Van Halen - Why Can't This Be Love (LIVE) (SUPERSCALED) 🇺🇸

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Live Without a Net is a live concert video of Van Halen recorded in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1986, and released later that year. It was of their performance on August 27, 1986 at New Haven's Veterans Memorial Coliseum. While the band attempted to record the previous night, audio problems prevented it from being used, although some video footage from that night would later surface in music videos. The concerts were part of the 5150 Tour, supporting the album of the same name, Van Halen's first with lead singer Sammy Hagar.

In the US, Why Can't This Be Love went to number three on the Billboard Hot 100 and hit number one on the Cashbox Top 100, the week of May 16. It was a top 10 hit in the United Kingdom, Australia and Germany and a top 20 single in Canada, the Netherlands and Sweden.

Eddie Van Halen wrote the track on an Oberheim OB-8 keyboard. It was one of his first songs where Sammy Hagar said, "You don't mind if I follow your keyboard melody do you?" And Eddie said, "No, not at all," though he really didn't like the vocals to follow his instrumental parts. Eddie would have rathered the vocal line act as a counterpoint.

5150 was a detour from the band, and the direction they would continue on centered around a more keyboard-driven sound.

“The old people that were in doubt, they heard (imitates keyboard riff notes) ‘Why Can’t This Be Love’ and they just went, ‘Whoa, this is a new sound for Van Halen,'” said Hagar in 2023. “You know that keyboard riff sounded like a guitar riff. [Whereas] previous stuff like ‘Jump’ sounded like a synthesizer. So some of the hardcore guitar people rebelled a little bit, but they got a whole new audience with that. And we just satisfied them, and they stayed. And we just went out, and every show sold out in minutes, and we went out and just killed it."

During the 5150 and OU812 tours, Eddie Van Halen played the keyboard parts (using either a Kurzweil K250 or Yamaha KX88 connected by MIDI to an OB-8 backstage) while Hagar played the guitar parts and the solo. For the For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge and subsequent tours, Van Halen took over the guitar parts and the keyboards were played backstage. Starting during the 1995 Balance tour, Michael Anthony and Eddie Van Halen would sing the second verse of the song during live performances. They would continue to do this on both the 1998 and 2004 tours.