Live review: Def Leppard, Motley Crue and Mammoth WVH, Wembley Stadium, London, July 1
By STEVE MASCORD
THERE’S a certain freedom to going to a stadium show and sitting in the cheap seats. You don’t have to worry about packing your camera and making sure it’s charged, there is no concern about going to the loo and losing your spot and you’re less likely to get an elbow in the nose from a stranger.
Besides, modern stadium rock shows (and I assume other genres) are sort of like the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain. The performers are six stories high, featuring in state-of-the-art music videos produced in real-time, and you forget the ant-like creates scuttling around on something apparently called a stage.
It really is a wondrous step forward in live entertainment that, for some reason, we all take for granted.
It would be a brave production manager who would tell the son of the great Eddie Van Halen that he and members of his band Mammoth WVH can’t use vanity ramps and catwalks because they are first on.
In the end, Mammoth WVH was about what I expected – modern rock with compressed-sounding riffs and soaring choruses that more than nod to the Foo Fighters.
Band members Frank Sidoris, Jon Jourdan, Ron Ficarro and Garrett Whitlock do their best to be as visual as possible while Wolf Van Halen – who writes every song, plays every instrument on record as well as singing and performing most lead breaks – stays centre stage and is unstintingly polite between songs.
If they were playing a local club or theatre, I’d go. The music is not stadium rock as we know it – Wolf is trying to appeal to people of his own age, not 60-year-old drummers who want members of the audience to flash their tits.
Speaking of which … Motley Crue.
When they opened with their second-best song, “Wild Side”, your reviewer was fully prepared to enjoy himself, even allowing for the corny “breaking news” opening sequence on the big screens.
“The Future Is Ours” is now the Crue’s catchphrase. In fact, the opposite is the case. Motley Crue are emissaries from 1987 who just look like they’ve lived the intervening years.
Things went downhill pretty rapidly for John 5, Nikki Sixx, Tommy Seven and Vince Eight.
Put as simply as possible, the songs got less and less recognisable and one could only feel sympathy for the twenty-somethings on their feet under the misapprehension they were watching a good show.
Vince forgot the setlist, introducing “The Dirt” early, and any allegations of backing tapes were surely not countered by having Machine Gun Kelly’s contributions on the big screen and over the PA.
(I can only assume he wasn’t one of the ants scuttling around on stage).
John 5 is an outstanding musician but can’t play the razor wire riff from “Girls Girls Girls”. “Dr Feelgood” sounds like a cake that failed. And as for Tommy getting audience members to flash their boobs and the dancers with their arse cheeks hanging out …. Doesn’t anyone have the courage to explain the concept of “changing community standards” to these guys?
On the way out of the stadium I heard countless stories of parents trying to explain such an anachronistic spectacle to their children.
Now, I was told they were great the following night so I base this rather scathing comment only on what I saw at Wembley: Motley Crue are a parody of themselves but the fact it’s them playing Motley Crue means there are precious few reasons to laugh.
(PS: “Kickstart My Heart” – their best song – was awesome)
Chuntering is a northern English word that’s kind of like a cross between chattering and whinging. We were still chuntering about The Crue – and the sun was still up – when Sheffield’s finest, Def Leppard, took to the stage.
Alarmingly, opener “Take Want You Want” was echoey. “Let’s Get Rocked” was, as always naff.
And at this point I should say something about the layout of the famous venue. About a fifth of the seats in the stands – behind and to the sides of the stage – were covered. The playing surface, however, was only one-third full of seats – there were no standing tickets at all.
This concept no doubt allowed promoters to charge more and from the stage, Wembley Stadium would have looked magically full – when it was anything but. In fact, two merry lads at the back of the field had about 150 square metres to themselves and entertained 30,000 people with duelling air guitars!
Eventually, Def Leppard found their groove – and it’s a profoundly impressive note-perfect one. I could not have imagined when I first heard ‘Rock Of Ages’ on my aunty’s veranda in 1983 that I would hear it played 40 years later in such compelling fashion, in no way watered down by the passing of the years.
“Hysteria” is allowed to stretch its harms above its head and show off a little, the songs from the over-rated Diamond Star Halos invite a second chance from the listener and by the end of the night you know how important tonight is to them – the first time they’ve played on this hallowed ground since 2005 with their only previous experience in 1992.
Mammoth three skulls, Motley one and Def Leppard four and a half. I like the back catalogues of the headliners about equally but the live experience could not have contrasted more sharply.
It’s one thing to do the mental gymnastics of separating the art from the artist. There’s an exponentially greater degree of difficulty in separating the artist from the art performed live and then considering the art committed to acetate separately again.
But here’s the thing: with Motley their art on record is one thing while their art live seems to be a greater reflection of them as flawed individuals.
The obsessiveness and perfectionism that meant Hysteria cost millions of pounds with dozens of overdubs over three and a half years still defines Def Leppard. And the recklessness and wantonness that meant Nikki Sixx died of a heroin overdose before being brought back to life – lamentably – still defines Motley Crue.
