Def Leppard, Journey tour to bring hits to Summerfest
NEW YORK - Def Leppard and Journey have hit the road together for a 60-show tour, but they promise there won’t be any squabbles over which band headlines each night.
“If it’s 60 shows, it’s 30 each. Simple as that,” said Joe Elliott, lead singer of Def Leppard. “You know, it’s pretty logical the way it’s going to work.”
The two bands will take turns closing out shows in 58 cities, including concerts at iconic venues such as Boston’s Fenway Park, Chicago’s Wrigley Field, The Forum in Los Angeles and New York’s Madison Square Garden, an arena where Def Leppard will play its firstever full concert.
The bands also headline the American Family Insurance Amphitheater at Summerfest in Milwaukee on July 4.
The tour is the second time the two bands have toured together. Def Leppard and Journey first teamed up in 2006, and both bands remember those days.
Neal Schon, a founding member and lead guitarist of Journey, said it was a “no-brainer” to get the bands back together. “Musically, I think that we match up amazingly well.”
Elliott agreed: “It was such a great tour, and I don’t think either of us has ever forgotten how brilliant it was.”
While both bands have continued to make new music, expect the tour to focus on the hits. Def Leppard won’t leave the stage without “Pour Some Sugar on Me” and “Rock of Ages.” Journey won’t take its bow without offering “Don’t Stop Believin’ “and “Who’s Crying Now.”
“It’s not a curse to have a hit,” Elliott said. “I want to do our hits. I want to do ‘Sugar’ and ‘Photograph’ and ‘Rock of Ages.’ They are the songs that have put us in stadiums. So why would you abandon them now?”
Both bands have weathered line-up changes and the massive shifts in the music industry since the 1970s, riding the wave from vinyl to MP3s, surviving Napster, the rise and decline of MTV, and now fully enjoying the pop-culture embrace of all things from the 1980s.
“We used to tour to promote a record, and now I think we put a record out to promote a tour. You know, it’s wild,” Elliott said. “We survived basically because the audience stuck with us.”
Def Leppard is touring fresh from becoming one of the last multiplatinum-selling acts to have its music made available on streaming and download sites. In January, Spotify, iTunes, Amazon and other digital music platforms made the band’s catalog available — and it immediately charted in America and the U.K.
“Our record deal lapsed in 2009, and we weren’t in any great rush to do it because, at the time, we weren’t really sure if this is just a fad,” Elliott said. “We, as a band, wanted then to go through the entire catalog and master everything properly for streaming and download, which had never been done.”
The two bands are still discussing the possibility of a Def Leppard-Journey onstage jam session, with members of both bands belting out a song or two together. They even joke they may write a new one. Possible title?
“‘Don’t Stop Pouring Sugar,’” Elliott said.