Remember that Van Halen concert here back in the '80s? Great show, I think. Wish I could remember details. I'm sure they played Jump and Panama and David Lee Roth wore tight pants, swore and leaped around a lot.

Anyway, after the show we're waiting for the bus and a stretch limo glides to a stop beside us. Those were the days when limousines generally contained actual famous people instead of groups of office workers out for a club hop. As we gawk in our post too-much-marijuana-eardrums-blown stupor, a tinted window rolls down. A face leers out. It shouts something incoherently good natured. "Hey!" we shout back. Omigod, it's David Lee Roth! He's actually saying hello to us. What a thrill. Really. We're nobodies. He's a rock star. He grins and waves and the limo drives off to what we imagine is an exclusive rock star party filled with a bevy of willing groupies and a neverending supply of booze and good drugs. Brush with greatness....

This was the first concrete proof I got that rock stars are different than normal people.

Rock stars have more fun than those who worship them. That's their function in the universe. Fans of said rock stars are then free to have all the vicarious fun they want without all the bother of behaving like a rock star all the time.

So for all the sneering from your alternative rock refuseniks about "rock stars" - "I never want to act like a rock star ... I hate rock stars," these unwilling celebrities often say; there's even a record label called Kill Rock Stars - I kind of miss them.

I'm talking about real rock stars, career rock stars, none of this baloney about being "down with the common man" pretending they're no better than anyone else. Real rock stars know they're better. They are larger than life, blessed with that rare combination of giant ego, great wealth, massive self-delusion, a flair for creative excess and general debauchery. These are people who genuinely enjoy being rock stars. There aren't many left. The older ones are either sober or dead. The newer ones don't seem to have the same panache. Nickelback's Chad Kroeger turns out to be a huge video game geek. Jack White beat up a guy. The guy from the Darkness wears a unitard. Oasis used to get arrested every now and then. Haven't heard much from them lately. Tommy Lee fires hotdogs into the crowd at a football game. That's about it for rock-star antics these days. It's pathetic. OK, Michael Jackson is excessive, but let's not talk about it.

And so the return of Van Halen - though not necessarily the version we wanted to see - at Rexall Place romorrow is a chance to see some real rock stars ply their craft before the species becomes extinct. Van Halen are the real deal, at least that's the way I remember them - from the bassist's bass that actually looked like a bottle of Jack Daniel's to Eddie's furious guitar noodling gifts, to the inauguration of the synthesizer into the heavy-metal realm to great songs glorifying sex imagined from the point of view of a 15-year-old boy.

Legend has it that as an opening act for Journey in the '70s, Van Halen parachuted into Anaheim Stadium (actually professional skydivers posing as the band). Journey was not pleased. Early gigs - post-Mammoth, for those keeping score - sometimes erupted into riots, so intense was the vicarious fun enjoyed by fans. With Roth as their overgrown teenager ringleader, the band members drank themselves silly, shagged groupies left and right, demanded outrageous items on their rider, like bowls of M&Ms with all the brown ones picked out - by now a rock 'n' roll legend too good to be ruined by facts. (The M&Ms provision was said to be a "test" to determine if promoters would thoroughly read and comply with production requirements.)

So it's Hagar who's back instead of Roth. The return of either singer would've been acceptable. Like bad golf is always better than no golf, Van Hagar is preferable to No Halen. Fans sometimes forget that while Roth sang most of the band's early signature songs, like Jump and Panama, Hagar's debut marked some of the band's biggest selling albums.

Some folks were not pleased with the change, of course.

In my favourite book, The Worst Rock 'n' Roll Records of All Time, in a chapter about "personnel changes that flopped," is this terse item: "What made this heavy-metal colossus intermittently interesting was the tension between show-biz singer David Lee Roth and excessive guitarist Eddie Van Halen. Once Sammy Hagar took Roth's place, all that was left was the excess and, ta da!, no point."

Personally, while I prefer the original band, I think Sammy got a bad rap. In his own way, he is just as outrageous and juvenile - I mean this in the kindest way possible - as Diamond Dave. During an interview to promote his appearance at Rockfest 99 (the less said about this event, the better), Hagar, a 51-year-old father of three, went on and on about how much he loves tequila. He's the heavy metal Jimmy Buffett. He even said at one point, "Sammy likes to have fun." Referring to oneself in the third person is a hallmark of the true rock star.

Both Roth and Hagar are capable of penning some breathtakingly juvenile lyrics. Think of Davey as the class clown. Sammy the wisecracking captain of the football team. Roth came up with Hot For Teacher, Sammy with Why Can't This Be Love ("only time will tell if we stand the test of time"). Even the new songs from their recent The Best of Both Worlds set at least attempt to recapture the old magic. Love this new Hagar lyric: "She put the cream in my coffee, spread hot butter on my biscuit, like them cherries on bananas, that's why I'm up for breakfast." Roth should be proud.

REUNIONS FAILED

Van Halen is unique among superstar rock bands in that they had great success with two different lead singers - though that didn't last, either. Hagar departed in 1996, prompting Eddie Van Halen to accuse the singer of suffering from L.S.D., or "Lead Singer Disease." It was a prophetic remark that would apply more to the band itself than any of its singers. Attempts to reunite with Roth failed miserably, as did a one-album-one-tour-over-and-out stint with a third lead singer, poor Gary Cherone from Extreme, in 1998.

At the time, Eddie said, "We figured, hey, if we can do it a third time let's make sure it's right this time."

The album Van Halen 3 was not well received, however, and Cherone - once called "the final piece in the Van Halen puzzle" - quietly left the band. A long hiatus ensued.

Rock star behaviour can take its toll. Accounts of Eddie's health trouble are well known and included hip replacement surgery in 1995. He explained at the time, "It's just from years of drinking and jumping on it and not feeling the damage I was doing. The thing is, I haven't had a drink now in 10 months ... and the doctor says there's a slim chance it could get better." He also beat tongue cancer in 2000.

The lead-singerless hiatus continued.

Roth and Hagar, meanwhile, briefly toured together in a show dubbed "Sans Halen," but they apparently didn't get along too well. Big surprise.

In an Edmonton Sun interview last year, Roth more or less called Hagar a big whiner.

"I think Sam came out to prove something and maybe came up a little bit short," Roth says. "I don't think of Sam really as a colleague."

Roth hasn't blabbed to the press what he thinks about this current "reunion," though one imagines he's not pleased. Asked about getting together with Van Halen during last year's interview, Roth started talking about Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird, so draw your own conclusions.

It was Hagar who actually broke the Van Halen ice last last year. He got on the phone with bassist Michael Anthony. Then he phoned drummer Alex Van Halen and eventually worked his way up to Eddie.

The reunion, or "continuation," as they prefer to call it, gelled shortly thereafter.

COMPLETE LOVEFEST

Hagar recently told the Toronto Sun, "There was nothing about business, it was like, 'I wonder what it would be like running into Ed or Alex.' If I ran into them on the street, two things could happen - you're either going to get a big hug and a kiss and say it's great to see you again or you're going to get into a big fight, so you don't know until you go head on and we went head on. It was a complete lovefest. And once we started playing music it was all over."

That's "all over" in a good way, of course. Time will tell whether Van Halen Version 2004 will stand the test of time, but here and now, there are some real rock stars coming to town, Good seats are still available. Keep an eye out for that limo.

TALE OF THE TAPE

Who has the edge in the Van Halen lead singer department - Sammy Hagar or David Lee Roth? Let's go to the tale of the tape. The third singer, Gary Cherone, was knocked out before he even got to the boxing ring and is disqualified.

DAVID LEE ROTH

Age: 49.

Weight: Lanky.

Facial hair: No.

Van Halen tenure: 1974-1985, briefly in 1996.

Nickname: Diamond Dave.

Obsession: Women.

Solo highlights: Just a Gigolo/I Ain't Got Nobody, California Girls, 1986; autobiography: Crazy from the Heat (1998).

Point of ignominy: Arrested for buying $10 worth of marijuana in New York's Washington Square Park.

Memorable lyric: "Got an on-ramp comin' through my bedroom."

Memorable quote: "An ounce of image is worth a pound of performance."

SAMMY HAGAR

Age: 57.

Weight: Getting a bit chubby.

Facial hair: Varies.

Van Halen tenure: 1985-1996, present.

Nickname: Red Rocker.

Obsession: Tequila.

Solo highlights: I Can't Drive 55 (1984), Mas Tequila (1999), opening up his own theme nightclub in Mexico.

Point of ignominy: Being pals with professional redneck Toby Keith is about the best we can come up with.

Memorable lyric: "Time will tell if we stand the test of time."

Memorable quote: "Sammy likes to have fun."