O.C. POP MUSIC REVIEW : Musically Adept Van Halen Parties On

Boy, talk about a Sammy Hagar weekend! Van Halen launched into the penultimate show of a world tour at the Pacific Amphitheatre on Friday night (concluding the two-night stand there Saturday) with all the insouciant gusto one might expect of such a homecoming.

Vocalist Hagar was only affirming the obvious when, a few songs into the show, he told the near-capacity crowd that the antic quartet had already been partying for hours with a horde of friends backstage.

He and the band seemed more than willing to carry that celebratory mood to their audience, which didn’t need much prodding. Observing the crowd, which at the time was engulfed in a formidable cloud of marijuana smoke, Hagar declared: “We’re gonna be up here so . . . long you’re gonna forget you had that hit!”

Clocking in at slightly over two hours, the show didn’t actually set any endurance records. But when the smoke cleared, the band had reasserted its unique status as the Mozart of kegger bands. For all the party-hardy ethos and numskull histrionics that go into its show, Van Halen also performs with a rampaging musicianship, applied to songs that have some compositionally challenging stuff hidden within their corporate rock crust.

Even with countless other players now slavishly copying the prodigious fretboard innovations Eddie Van Halen introduced 15 years ago, the guitarist’s musical vision still sounded clear and wholly distinctive Friday. All but the most mainstream offerings in the show’s 21 songs were powered by his peculiar chord structures and skewed riffs, which--like the ones Jimmy Page once excelled in--can boast odd rhythms and be illogically chopped up yet still rock like crazy. The group may have lost its cartoonish, larger-than-life image when original singer David Lee Roth split in 1985, replaced by meat-and-potatoes rocker Hagar, but that has brought a change for the better in guitarist Van Halen’s playing.

Where his solos once went caroming off into space, perhaps to escape the comic schmaltz Roth brought to the songs, he now seems comfortable keeping his notes closer to home. There are still the dive-bomb effects and incredible flurries of tapped notes, but they are more melodically and emotionally tied to the songs now.

The unaccompanied solo spot, “316,” overflowed with his volcanic virtuosity. With cigarette affixed, Clapton-style, to the guitar peg-head, Van Halen launched into a far-ranging excursion that seemed to mix elephant trumpeting, Bach inventions, the labyrinth logic of guitar mentor Allan Holdsworth, and Pete Townshend’s killer riff from the Who’s live version of “Young Man Blues.” There wasn’t much to the solo that one could call coherent , but it was engaging fun up to a point.

As usual with the band, each member got a solo spot.

Brother Alex Van Halen’s drum solo was fine, as drum solos go. It didn’t, however, take too much of bassist Michael Anthony’s abrasive “Top this!” low-end noise-fest to make one sort of hope an alien would top it by popping out of his sternum.

When devoted to ensemble playing, all the members’ playing proved tight, yet light-footed enough to be responsive to each other. Unlike many arena acts, the group clearly was having fun playing instead of just going through the motions, and there was a warmth and camaraderie to the performance. With untold thousands of watts pumping out their sound, they were still a juggernaut, but they were a friendly juggernaut.

Back in his solo days, Hagar could shake his fist in the air as predictably as anyone, but he has clearly loosened up a lot in his present company. Goateed this time out and sporting jester-checked Spandex jogging togs, he interacted freely with the audience, if that’s what you call pouring Peanut M & Ms on the front rows and donning the red panties that were tossed his way.

The set list ranged from the new Hagar solo-spot tune “This Is the Love” to the Roth-era staples “Panama,” “Jump,” “Ain’t Talkin’ Bout Love” and “You Really Got Me.” Other selections included “Dreams,” “Poundcake,” “Judgment Day,” “One Way to Rock” and “Best of Both Worlds.”

Hagar has some high-octane lungs, and when coupled with a bit of melodic yearning on the anthem-like “Love Walks In” or the hits “Why Can’t This Be Love” and “Right Now,” it was particularly effective.

For their closing encore tune--which ended with real fireworks, if not musical ones--they assayed Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World.” They did little to Halen-ize the song, though, and it rocked not nearly so freely as Young’s dangerously unfettered renditions do.

Meanwhile, there was a certain symmetry to Van Halen having former Motley Crue singer Vince Neil open the show: One was a band that was dumped by its vocalist; the other was a vocalist dumped by his band. That curiosity aside, Neil’s show was a dull reminder of why Van Halen remains so far ahead of the pop-metal pack.

Neil’s 10-song performance, even aided by former Billy Idol guitarist Steve Stevens, was a plodding, characterless affair, as predictable as the “How ya doin’ L.A.!” shouts he uttered with numbing regularity.

Sporting a baseball jersey--only $45 at the souvenir stands--he screeched songs from his current “Exposed” album, including the single “Sister of Pain,” and dipped into the Crue songbook for “Girls, Girls, Girls.”