Van Halen live in 1986: "Best of Both Worlds" from the concert film "Live Without a Net"
New Haven, 27 August 1986: on the 5150 tour, their first with Sammy Hagar, Van Halen played "Best of Both Worlds" – captured in the concert film "Live Without a Net".
Photo: Alan Light / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0 (cropped and resized)
Single video: YouTube · Van Halen · youtube.com
The official clip comes from "Live Without a Net", Van Halen's first long-form concert video. It was filmed on 27 August 1986 at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum in New Haven, Connecticut – the second of two consecutive nights. The band was about two-thirds of the way through its 5150 tour, named after the album of the same name. The video shows "Best of Both Worlds" as a high-voltage peak in a set of pure arena rock.
On stage are Sammy Hagar (vocals, guitar), Eddie Van Halen (guitar), Alex Van Halen (drums) and Michael Anthony (bass). A detail for the faithful: a brief nod to Robert Palmer's "Addicted to Love" that the band worked into the song that night was edited out of the video. The film goes on to feature "Panama", "Love Walks In", "Why Can't This Be Love" and an Eddie Van Halen guitar solo of around ten minutes.
The 5150 tour was the first with Hagar as frontman, and the band reinvented itself along the way: less of the lengthy stage banter of the David Lee Roth years, new song endings and a raised stage so that seats behind it could be sold. "Live Without a Net" was released on 24 November 1987, runs 92 minutes and remains a document of the "Van Hagar" era at its first peak.