Well, it's official. Van Halen will be touring with David Lee Roth on lead vocals.

Right about now you're having one of two possible reactions:

• If you have a mullet, rarely wear a shirt, drive a Firebird and drink Budweiser, you're probably standing on top of your trailer at this very moment, yelling "WHOOOOOOOOOOO!"


• If you don't fit any of those criteria, you're probably saying "Van Halen is touring?? Why??"

If you don't know, Van Halen was one of the most successful hard rock bands of the '80's. The band's drinking, drugging, and groupie indulgences are legendary, and they remain known as one of the hardest partying bands that ever toured.

But that isn't exactly the band you'll be seeing on this reunion tour.

During their heyday, Van Halen looked like this:

But if you catch them on this reunion tour, what you'll see instead will be three corpses and a child:

The child who's replaced bass player Mike Anthony is Wolfgang Van Halen, the son of Eddie Van Halen, and he's been playing the bass guitar for almost an hour now, so expect to be dazzled.

If you're unaware, it might be relevant to throw a bit of Van Halen history out there:

• Van Halen formed in the mid 70's and featured David Lee Roth on vocals, Eddie Van Halen on guitar, Alex Van Halen on drums, and Mike Anthony on bass. The band was known for two things: One, Eddie Van Halen's lightning quick guitar playing and David Lee Roth's penchant for dressing like Stevie Nicks, acting like Steve Tyler and singing like Steve Buscemi.



• Van Halen released a string of successful albums featuring Eddie's distinctive guitar playing and Dave's diverse array of songs about women, drugs, sex, women, lust. In 1985, David Lee Roth left the band to enjoy an amazing and successful solo career that, somehow, didn't implode for two whole years.



• After the departure of Roth, Van Halen surprised everyone by hiring as their new vocalist a man named Sammy Hagar. Hagar was renowned in the music world as a powerful rock vocalist and a nimble guitarist. In other words, he was the opposite of David Lee Roth in that he was talented and capable. Predictably, most of Van Halen's fans responded to the line-up change with drunken ambivalence.



• With Hagar on board, Van Halen now had a capable musician, a stellar vocalist, and a fine songwriter. Not surprisingly, the band crafted a string of successful albums and singles. Yet not all was well. Hagar is well known for his distaste for touring. Given his druthers, Hagar would spend every night of his life drunk on the floor in the bar he owns in Mexico. Van Halen had always been a touring band, and with tension at an all-time high, Hagar was fired in '96.



• After the departure of Hagar, Van Halen went through a period wherein nobody, including the Van Halen brothers, had any idea who the band's singer was. David Lee Roth returned to the studio with Van Halen to record two songs for the band's first ever "Best Of" collection ... and although Roth gave a series of interviews in which he talked about how glad he was to be back in the band, Van Halen reps insisted that the tracks represented a "guest appearance" and not a reunion. After a disastrous appearance with Roth at the 1996 MTV Movie Awards, Eddie Van Halen publicly indicated that he'd never work with Roth again. Soon thereafter, Van Halen hired ex-Extreme singer Gary Cherone and recorded an album called "Bargain Buy!" Well, that might not have been the official title, but a sticker with those words is on the cover of every copy of the album I've ever seen. Cherone was quickly fired and rumors abounded about who was or wasn't in or out of the band. Van Halen surprised everyone in 2004 by releasing yet another "Best Of" set, this one featuring three new songs with Sammy Hagar on lead vocals. After a tour during which the supposedly-sober alcoholic Eddie collapsed on stage a few times, Hagar again left the band, citing Eddie's drinking as the cause. This time bass player Mike Anthony left with Hagar, leading Eddie to stick a bass guitar in his son's hand.



• By 2006 it was safe to say that nobody cared about Van Halen anymore, which is probably why they're desperate enough to reunite with Roth and try another tour. Eddie has been in and out of rehab more times than Lindsay Lohan, Alex was and probably still is a serviceable drummer, and since David Lee Roth never could sing to begin with, he's likely still as good a singer as ever. Watching him attempt karate kicks at his age, however, might be too painful for even the most hardened fans to endure.

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