Backbeat: Van Halen Packs VIP-Loaded L.A. Club Show
February 02, 2012
By Ryan J. Downey with additional reporting by Phi Gallo, Los Angeles
HOLLYWOOD, California — Henson Studios is located just across the street from Crazy Girls. It’s hard to imagine a better place than the crossroads between Kermit the Frog and a Hollywood strip club for David Lee Roth to lead Van Halen through a hit-packed club show. With three giant video screens and a wall of EVH amplifiers loud enough for an arena, the newly recharged band were agile and full of smiles as they performed Wednesday in front of a few hundred VIPs deep inside Charlie Chaplin’s old stomping grounds.
Invitations for the event called it an “album release celebration” to promote next week’s A Different Kind of Truth, the band’s first full length with their original singer since 1984. Eddie Van Halen, drummer/brother Alex, his 20 year old bassist /son Wolfgang and Roth played for over an hour with few stops and zero hiccups in front of press, industry VIPs and fans. People spied by us and others in the crowd or the ultra-VIP section included Live Nation head Irving Azoff (no. 1 on the Billboard Power 100), Universal chief Lucien Grainge (no. 3), Interscope’s Jimmy Iovine (no. 10), Steve Berman and Brenda Romano, and Live Nation’s Michael Rapino (no. 6), Mark Campana and Bob Roux ( who share no. 39) and Liz Morentin, Front Line’s Jeffrey Azoff, publiicist Ken Sunshine, and Scoop Marketing’s Larry Solters and his team, Anna Loynes, Eve Samuels and Erik Stein. Wolfgang’s mom Valerie Bertinelli, Evanescence’s Terry Balsamo and Rob Zombie guitarist John 5 were also in the house, and Victoria’s Secret model Alessandra Ambrosio showed off her baby bump as she danced along to the music.