Denver, CO - Media Reviews

Def Leppard @ Red Rocks By Colorado Springs Gazette-Telegraph

What a difference six months can make.

Def Leppard rolled through Denver's MicNichols Arena back in February with two shows that produced spectacular box-office sales.

A full concert video to be released early next year and, in some ways, a less-than spectacular performance.

Part of the problem with the shows was the rather superfluous stage design.

Which put the band in the middle of the huge arena to play 'In the Round'.

This made Def Leppard seem like less of a unified band and more like a group of vie individual performers.

Saturday night, in the first of two sold-out shows at Red Rocks Ampthitheatre, there was obviously only one place to put the stage.

And that made the show much more pleasing to watch.

The best parts of Def Leppard's show in February remained the best parts Saturday night.

And the worst parts remained the worst.

Propping up in the middle of the show were some very heavy offerings.

'Gods Of War' was so powerful that it's climactic, end-of-the-world finale threatened to shale the sandstone rocks of the amphitheatre to the ground.

Supporting the fiery nature of the song was an impressive light show that set the stage ablaze with multitudes of color and flashing light.

Gutsy renditions of 'Die Hard The Hunter' and 'Foolin'' surrounded a tasteful presentation of 'Bringin' On the Heartbreak', much different from its original version from Def Leppard's 1981 record, 'High 'n' Dry'.

Instead the intense volume and brute strength relevant throughout the rest of the night, 'Heartbreak' found itself a new representation through the excellent acoustic guitar work of Phil Collen and the electric guitar of Steve Clark.

The worst parts of the show didn't really detract from the performance all that much, but they're definitely worth taking into consideration in the future of the band.

Vocalist Joe Elliott had a difficult time with the higher notes Saturday, as he did the last time the band was in town.

Even his speaking voice between songs sounded like it was on the brink of collapse.

How he manages to continue to sing is baffling."

Although he did actually succeed in hitting most of the notes he needed throughout the night, you could tell he was straining all the way."

Also, the guitar solo still has its place on the stages of rock 'n' roll shows, but if it's done as poorly as the two that were served up Saturday night.

Steve Clark's solo was not much more than a lot of noise, a lot of sound and lighting effects, and not much originality.

Collen, although the better of the two guitarists by a long shot, didn't do much better.

His playing was more inventive, but his solo ended abruptly with little structure and left a big empty feeling when it was over.

Guitarists need to structure their solos into the framework of a show if they're to make them work.

By Colorado Springs Gazette-Telegraph 1988.

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Def Leppard @ Red Rocks By Mick Wall

It was Joe Elliott's friend, Bono, who originally suggested Red Rocks as a venue to be included on Leppard's next American tour.

"We've been mates for a while now, and whenever we're both at home in Dublin we tend to hang out together," says Joe. "U2 recorded their live album, "Under A Blood Red Sky", here, and Bono told me all about the place. He said 'You've got to play at Red Rocks if you're going to be playing in Colorado this summer. It's a totally unique experience!' After a recommendation like that we just had to come here and give it a crack..."

And so they do. Playing a kingsize American arena, cranking it out on the big stage to a five-figure audience of moonstruck teenagers, has, from the very beginning, been where the Leppard ideal has found its truest expression. It's what they were built to do best.

"The bigger the place, the bigger the occasion, the more we thrive on it," affirms Joe. "We've never looked that convincing, really, on a tiny stage, two-feet off the ground in the corner of some club.

"But give us plenty of room to move and the facilities to put on a proper show, and we really start to come into our own. We really do need that kind of setting to show what we can really do.

In essence, the set the band are turning in on this tour is much the same as the one they were touting around the UK last April. 'Stagefright' still opens the show ("It's either there or nowhere,' as Joe put it. "It would seem kinda silly anywhere else in the set.") and as the curtain finally drops and the band appear to shoot like stars in five different directions at once, Red Rocks clambers to its feet and wails...

They're 13 months into this trip, and on stage Leppard are as slick as a well-oiled gun. 'Rock Rock...', 'Women', 'Hysteria', 'Animal', a newly included 'Run Riot', the plot is a familiar one by now, yet somehow more spellbinding with each retelling.

As Joe says, this is a show and a half. The lasers dance like green goblins across the face of the Rocks during 'Women'; snake across a screen that hovers over the front of the stage for the climax to 'Hysteria'; then entwine Steve Clark and Phil Collen in their own seperate cages, prisoners of the swirling green lights, for the moody new acoustic intro to 'Bringing On The Heartbreak'.

But the lights and the showmanship are just the icing on tha cake. What really inflames the scenes is the exhilarating spectacle of the performance the band manage to pack in.

No longer enjoying the luxury of playing in-the-round with their backs against a wall in outdoor arenas, the band still mange to crawl over every inch of the stage, popping up on top of their huge black amps, or striding across catwalks wired from the rigging, running rings around each other like pinballs zinging out of the shoot, all the time nailing down t he rhythm in cool ruthless strokes, or scratching out another of their spidery, head-turning riffs.

The audience, which has to be at least 60 per cent female, laps it up like wide-eyed babes and drools for more. Pour Some Sugar On Me' and 'Rock Of Ages' finish the job with style. The stage-lights die and the crowd begins their long howl for more, lighted matches and lighters twinkling in the darkness, then gasps as the band reappear, cloaked in watery lasers and billowing dry ice, and descend stealthily into the subterranean love-gone-wrong-and-then-gone-weird emotional vistas of 'Love Bites'. The spell doesn't last long, Red Rocks being thrown into utter turmoil again as the number winks out like a dead candle and the cartwheeling riff to 'Photograph' comes rolling out of the speakers like a freight train on greased wheels.

When it's over they exit from the stage a second time. There's a pause just long enough to make you think it might really be over, then the lights flash on and there they are again - the four-man frontline all stripped to the waist, save for Steve Clark who's wearing a Union Jack and polished black mirror shades cranking out the grungy old stink-fingered riff to Creedence's 'Travellin' Band'.

Even the big red boulders that tower like sentinels above our heads look like they might be ready to shake some action.

By Mick Wall @ Kerrang! 1988.

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