"It's like climbing into a rocket in here," David Lee Roth said as he stepped onto the matchbox-sized stage at New York's 250-capacity Cafe Wha? for Van Halen's first concert in four years. "It's a rocket that comes from way back into the past into what the future's going to look like. Welcome to Occupy Van Halen, ladies and gentlemen!"
With those words Eddie Van Halen kicked into the opening notes of "You Really Got Me" and the crowd –composed almost entirely of journalists and music industry insiders – went absolutely bonkers. Over the next hour, the group played a stunningly tight set of songs from their 1978 debut LP all the way through David Lee Roth's swan song, 1984. It was a show guaranteed to make any crowd go into a collective state of hysteria, but the happiest man in the house could have been Roth himself. Dressed in beige overalls and a Brian Johnson-style newsboy hat, the singer had an ear-to-ear grin on his face all night, especially when he looked over at his 92-year-old uncle Manny – the founder of Cafe Wha? – who was seated in the corner. "Last time I stood on a stage this low I had to have the car back by midnight," Roth joked early in the night. "This is one of our best nights ever."
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