One couldn’t tell that Mick Mars 71 was the oldest performer of the evening, he carried himself with the best of them. However had stated that he was going to get himself in shape for the tour (and after recently seeing Bon Jovi), he did a great job! Tommy Lee who had suffered 4 broken ribs a couple weeks prior to opening night played his first entire set! He was also featured on a piano that rose up from beneath the catwalk for ‘Home Sweet Home’. I had heard that he has never really had a strong stage voice so I wasn’t there to hear studio albums reproduced. Neil addressed the crowd, ‘We’re back, we’re back, you thought we were gone and now were f*****g back… let’s go! The focus would not be on Vince Neil’s voice but his frontman-ship. Two huge inflatable futuristic looking mannequins filled up the already crowded stage for ‘Girls Girls Girls’. Yes there were dancing girls ‘The Nasty Habits’, who also sang and I’m pretty sure they weren’t background tracked. There was what looked to be erector set staging all over the stage with which dancing girls could use to climb. There were four large radio towers or ‘lighting trees’ with spiked tips extending up. A sound from the video screens came on like a breaking news report, ‘For the next 2 hours music will be the only form of communication!’ What seemed to be a stage length partition designed to conceal the stage crew during the turn time doubled as a video screen with the words ‘THE FUTURE IS OURS’, rising up and revealing the set. Being their first major tour in 7 years the anticipation was mounting as even their stage set was reported being shut up a warehouse for over two years. A row of light boxes kept everything captivating and bright during the hour long daylight set. Rikki Rockett had a super cool green kit with the Poison skull and bones on the bass drum, the bones were images of sticks creatively spelling out his name. ‘I don’t care if it snowed, we were coming here to throw a party!’, at 59 he looks great! CC at 60 with long hair, aviator glasses, his red vested top hat and GMP flying V was strong as ever playing a 4 minute solo (far too short to spotlight his talent) that included an excerpt from ‘Eruption’. Poison coming off a 4 year hiatus was simply amazing! The energy alone from Bret Michaels working the crowd (dressed in a black Poison shirt with trademark bandanna) was contagious. She sounded identical to me as she had some 33 years earlier. The fact that Joan had been touring right up to the stadium dates was evident in the fact that she did not miss a single beat throughout the 45 minute set. She immediately got the crowd off their feet, ‘Are you ready for a day of rock and roll?’ Dressed all in black, black Gibson in hand with a pink heart on it ‘Girl Is Not A Four Letter Word’, we could all agree on one thing, that ‘ROCK’ is! The drum kit in like fashion was all in black monogramed on the bass drum, ‘JOAN JETT AND THE BLACKHEARTS’. Joan age 63 came on promptly and without a lot of fan fair. An estimate of the age of the majority of attendees was 50 plus, the atmosphere at our seats pungent and earthy. Of note there was also an opening band ‘Classless Act’ coming in with perfect timing for their debut album just days earlier. I had seen Jett in Spring of ’89 and Poison in 2017 when I showed up for Cheap Trick (the first half of a double-bill), and left a believer in Poison! The order of the 7 hour day was Joan Jett then Poison who were billed as ‘special guests’, next were Motley Crue and Def Leppard on the alternation swapping their order out every other show as ‘co-headliners’. Finally sums it up well as tickets for the 36 city tour originally went on sale in December of 2019! It was my first time seeing Def Leppard (despite many opportunities) and also Crue so I was super-excited. “With a break from the heat but not from the music (a pleasant 80° post 17 days of 90+ heat), the Stadium Tour finally rolled into Charlotte for a Tuesday show.
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