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Thursday, 27th August 2015
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St. Paul/Minneapolis, MN - Media Reviews

Def Leppard and friends bring the 80's back to Minnesota State Fair By Ross Raihala

The Minnesota State Fair Grandstand kicked off its sold-out opening weekend Thursday with the world's biggest band (to include a one-armed drummer), Def Leppard.

Thanks to continued airings of the British pop metal group's work on rock radio -- and in strip clubs, where their songs are passed down from generation to generation, like folk music -- Def Leppard can still fill large venues and drew 13,007 fans to the Grandstand.

In many ways, Def Leppard is the ideal fit for the Great Minnesota Get-Together. They make music that sounds like summer, fried food and stomach-churning rides. It's a safe bet many in the crowd once won a British flag Def Leppard mirror at a carnival and proudly displayed it in their high-school locker.

The best news to report from Thursday's concert is that guitarist Vivian Campbell looked happy and healthy. He's been battling Hodgkin's lymphoma for more than two years, and has come in and out of remission twice. Fellow guitarist Phil Collen continues to impress as well, with the 57-year-old spending the show shirtless, showing off the oiled torso of a college athlete. The pair spent much of the show on opposite sides of the stage, but played together with effortless ease.

Then there's Joe Elliott. Like many other aging metal singers, Elliott has struggled with his voice for years and Thursday was no different.

He's not as awful as modern-day Vince Neil, nor as bizarre as David Lee Roth, but Elliott remains the weak spot in Def Leppard. At times, the electronic trickery applied to what's left of his vocals left him sounding almost robotic, particularly during "Love Bites." (After playing Sioux Falls earlier this month, Elliott posted an apology on Facebook: "I'm sure you noticed, my voice completely went out ... but the crowd was just amazing!")

Tesla, a band mostly followed by older brothers during their heyday, opened the evening with an hour focused on singles drawn from the band's first three albums. Their 1990 acoustic cover of the hippie-era hit "Signs" stands, by far, as their best-known song, and it predictably earned the warmest response of the show.

With their endless mugging (guitarist James "J.Y." Young being the worst offender) and sometimes shrill songcraft, a little bit of Styx goes a long way. They work best on these nostalgia bills when they're not headlining, as was the case Thursday. They played 10 songs, most from their five-year peak of 1977 to 1981. As usual, they skipped several major hits too closely associated with former lead singer Dennis DeYoung ("Babe," "Mr. Roboto," "Show Me the Way") and instead let vocalist/keyboard player Lawrence Gowan indulge in a late-set medley of Elton John's "Rocket Man," Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" and Otis Redding's "(Sittin' On) the Dock of the Bay."

As far as this stuff goes, Foreigner is a better fit with Def Leppard than Styx, and will take their place when Tesla and Def Leppard return to town Oct. 5 to headline St. Paul's Xcel Energy Center.

By Pioneer Press 2015.


Def Leppard, Styx in fair condition By Chris Riemenschneider

Pronto Pups? Check. Cheese curds? Check. Rock bands that were on the radio during the Carter and Reagan administrations? Triple check.

The Minnesota State Fair’s grandstand concerts kicked off in classic classic-rock fashion Thursday. Def Leppard, Styx and Tesla together added up to the first of the grandstand’s three sold-out concerts. And like the Midway, Coliseum and Space Tower, all three bands’ live acts haven’t changed much in at least three decades.

Opener Tesla had fans partying like it was 1984 from the get-go with its hits “Little Suzi” and “Love Song.” Scarecrow-looking Tesla singer Jeff Keith gave a perfectly Jeff Spicoli-like rah-rah speech to kick off the festivities, too.

“Everything is cool, bitchin’ and outta sight in Minnesota tonight,” he yelled.

Styx was … just so Styxy. The Chicago-reared ’70s prog-rockers turned power-balladeers piled on the corny rock-starry gestures and theatrical drama of songs like “The Grand Illusion” and “Renegade” as if they were Michelangelo showing off the Sistine Chapel.

Singer/keyboardist Lawrence Gowan, who filled the large vacancy left by Dennis DeYoung in 1999, especially proved insufferable Thursday. He pranced around the stage like the star of the band, then he sat down and delivered a melodramatic, piano-bar-ready medley of “Piano Man” and “Bohemian Rhapsody.” The only way to make the moment any cheesier, of course, was to then launch into “Lady.”

Def Leppard’s set was actually reminiscent of Depeche Mode’s commanding performance at the grandstand two summers ago, and not just because of the plethora of leather pants and plucked, greased-up bared chests. Both of the (otherwise dissimilar) bands lived up to the visual appeal of their MTV heydays without all the ozone-depleting hair spray and gloss of that era, and both did their songs justice without the slick production of those old records.

Always a band that had spotty success living up to the mega-slick, big-chorus vocals on its albums, the Def jammers fared OK in that department Thursday, with frontman Joe Elliott decently nearing the key high notes. And anyway, they could have unplugged all the mics during songs like “Animal” and “Love Bites” (early in the set) or “Photograph” and “Rock of Ages,” and the 13,000 fans’ voices would have filled in just fine.

Already a band known for its resiliency — drummer Rick Allen lost his arm in a car wreck in 1985, and guitarist Steve Clark died of alcoholism in 1991 — Def Leppard’s usual show of strength was buoyed greatly this time out by Clark’s replacement, Vivian Campbell. The guitarist, 53, is on tour despite being in remission from Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

Campbell looked and sounded like a true rock star Thursday, his long curly locks shorn but his smile sticking to him like the scarf around his neck. The sentimental high point came as the crowd gave him a big, hearty cheer when Elliott introduced him to kick off “Armageddon It” — a little Minnesota Nice to kick off the Great Minnesota Get-Together.

By Star Tribune 2015.

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