CUYAHOGA FALLS, Ohio — The pervading feeling between dueling former Van Halen frontmen David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar may never be love, but fans showed a lot of it Wednesday at Blossom Music Center.

Vintage Van Halen T-shirts peppered the fiery crowd. Fortysomething women

fashioned the Van Halen symbol with their hands as they shook their shoulders

to songs such as "5150" and "Panama." A group of teenage boys wrote with

marker "f--- Eddie" on their arms, referring, of course, to VH guitarist Eddie Van Halen.

The admiration was mutual between the crowd and Roth and Hagar. Mop-haired

Hagar opened the show at 7:15 p.m. — the singers are alternating set order during the tour — with a video retrospective that included interviews, clips of magazine

stories and Van Halen photos. It hit a snag midway through, and kicked back

to the beginning of the film. When it finished, a curtain was drawn to allow

a select number of fans to stand on risers behind the band in an effort to

maintain Hagar's tradition of creating a club atmosphere onstage.

Bathed in red lights, Hagar kicked off his set with the apropos "Red."

"We're gonna turn this whole f---ing place red," screamed Hagar, who was

wearing a yellow T-shirt from his Cabo Wabo club that said, "Got Tequila"

across his chest. He quickly went into the Van Halen hit "Runaround," which

prompted the sea of fans to collectively mimic Hagar, who was whipping his

arm around in a circular motion.

At times, Hagar was a little too chatty between songs, often using long

stories to segue into the next tune.

"It's still daylight and I'm going to get drunk," Hagar said. He

yelled "Waitress!" and in response, a scantily clad woman arrived onstage to

pour him a margarita. "It's my first of the day, so make it a double," he instructed.

He coaxed the woman, a "calendar girl" from a local radio station, to imbibe

with him momentarily. "It's OK to drink on the job. As a matter of fact, it's

mandatory."

After wrapping up "Top of the World," Hagar admitted that he was somewhat

nervous.

"I didn't know what to expect today because, well, you know why," he said, referring

to his tempestuous relationship with Roth. "All I got to say is this is:

f---ing killer. This is the sh--. That's what I'm talkin' about. Waitress!"

Hagar took a potshot at Eddie Van Halen, who is now reportedly healthy after

receiving treatment for cancer. Among the groups of fans onstage was a

cardboard cut-out of the axeman, whose head the red rocker smacked after saying, "You

don't have nothin' to say? Didn't think so."

He further revved up the crowd by hitting a Cabo Wabo Tequila bottle piñata

with his guitar after singing "Mas Tequila." When the bottle opened, a mop-haired green

worm popped out.

Vocally, Hagar rose above a hoarse-sounding Diamond Dave, who needed a bit of

polishing. Hagar's voice soared to impressive heights during songs such as

"Eagles Fly," "Dreams" and the closer, "Right Now."

Roth was the antithesis of Hagar, who used videotapes of topless women at one

point as a backdrop for his show. The flamboyant original VH frontman opted

for a more "artsy" approach with his videos, repeatedly showing different variations of

cat-suit-wearing women and an armed Roth searching the halls for those

unknown. Interspersed with those scenes were shots of Roth doing martial

arts.

He couldn't measure up to Hagar's charisma, however. Aside from a few kicks,

Roth exchanged personality for shaking his spandex-covered lower body toward

the audience. His stage banter was minimal; he let his body and lyrics do the

talking for him. Roth, who botched the words to "(Oh) Pretty Woman," used a bottle

of Jack Daniel's to mimic a sex act and, upon "completion," splashed the

liquor on fans sitting close to the stage.

Using suspenders to keep up his spandex pants, Dave ended his set with a

martial-arts-style, baton-twirling number during an instrumental part of Van Halen's

hit "Jump." He bowed with the stick tucked under his arm, looking like a

majorette in a high school band.

Van Halen fans' "Sammy vs. Dave" battle clearly had a winner Wednesday night: Right here, right now, Hagar was on "Top of the World."

Sammy Hagar set list:

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David Lee Roth set list:

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For more sights and stories from concerts around the country, check out MTV News Tour Reports.