Metal Sludge The Power and the Glory
Motley Crue proves it’s still a blast at farewell show in Green Bay
By: Kendra Meinert, Press-Gazette Media
Green Bay — So that’s it?
Only time will tell if Motley Crue is serious about The Final Tour being last call to see rock’s fearless foursome live, but they sure played like a band dead-set on leaving nothing on the table during their farewell swing through Green Bay’s Resch Center on Tuesday.
No flash pot unlit. No guitar riff unexploited. No f-bomb unsaid.
For better or worse, the band that didn’t want to sound like, look like or “sure the (expletive) didn’t want to act like anybody else” when it formed in 1981 in Los Angeles — as founder Nikki Sixx explained during an oral history of the group’s beginnings midway through the night — has stayed true to its word 33 years later. And in true Crue fashion, without apology.
Before a sold-out crowd of 7,444 wearing every era of Crue T-shirt imaginable, Sixx, Vince Neil, Mick Mars and Tommy Lee proved that if you’re looking for an old-school, heavily tattooed, heavy metal good time, they’re still the guys you want to ring up. Because it’s not a party until someone straps the flamethrower on their bass and seemingly everything onstage, including the microphone suspended from the ceiling, bursts into flames during a blistering “Shout at the Devil,” the audience’s relentless chant punctuated by a mother lode of deafening pyro to blame for widespread eardrum hangovers.
That song was Crue at its best on a night when any signs of the toll of time or wear around the edges was easily overlooked.
Neil’s voice couldn’t always match the power of the band on some of its signature screamers, but, clad in layers of metal-studded leather everything, he was certainly formidable on “(Expletive) of the Year” and lighter fare like “Don’t Go Away Mad (Just Go Away)” and “Smokin’ in the Boys Room.” Mars, who has long been dealing with ankylosing spondylitis, is unable to move around a lot onstage, but he cuts a perfect gothic elder statesman figure in the shadows, stepping out repeatedly, including on “Primal Scream,” to show off his guitar chops.
It was Sixx, who, if there was a hall of fame for rock fashion sense and the art of banging your head, would be a shoo-in, worked both sides of the stage, playfully toying with the crowd one minute and then shredding with venom on “Looks That Kill.”
The production was its usual towering, Motley Crue self but without all the circus sideshow distractions of previous tours to the Resch. Classy, actually. Eye candy was limited to two backup singers/dancers dressed as you’d guess for “Girls Girls Girls” and “Wild Side.” When you’re Motley Crue, you don’t have someone in a black hoodie bring you out your guitar, you have a scantily-clad woman in knee-high stiletto boots strut it out to you.
For reasons unexplained, Lee and his drum kit never took a ride on his Cruecifly roller coaster track that curves 55 feet above the crowd and turns him upside down as he plays. An especially long guitar solo by Mars while the stage crew was visible near Lee and on the track would seem to have indicated technical difficulties.
Luckily, Alice Cooper and his five-piece band were more than generous with theatrics and spectacle during their opening set. From the live snake cozied up around his neck during a fog-engulfed “Welcome to My Nightmare” to the giant monster that roamed the stage at the end of “Feed My Frankenstein” to, of course, the guillotine, there’s something inexplicably cool about Cooper.
Lest the bloody lab coat or his onstage “beheading” would imply he only has a dark side, he came out amid tiny bubbles and giant multicolored balloons as a merry maestro in a top hat and silver glittered tails for “School’s Out.” Then, in true Cooper fashion, he pulled a knife from his pocket and proceeded to slash each one.
Crue capped its two-hour show with a “Home Sweet Home” encore on a small stage that rose above the crowd near the back of the arena. As vintage band clips played on the video screens, it was the night’s bittersweet moment — a reminder, as the “Kickstart My Heart” lyrics go, “Years gone by, I’d say we’ve kicked some a–.”
And so even if all bad things must come to an end, at least it still felt good.
— kmeinert@pressgazettemedia.com and follow her on Twitter @KendraMeinert.
— Photos: H.M. Larson/Press-Gazette Media
The above courtesy of the Green Bay Press Gazette and Kendra Meinert
Metal Sludge
Motley Sludge
