Gig Review: Mötley Crüe + Def Leppard at Giants Stadium, Sydney

Live Review: Motley Crue + Def Leppard, Giants Stadium, Sydney, Saturday, November 11 2023

By BRIAN GIFFIN

EARLY November in Sydney is just about perfect for the stadium rock experience and Remembrance Day certainly was putting on an ideal climate – eight or so degrees less than forecast and a light breeze across the ground tempering the moderate heat.

That heat was about to be turned up as rock superstars Def Leppard hit the stage with “Take What You Want”, the opener from last year’s Diamond Star Halos set, bringing the entire arena to its feet. When Joe Elliott asked “Do you wanna get rocked?,” the excitement level went up even more and for the next hour and a half Sydney was carried by Def Leppard’s impeccable harmonies, showmanship, chemistry and slick, upbeat rock songs. They look good, they play well off each other, the enormous screens revisit images from their past as the deliver hit after hit with immaculate style – “Foolin’” takes anyone who might have been there back to their first Oz tour 39 years ago, “Animal” is ablaze with licks from Phil Collen and Vivian Campbell, “Armageddon It” gets fists pumping everywhere. Mid-set the acoustics come out for the rather Bon Jovi-like “This Guitar” and a singalong through “When Love and Hate Collide”; “Rocket” turns the rock back on with gusto. Collen and Campbell trade off leads and guitar harmonies as they take centre stage for “Switch 625” that Rick Allen rounds out with a drum solo to massive applause.

It’s when the opening notes of Hysteria’s anthemic “Pour Some Sugar On Me” come in, however, that Leppard’s show hits the peak. It’s been over an hour and they are not only at the same high energy level they started at, they can go further still and take the crowd with them. “Rock of Ages” soars like the gods and “Photograph” ends with just as high a note, the giant screens piling up with photos going back to their early days as the band wheel breezily around stage to close a flawless set of exemplary arena rock.

In contrast with Def Leppard’s breezy, easy going and wide-eyed fun, Mötley Crüe was spiky, jagged and disjointed. Like the Hell to Def Leppard’s Heaven, the Crüe kick off with the heavy hitting stomp of “Wild Side”, barely-clad dancing girls helping Vince Neil on back-ups, upside-down crosses dangling from above. Going off other reviews including the one of the show at Wembley in July, I was prepared for an absolute shitshow but to be fair, it wasn’t a complete disaster. Neil appears to be in a little better shape than he was during the falsely-named Farewell Tour and seems to be putting in a bit more of an effort vocally, but even then he’s still straining. The rapid-fire delivery of “Shout at the Devil” is beyond him and he gets a bit of shriek off in “Live Wire” after at least one previous attempt. For their part, the rest of the band sound mean – Nikki’s bass is monstrous and Tommy’s drums are huge. The yin to Sixx’s yang, John 5 tears strips off his guitar as he swirls and spins in his enormous white PVC coat, looking totally out of place.

“Let’s do some singing!” Vince proclaims as one of their dancers hands him a guitar for “Don’t Go Away Mad” and the crowd indeed does most of his job for him, he struggles through “Live Wire” but “Looks that Kill” isn’t too bad. It’s just about now that the guy next to me – who’d offered me a swig from a hip flask early in the night and then spent about half of Leppard’s set in the queue at the bar – got busted by security and is led out of the ground. His wife barely even notices, so she was clearly enjoying the show way more, though she did start texting him a bit later when he obviously wasn’t coming back.

While Neil takes a break, Nikki invites a young woman holding up a sign onto the stage for a selfie and 5 takes a solo ahead of a shambolic train wreck of a medley that ends with “Fight For Your Right (to Party)” for some reason. After that, Tommy Lee shows everyone he’s learned absolutely nothing, still a gangly degenerate 15-year old hormone as he stalks to the front of the stage to get the ladies to show their “titties”, the direct opposite of how nice Nikki had been to their onstage visitor only a few minutes before. “Home Sweet Home” is wobbly and then it’s full speed to the end, somehow holding on through a careening avalanche of “Dr Feelgood”, “Girls, Girls, Girls” and more to a climactic “Kickstart My Heart” to bring the evening to a fittingly spectacular conclusion.

More motley and scrappy than ever before with their weird out-of-place (but phenomenally talented) guitarist and clearly still out-of-shape frontman, the Crüe can still entertain even when it seems like they’re barely holding it together. Def Leppard, on the other hand, simply don’t have any such worries: a peerless live band.

IMAGES: Third Eye Visuals AU

MÖTLEY CRÜE – 3 SKULLS

DEF LEPPARD – 5 fucking SKULLS