Halen--especially guitarist Eddie Van Halen--remains a rare bright spot in the generally characterless world of hard-rock. Along with the rhythm supplied by bassist Michael Anthony and drummer Alex Van Halen, Eddie’s graceful, inventive guitar work is about as close to poetry as hard-rock gets in the ‘80s.

Backstage before their set, the four members of Van Halen said their vision in putting together this “Monsters of Rock” marathon was a show like one they would have wanted to attend as teen-agers.

“When I was younger, I would have killed to go to something like this,” Eddie Van Halen said, adding with a smile, “Well, maybe not every week, but once a summer.”

9:30 p.m.

By the time Van Halen headed into its second hour on stage, Stalder was still pulling hot dogs out of the freezers and rushing them to stands. (The weather, cooler than expected, had pushed the number of hot dogs sold past 20,000.)

In the first-aid station, Berkeley and Moreau appeared drained. More than 225 patients had already been treated and more were on the way. There was a report of a kid on the field who put a firecracker in his ear and lit it. “Two more hours,” Berkeley groaned. No, someone said, the concert wasn’t lasting until 11:30 p.m. It’d be over at 10:30. For Berkeley, that was the sweetest number of the day.