Def Leppard / Cheap Trick
London O2 Arena
Joe Elliott and co’s Hysteria victory lap comes to the capital, and there is much... well, hysteria.
Leppard fever has set in. As gaggles of men and women in Hysteria T-shirts exit North Greenwich station, a busker warbles his way through the album we’re here for, and the TFL noticeboard is adorned with a truly terrible poem built around their song titles (“Love Bites and so does a dangerous Animal”, “Tonight’s the night to be Armageddon It…”).
In 2017 Hysteria turned 30, and Team Def
Leppard have been celebrating ever since with deluxe reissues and worldwide touring. Now, as 2018 closes, they’ve come to London for their first ever headline show at the 02.
It’s the right time for Leppard to go large. Turbocharged, steroid-pumped and nitpicked with one of the most obsessive producers in the industry – in an era characterised by bottomless budgets – Hysteria also happened to boast fantastic tunes, which turned the Sheffield hopefuls into stars. It earned them a lot of sneering and scoffing as well, though the 25 million-plus sales worldwide presumably take the edge off that.
So they’re playing the whole thing from start to finish, no surprises or tricks. It’s the very definition of
‘giving the people what they want’.
But tonight isn’t just about Leppard.
Early birds in the enormous arena are treated to a sparkling opening set from Illinois’s finest, Cheap Trick. As it quickly becomes apparent, if you’re going to throw everything at a massive tour this is who you’d want. “Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the stage the best fucking rock band you’ve ever seen,” a woman purrs over the tannoy, as Rick Nielsen, Robin Zander and co. blast into a tight opening trio of gleeful rock’n’roll stomps Hello There, Big Eyes and (Move cover) California Man. Nielsen lobs increasingly generous fistfulls of plectrums into the crowd, and he and Zander command the stage with more high-octane pizzazz than we have any right to expect from two 60-something dudes in slightly weird suit’n’hat combos. In discussions of A-list rock voices that have/haven’t survived the test of time, Zander tends to be rather overlooked. But he ranks among the best tonight, as triumphant in heartfelt power ballad The Flame as the spine-tinglingly joyful I Want You To Want Me. Aware that this isn’t ‘their’ crowd, they stick to the stuff everyone knows (Cheap Trick fan or not) and it works like a charm.
Surrender and Goodnight bring things careering to an end, and Nielsen moves on from throwing plectrums to (slightly alarmingly) vinyl; hurtling it into the ducking crowd with gusto. Everyone’s cheering heartily by now, so he whips out the fivenecked guitar (well, they are opening for Def Leppard after all, who are playing Hysteria in full; clearly now’s the time for five-necked guitars) and we all quietly agree that the bar has been set very high.
And then it’s time. The lights go down, the audience roars, a mash-up of Leppard tunes booms into the darkness, and the curtain lifts to reveal Phil Collen – topless and gleaming like a box-fresh GI Joe – striking the opening notes of Women. We shouldn’t be surprised; Collen hasn’t worn a shirt for more than five minutes since about 1983. Though in fairness, if we were that ripped at 60 we’d want to show it off too. Besides, there are plenty of flashy visuals and close-ups of all of them to draw our gaze in, as the killer first portion of the record gets under way. Rocket, Animal, Love Bites… fucking hell, no wonder Joe Elliott’s literally skipping across the stage, strident frontman poses teleported from his youth in pristine condition.
His wardrobe, however, has been updated
(tank tops replaced with tasteful jackets and jeans) while bassist Rick Savage looks pretty much exactly as he did in ‘87. Which is basically what you want when something so rampantly of-its-time as Pour Some Sugar On Me (Leppard’s… ahem, rap-inspired moment) is on the cards. ‘Razzle ‘n’ a dazzle ‘n’ a flash a little light’, ‘You got the peaches I got the cream!’… Less Public Enemy, more Vanilla Ice. So magnificently stupid it’s ingenious.
After a robust Armageddon It, a projection of the late, great Steve Clark – Leppard’s gnarlier first guitarist and songwriter, who died at 30 of alcohol poisoning – offers a reminder of the key member and ‘Terror Twin’ who didn’t make it (the other, Collen, quit drinking in the 80s). Other old and new photos of the band, the line-up of which hasn’t changed for 26 years, add a charmingly nostalgic, family photo album-ish effect.
There’s no getting away from the fact that Elliott can only just hit the highest notes these days, but he works round it well – the rest of his range is strong, and the audience are more than happy to join in for those peak-falsetto choruses. And he’s got rocksolid backing. Collen and Vivian Campbell shred with soul, and no matter how many times people point out how impressive a one-armed drummer is, Rick Allen never disappoints.
The final two tracks (which, let’s be honest, are where you’d most likely go to the loo or the bar) bring Hysteria home, before they return for an encore of select highlights from across their career. Well, they steer clear of anything post-90s. But while not having to sit through, say, anything from 2002’s horrifying boyband foray X is a true blessing, they could’ve easily included a track from 2015’s self-titled comeback. Go on fellas, swap the drippy When
Love And Hate Collide for Dangerous or Man Enough next time, eh? Still, Wasted is an oomphy treat,
Let’s Get Rocked is as joyous as it is brain dead
(ie extremely so), and Photograph leaves sugar-high grins in its wake.
There are those who lament bands trading off glories of yore as flagrantly as tonight’s headliners. But when said glories are like those of Def Leppard and Cheap Trick… well, is it really such a bad thing? The mood throughout was celebratory, not stale. Def Leppard might not be relevant to most of the ‘kids’ today, but for the kids inside the 20,000 people at the O2 tonight they remain eternally so.
Words: Polly Glass Photos: Kevin Nixon