LOS ANGELES — Diamond Dave is back in the live business.

David Lee Roth performed his first public concert in more than five years Saturday night at the M3 music festival in Columbia, Maryland — a 75-minute set of classics by his old band Van Halen, according to Rolling Stone, in which he was accompanied by a band that included guitarist Al Estrada and four backing vocalists.

According to a set list published by Ultimate Classic Rock, Roth, 70, opened the concert with Van Halen’s “Panama” and went on to play “You Really Got Me,” “Dance the Night Away,” “Runnin’ with the Devil,” “Jamie’s Cryin’,” “Hot for Teacher” and other Van Halen hits before closing with the band’s Hot 100-topping “Jump.”

Ultimate Classic Rock reported that Roth joked onstage that the show marked “the end of my first retirement” — a reference to his announcement in late 2021 that he was calling it quits due to unspecified health issues. Early Monday, Ticketmaster listed more than a dozen upcoming shows by Roth starting July 22 at the California Mid-State Fair in Paso Robles.

Roth’s most recent show before Saturday’s was a private 2023 corporate gig for Home Depot, according to Rolling Stone; before that, he opened for Kiss on a tour that ended in March 2020 amid widespread cancellations and postponements related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The singer was scheduled to play a residency in Las Vegas in early 2022 but called off the shows before they happened.

Saturday’s performance came as Sammy Hagar — who replaced Roth as Van Halen’s frontman in 1985 — has been talking publicly about Van Halen, whose founding guitarist, Eddie Van Halen, died in 2020.

Last month, ahead of Hagar’s appearance at Indio’s Stagecoach festival, Hagar told The Times that he and Eddie had discussed a reunion before the guitarist’s death and that Eddie had asked him not to talk about the plans with Eddie’s brother, Van Halen drummer Alex Van Halen.

Hagar went on to tell Rolling Stone that he thinks Alex — who made no mention of Hagar in his 2024 memoir — is angry at him because “I’m out doing it … and he can’t.” After Stagecoach, Hagar launched a Vegas residency at the Park MGM.

Van Halen’s final concert took place in October 2015 at the Hollywood Bowl — the second of two dates in the band’s Los Angeles hometown to wrap a tour featuring Roth on vocals and Eddie’s son Wolfgang Van Halen on bass.

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