POP MUSIC REVIEW : Van Halen: The Eternal Dudes Rock On and On : 17 Years Later, Juvenile Love ‘n’ Lust Fantasies Still Become Treasures

Pete Townshend agonized over the Who’s having to sing “hope I die before I get old” as they got old.

Mick Jagger grappled with rolling into comfy middle age chanting for “Satisfaction.”

No such pensive concerns for Van Halen on Tuesday at the Forum, where fortysomething singer Sammy Hagar strutted around the stage with bras and panties tossed from the crowd hanging around his neck.

After 17 years of this stuff, these guys are rock’s top cases of arrested adolescence. And you know, you almost gotta love ‘em for it.

Here’s a band that has stayed on top for nearly two decades by being true to itself, transcending every trend and weathering every whim of pop fashion, with only the 1985 switch from clownish party animal David Lee Roth to dude-ish party animal Hagar to serve as “progress.”

Tuesday, in the first of two sold-out Forum nights, the quartet’s formula remained intact: simplistic, sometimes banal juvenile love ‘n’ lust fantasies transformed into pop-rock treasures, largely through Eddie Van Halen’s still-stunning-after-all-these-years guitar mastery.

It didn’t matter whether it was a song from the group’s latest No. 1 album, “Balance,” or such Roth-era classics as “Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love” or “Panama”--Sammy ran around the stage with his frizzy blond locks a-bouncing, Eddie worked his fretboard magic and the crowd loved every minute of it.

Actually, there were three notes of maturity injected into the concert. First, Hagar--known in his pre-VH days for his jingoistic, right-wing stances--made an impassioned plea for handgun control, noting that two friends of his had been shot to death in the past year.

Later, he praised the fans for their contributions to the band’s food drive for the needy. And, finally, he noted that this show was the first time Eddie had ever performed in his hometown sober, earning an enthusiastic ovation from the crowd--and evening the score for the earlier ovation given when Hagar introduced the new song “Amsterdam” as being about smoking pot.

But lest anyone fear this would turn into a think-tank seminar, Hagar proclaimed the essence of the VH philosophy as the band launched into the 1991 hit, “Right Now.” While the provocative, witty phrases from the song’s video were coming up on the big screen behind the stage, the singer summed up the existentialist gestalt by shouting, “Right now, Van Halen is kicking ass in Los Angeles, Calif.”

And in the world of Van Halen, that’s all that really matters.

Where Van Halen succeeds, opening act Collective Soul failed Tuesday, its set of amiable, post-grunge boogie-rock lacking the kind of dynamics and personality required to build the kind of long-term audience bond the headliner has.