DALLAS — One of the most iconic concerts in Dallas history is about to get a high-definition revisit.
This week, Van Halen announced plans to reissue their chart-topping 1991 album "For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge" with a new box set release. Included in the package are multiple LPs, two CDs and a Blu-ray DVD featuring various rarities, promotional videos and previously unreleased live concert footage from the band at around the time of that album's release. A further expanded version of the set also includes a collection of seven-inch singles from that era of Van Halen's music.
Dallasites should be especially interested in the live concert footage aspect of the new drop. Per the release's promotional material, the "main attraction" of this new collection is the previously unreleased high-definition video of Van Halen's famed December 4, 1991, performance in Dallas' West End.
That show, hosted in the once-bustling nightlife destination known as Dallas Alley, remains the stuff of legend even three decades on.
Its backstory is special, too.
The performance's genesis can be traced to a show the band performed at the Cotton Bowl three years earlier. In 1988, Van Halen hit the road as part of a package called "The Monsters of Rock Tour" that also featured fellow '80s icons Metallica, Dokken, Scorpions and Kingdom Come on the same bill.
That tour's Dallas stop hit a bit of a snag, however. Van Halen's lead singer at the time, Sammy Hagar, was dealing with a litany of injuries by the time the tour arrived in North Texas for two nights of shows. He was suffering from a broken tailbone, an ear infection and a sinus infection, the last of which made singing a difficult prospect for the renowned vocalist. Though he soldiered on for much of the tour, Hagar found himself unable to sing up to the standards he'd shown in previous North Texas tour stops. And so, in the middle of the band's first song, he outright stopped trying to sing. After letting the crowd sing on his behalf for a few cuts, the band eventually cut that July 3, 1988, performance short.
Before Van Halen left the Cotton Bowl stage, though, Hagar made a promise to the fans in attendance that night. He swore over the mic that the band would come back and host a free show in Dallas to make up for any disappointment his ailments had caused.
To hear Hagar tell it, his bandmates weren't exactly thrilled with Hagar's offer.
"It almost broke the band up," Hagar said with a laugh, recalling that moment in 2023.
And, though it took him three years to make good on it, Hagar came through.
"We've been trying to do it ever since," Hagar said in a press conference before the 1991 show. "When you promise people that much in Texas, you better be a man of your word -- otherwise, you're history."
The ensuing show turned out to be quite the spectacle. Hosted in the afternoon sunlight, and open to all comers as promised, it's estimated that anywhere from 20,000 to 80,000 people showed up to watch Van Halen on that December 1991 day.
No one really knows for sure.
This much, however, is confirmed: The 11-song concert itself was loud. It saw the band pulling heavily from the released-just-six-months-prior "For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge" (including its smash single "Right Now"), and playing the band's David Lee Roth-era hit "Panama" and even the pre-Van Halen solo Hagar single "I Can't Drive 55" as the Dallas audience jammed out and crowd-surfed along to Van Halen's famous riffs.
What's perhaps most remarkable, though, is how smoothly the show turned out. The Dallas Police Department reported no arrests and just seven people needing medical attention for dehydration at the event.
In an interview with legendary Dallas radio DJ Redbeard immediately after the show, Hagar and the rest of the band were thrilled at how the show turned out.
"I think it was fantastic," Hagar said. "It was so real and so honest. We didn't use a set list, we didn't plan anything. We didn't say how long it was gonna be, how short it was gonna be. We were just gonna play until it was over -- and then, when they asked us to stop, I think it was cool. It was a good time to stop."
The crowd certainly got its money's worth. And, based on that reaction, it seems Van Halen did, too. In the years since, Hagar has said the band spent somewhere in the neighborhood of $200,000 on production for the free show.
For Hagar, anyway, it was money well spent.
Added the singer to Redbeard: "I told the audience, 'We're even now. Now let's start over. Van Halen and Dallas, let's start over.' Because I really feel that we came to terms with everything."
Well, for 30 or so years, they did, anyway. Bootleg footage from that legendary West End show has existed online for some time, where millions have enjoyed reliving it -- albeit in the kind of resolution one might expect from an early '90s VHS recorder.
With the announcement of the 2024 reissue and the concert footage coming out alongside it, Van Halen released high-definition footage captured of the band performing the uproarious "Poundcake" as its opening song from that fateful 1991 show. The crisp clip serves as an exciting taste of what's to come in the full box set release -- and as positive a sign as any that, even 33 years later, one of Dallas' most famous concerts of all time might just have some legs left in it yet.
Iconic, indeed.
