POP MUSIC REVIEW : Band Still Halen and Hearty

When Van Halen hired Sammy Hagar a decade ago to replace departed singer David Lee Roth, more than a few rock ‘n’ roll savants felt the kings of heavy-metal were committing career suicide.

The charismatic Roth was the ultimate party animal who fronted the ultimate party band. Conversely, Hagar was considered a marginal talent known more for his conservative politics than for any particular artistic achievement as a solo artist, or as the lead singer of the pedestrian hard-rock group Montrose.

But 10 years later, Van Hagar (as the band was once derisively tagged) is more popular that ever and seems ready to forge on for at least another decade.

Van Halen’s enormous commercial success since Hagar joined forces with guitarist Eddie Van Halen, drummer Alex Van Halen and bassist Michael Anthony was not lost on the blond vocalist as he stood center stage at the band’s tour-ending Irvine Meadow’s Amphitheatre show Sunday.

At one point, the shaggy-haired Hagar spoke of the band’s surprisingly strong fan support in a tone that reflected both utter gratitude and utter amazement.

Van Halen’s two-hour show certainly provided an accurate encapsulation of why the outfit has achieved an enduring popularity remarkable for a crew of hard-rockers in their late 30s and 40s. (Hagar is 48.)

Once known for a blazing heavy-metal sound sparked by Eddie Van Halen’s revolutionary guitar pyrotechnics, these cagey veterans now deliver a far more polished and accessible brand of melodic hard rock.

On stage, such power ballads as “Why Can’t This Be Love” and “Feelin’ ” sounded more like steroid-injected Journey songs than old V.H. barn-burners in the “Somebody Get Me a Doctor” or “Runnin’ With the Devil” mode.

Van Halen, as usual, performed only a few songs associated with its first career phase. But unlike on previous tours, this tactic didn’t register as a deliberate attempt at exorcising the once formidable ghost of Roth. Time, four hit albums post-Roth and Diamond Dave’s sad new status as a Las Vegas entertainer undoubtedly helped tip the scale in the band’s favor.

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Still, this wasn’t one of Van Halen’s better performances. At times a muddy sound mix blurred the nuances in the band’s often elaborate, note-heavy songs. Plus, the use of dreadful-sounding prerecorded piano and keyboard tracks contributed to listless readings of such melodic rock numbers as “Jump” and “Dreams.” The group delivered a crisper show earlier in the year at the Forum in Inglewood.

Interestingly enough, it was the band’s de rigueur solo instrumental segments that best recalled the Van Halen of old. Guitar Eddie may have run out of flashy new ideas, but his familiar on-the-fretboard “hammer-ons” sounded as deadly as ever. He also tossed the old die-hards a bone when he excerpted a few riffs and leads from such Roth-associated numbers as “Mean Street” and “Cathedral.”

Skid Row preceded Van Halen with a set of anonymous-sounding heavy metal that contained sufficient energy but little creative direction. Thanks to singer Sebastian Bach’s almost feminine good looks and a few MTV-friendly hits (including the acoustic ballad “I Remember You” and the faux-rebel song ‘Youth Gone Wild”), the quintet once looked poised to move up in the rock ranks. But the New Jersey quintet’s Irvine performance and new album indicate a band spinning its wheels. One plus was that Bach presented a less-obnoxious stage image than he did during one of the group’s Forum performances in 1991 with Guns N’ Roses.