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Mötley Crüe announces summer tour, plays headlining show at Madison Square Garden

Of all the excesses associated with the glam metal music of 1980’s Los Angeles, perhaps no group is more intertwined with drugs, sex, and rock and roll than Vince Neil, Nikki Sixx, Mick Mars, and Tommy Lee (especially Tommy Lee). The band totes an impressive record of rehabs, DWIs, overdoses, and sex tapes in addition to multi-platinum albums and 20 years of top-grossing concerts. While hair metal was considered all but dead during the 1990s as grunge and rap metal ruled the airwaves of rock radio, the resurgence of ‘nostalgia acts’ such as the Crüe and their contemporaries like Poison and Warrant has been growing in recent years, and Mötley Crüe has been leading the way, hosting summer tours known as ‘Crüefest’ and releasing a new album that sounds relatively fresh without abandoning the band’s original, distinctive pop-metal styling.

 

Monday was the official announcement of Crüefest 2, a summer arena tour that will feature Godsmack, Theory of a Deadman, Drowning Pool, and Charm City Devils supporting Mötley Crüe. Inexplicably, as of the currently listed tour dates, the nearest New York metro area show is in Camden, NJ, hours from the city, despite a Jones Beach show during last year’s tour. The intense publicity for the tour announcement included a press conference in the Fuse studios across the street from Madison Square Garden, as well as an interview for the Fox News Channel.

 

Monday night’s show at the Garden brought in a massive crowd, as adults now well into their 30s and 40s relived the music (and clothing) of their youth. Starting promptly at 9:15 pm, the band opened with the classic anthem Kickstart My Heart, setting the tone for the evening with plenty of noise and pyro. The audience was enthralled from the start, cheering raucously and singing along to every song. The four musicians seemed exceedingly comfortable moving about the large stage, playing songs written over two decades earlier on the Sunset Strip with the ease and effortlessness of musicians who know each others’ every move and thought.

 

Old hits and new favorites made up the 16 song setlist, from fist-pumping rock gems such as Shout at the Devil and Too Fast For Love, to the title track of their newest album, Saints of Los Angeles. Breaking up the time between songs, drummer Tommy Lee, long the posterchild for the excesses of the rock and roll lifestyle, came out from behind his drum kit and addressed the crowd with a bottle of Jaegermeister, which he then handed off into the crowd to be drank and passed around. By far the most entertaining band member, Lee ranted and rambled on for several minutes, eventually leading into another new song, Motherf-cker of the Year. 

 

Between other classic Crüe songs and a hyper-extended solo by guitarist Mars, the band also performed a cover of Elvis Presley’s Jailhouse Rock, which came out surprisingly well for a band whose cover of Helter Skelter made most Beatles fans cringe. Wrapping up the show with hits such as Girls, Girls, Girls and Dr. Feelgood, the group encored with the piano-led power ballad Home Sweet Home, accompanied by a two-minute shower of confetti across the arena, concluding an impressive performance by a band many critics wrote off as finished over a decade ago.

 

Mötley Crüe is not comprised of the world’s most proficient musicians, nor the greatest songwriters. Their lyrics are simple and often cheesy, and the entire band’s persona seems like a cheap cliché. But when it comes to rock n’ roll, which in its heart revels in the excesses and frivolities of life, no band plays with as much genuine affection for the lifestyle as the boys in Mötley Crüe.