MONSTER MASH: It’s a mystery worthy of...

MONSTER MASH: It’s a mystery worthy of Elmore Leonard. The summer’s biggest concert tour has a headliner with the hottest album in the country (Van Halen), two popular metal bands (Dokken and the Scorpions), a beloved speed-metal group (Metallica) and a flashy newcomer (Kingdom Come). But despite all the hoopla and media hype, Monsters of Rock is precariously close to being a flop.

The tour has already suffered cancellations of second-day shows here and at New Jersey’s Giants Stadium. Results have been mixed elsewhere, ranging from good (96,000 fans for three dates at Wisconsin’s Alpine Valley) bad (32,800 out of a possible 50,000 at Boston’s Sullivan Stadium) and ugly (27,000 out of a possible 78,000 at Miami’s Orange Bowl). Other dates that promoters said were financial bombs included Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Buffalo.

What went wrong? Everybody has a theory, though the managers of the bands involved declined any on-the-record discussions of tour difficulties. One key source close to the Van Halen organization offered the most likely explanation: “If you see the shows, the answer is obvious: I don’t think there’s one kid over 18 in the entire audience. Obviously Van Halen is still a draw--their album is going into its fourth week at No. 1. But the higher end of the Van Halen audience won’t spend eight hours outdoors, pressed against a barricade, waiting to see the band.”

Pop Eye sent out Sam Spade and Lew Archer, looking for more answers. Their poll of industry sources uncovered these possible clues:

It was a mistake to schedule Monsters of Rock concerts on weekdays, when most kids were still in school.

Van Halen’s album didn’t come out until the first week of the tour, so the concerts were well under way before it began to have an effect.

There were too many bands on the bill. The shows would have drawn better with only three groups, so older Van Halen fans could have arrived by late afternoon and not felt they had missed most of the show.

Many fans, particularly female fans, perceived MOR as more of a migraine-inducing heavy-metal endurance contest than an all-day rock concert.

Tickets have run for as high as $28.50, a steep price for kids to pay for a concert ticket (though it’s hard to call Monsters of Rock a bad buy when Pink Floyd did solid box-office charging $22.50 for a two-hour show).

The bands on the bill had too much overlap-appeal. Dokken, the Scorpions and Kingdom Come didn’t bring any new fans--they attracted the same fans.

The tour started too early in the summer, before kids had earned enough money from their summer jobs (though the tour’s earliest dates were sell-outs).

Since Sammy Hagar joined Van Halen, the band has lost a lot of its party image and appeals to older, conservative fans who were scared off by the predominantly heavy-metal bill (the show’s catchy title may have even worked against it).