Saskatoon, SK - Media Review Quotes

By Cam Fuller

The 13th Man made even 25-year rock veteran Joe Elliott do a double-take. This was the second show of a second leg of the tour, "and you guys are very close, if not the loudest," he said, and meant it. Naturally, the cheering got louder. "It has been 20 years since we first set foot on Canadian soil. I was only six," Elliott joked. "If it's anything like this, we're just going to keep coming back again and again and again." They did just that. Rather than stop at the routine one or two-song encore, the band came back for at least three, including the huge Let's Get Rocked. It's like neither the fans or the band wanted to part.All the more amazing was the lack of any tricks to urge the audience on.

The set was bare, save for a big Def Leppard logo on the floor in that distinctive angular font. There was no video screen, no pyro, no confetti cannon and no lasers. Not even a fake elephant a la Cher. Just the band and hoard of die hard fans, most of whom were in the exact same twentysomething age bracket.

Elliott, wearing a black muscle shirt but looking a little puffy around the middle, strutted from side to side twirling the mike stand and brandishing it like a spear as the nad ground through Bringin' On The Heartbreak, Make Love Like A Man, Rock Rock, Pour Some Sugar On Me and all the greatest hits.

This was rock 'n' roll history in the flesh, a band with a bio that's too unreal for fiction, a band that lost one player to a deadly cocktail of alcohol and pain killers and which somehow pressed on when drummer Rick Allen lost his left arm in a car accident.

By Star Phoenix 2003.

Read the full review at - canada.com

Back

share this page: