Real Rock Today: September 21, 2015
Scorpions at the Bell Centre: More than a farewell tour
It isn’t every legendary metal frontman who whistles his band’s greatest moment, but we’ll get there.
First, that the Scorpions were here at all, cranking into Going Out With a Bang, was an eye-opener. Wasn’t this a good several years after what I believe was their farewell-Farewell show? And yet as singer Klaus Meine toasted a large and resolutely loyal audience over and over, the Scorpions offered no signs of “going out.” Nor should they have.
Not when they can jam 10,800 into the Bell Centre on a Saturday night with POP Montreal in town, and have that crowd of vets standing for most of the show. Ten thousand! Nobody does that in 2015. In the words of near contemporary Pete Townshend of The Who (more immediately below): as the doors flew open, even the promoter smiled.
Van Halen’s summer-fall tour winding down
After canceling one show last month because of illness, Van Halen returned to the road at full tilt. Singer David Lee Roth’s bout with the flu forced the band to call off their August 23 concert in Hershey, Pa.: “This sucks… Dave has the flu. The show in Hershey tonight has been canceled. Refunds are available at the point of purchase,” bassist Wolfgang Van Halen shared on Twitter.
Fortunately, they’ve been able to continue with the rest of the schedule — and put on a well-received show in upstate New York 2 nights later. “Van Halen arrived at Darien loaded for bear. In an incredibly tight performance spanning the entirety of the band’s tenure with Roth, the group reminded us why we considered them one of the most significant guitar-based bands ever,” according to a review in “The Buffalo News.”
The band offered free lawn seating for their August 27, Camden, N.J. concert to disappointed fans who held tickets for the scrubbed show in Hershey.
Bon Jovi classics set alight the F1 stage at the Padang
SINGAPORE – The 20-year-wait for Bon Jovi to return to Singapore was not a wait in vain – the New Jersey rockers put on a spectacular 1 1/2-hour rock riot at the Padang on Sunday (Sept 20), never mind a technical glitch that marred the iconic guitar solo in their hit Wanted Dead Or Alive.
In fact, it was almost as if those 20 years never happened, for their more recent songs such as those from the 2015 album Burning Bridges did not receive the rapturous response as their classics from the 1990s and earlier.
After their last concert here at the Indoor Stadium in 1995, Bon Jovi returned to a crowd of 55,000, starting promptly at 10.30pm with That’s What The Water Made Me.
Def Leppard shake off the haters
The haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate but Def Leppard are due more credit in rock and roll’s history books than critics generally give them. Taylor Swift certainly thinks so.
The biggest pop star in the world right now performed with Def Leppard in 2008 as part of a US series called Crossroads that paired modern musicians together with their idols from yesteryear.
Swift reckoned that singing the likes of the hit song Photograph with the band was “my childhood dream come true”.
“My mom was a huge fan of theirs when she was pregnant with me,” she said at the time. “So growing up, the music that was playing in my house was Def Leppard. It was music that she liked that I could like too.”
