As we all know, Van Halen parted ways with their flamboyant original frontman David Lee Roth in 1985 and almost immediately regrouped with the already rising superstar Sammy Hagar firmly at the helm. "Van Hagar's" 1986 debut album, 5150, was a massive success, becoming the band's first #1 album on the Billboard charts, and spawning three hit singles.
A wildly successful tour soon followed, which you can still witness on the excellent Live Without A Net concert DVD. The video was originally released in 1987 on VHS and was finally transferred to DVD in 2004. Even if you are not the biggest fan of the whole Van Hagar era, you've got to admire the band's bodacious performance on that DVD.
Live: Right Here, Right Now was filmed over the course of two nights, 14 & 15 May, 1992, in Fresno, California during the band's For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge Tour, otherwise known as the F.U.C.K. Tour. This was the second (and I'll refrain from saying "and final") concert video to come out of the Van Hagar camp, but it certainly wasn't their best. I'll lay the brunt of the blame squarely in the lap of the brilliant director, Mitchell Sinoway, who obviously thought it would look just super to constantly intertwine footage from both shows throughout each and every song.
I guess if seeing each of the band members change clothes and instruments 50 times during the same songs is not a distraction for you, then you will just love this fine MTV video that Mr. Sinoway has thrown together for you. It's one thing to combine footage from different shows, just not throughout the same damn song - constantly! This obviously led to some audio/video synchronization problems too, and it didn't exactly provide for a great live feel.
I thought for sure that Van Halen would make things right after completing their hugely successful 2007-2008 world tour that reunited them with David Lee Roth. I attended one of the shows on that tour, and it was a monster. One classic song after another from each of the first six incredible Van Halen albums, and the boys were all playing like kids again.
Article comments
1 - r-jan
all in all i still think the dvd gives you an idea of what a pleasure it was to see van hagar live. it was a PARTY. look they did not WANT to play roth era stuff but having just the FUCK setlist is because that is what they were pushing at the time. I like that album and certainly there was strong playing on it. you must likely are a roth purest who blames sammy for everything.. not fair or giving justice to a decent cd.
2 - Paul Roy
You are right r-jan, the DVD does reflect how much of a party Van Hagar concerts were, it just could have been so much better. They had two other albums with Sammy at the time, which were both better, and they chould have played more from them, which the CD version did.