“Let’s say you ride your bicycle through Huntsville, Alabama at 3:30 in the morning,” David Lee Roth wrote in his memoir “Crazy From the Heat,” in a passage about his legendary hard-rock band Van Halen’s early touring years. “If you go through it by day,” Roth continues, “it looks like most semi-gentrified towns. If you wait until well after the sun does down and John Q. Public has headed for Dave Letterman, then the truth of that city, the age and the substance and the history of that city comes out.”

The history of Huntsville includes legendary concerts — including yours, Diamond Dave. Rock fans of a certain age from here still light about recalling Van Halen’s 1980 and ‘82 shows at the Von Braun Center, then called the Von Braun Civic Center.

The King of Rock and Roll himself, Elvis Presley, did sold-out runs at the VBC in ‘75 and ‘76. Other concerts Huntsville people still talk about include a lean, pre-fame Guns N’ Roses opening for Mötley Crüe at the VBC in 1987, just five months after GN’R now-classic debut album “Appetite for Destruction” was released. Metallica, Foo Fighters and Taylor Swift each played Huntsville on their paths to world domination. In the jam-band space, Widespread Panic’s 1996 VBC show is widely regarded was one of that long-running band’s best ever. (All these are concert level and don’t include storied gigs at small yesteryear venues like Tip Top Café, Crossroads, Kaffeeklatsch, etc.)

The intersection of memory and legend is a mysterious zone, though. Below are five legendary music acts legends who performed in Huntsville in their prime, at concerts you might not have heard about as much about as those mentioned above.