Cheap Trick lead singer Robin Zander opens the night. ( David Swanson / Staff Photographer )
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Which band are you more interested in?
No new spots, but then, none needed
Def Leppard, Poison, and Cheap Trick stuck to what they do best, and that was great.
At the end of Def Leppard's show Tuesday night, lead singer Joe Elliott offered the audience at the Susquehanna Bank Center a deal: "Don't forget about us, and we won't forget about you."
It was a moment of unusual vulnerability for a band whose most fervent pronouncements generally involve the word rock. But gratitude was the order of the night. Def Leppard, Poison, and Cheap Trick, who kicked off a seven-week tour in Camden, don't have much in common except paunches and power ballads. They were all just happy to be there.
In Def Leppard's case, remembering their fans meant focusing overwhelmingly on old material. "Nine Lives," the Tim McGraw co-penned single from last year's Songs from the Sparkle Lounge, was the only song released after 1993. Based on the polite stares and closed mouths that greeted the newish outlier, the lack of fresh material did not matter much.
Although nominally heavy metal, Def Leppard's songs hinge on monster choruses and multipart harmonies; they're a pop band in bondage gear. As "Bringin' on the Heartbreak" gathered speed, Elliott bounced around the stage in a frock coat like an eager English lord, juicing the audience singalongs with his outstretched hands.
It wasn't just the headliners who showed their appreciation. Poison's Bret Michael was positively burbling, thanking the crowd for "allowing me to keep doing what I love for 22 years." Considering how many years have elapsed since the band's last hit, Michaels' effusiveness would seem entirely appropriate. It proved contagious for the rest of the band as well, prompting a performance that was energetic if hardly earth-shattering.
Separated by time and good sense from the eyelinered excesses of their glory years, Poison seemed almost scrappy, notwithstanding the flame-shooting effects whose frequent deployment only underlined the lack of other stage gimmickry. The stripped-down-by-default approach paid surprising dividends, revealing a number of tidy melodies once buried under glam-metal bombast. C.C. DeVille's flamboyantly tuneless guitar solos brought many a song to a screeching halt, but even his furious fretting couldn't strip the candy coating off "Nothing But a Good Time."
Power-pop godfathers Cheap Trick felt no need to hide their hooks under a bushel. Cramming a half-dozen gems into a 40-minute set, they still found room for more new songs than the evening's other acts combined. Singer Robin Zander started off slow, but he kicked into high gear with "Sick Man of Europe," taken from the just-released The Latest. "I'm sure you'll hear a lot of that on the radio," quipped guitarist Rick Nielsen, acknowledging that, like their tourmates, they're more likely to be heard on a PlayStation than a car stereo. But for one night, they had control of the dial and never gave their audience a chance to change the station.
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