All bad things must end touring band gave fans quite the farewell Toronto last night. Opener Alice Cooper gave a masterful performance, too ... If All Bad Things Must End tour is truly the final hurray for Hollywood heavy-metal mavens Mötley Crüe, then it was quite the farewell gave their fans Sunday night at the Molson Canadian Amphitheatre.
For two hours on the nose, the 33-year-old quartet singer Vince Neil, 53; guitarist Mick Mars, 63; bassist Nikki Sixx, 55, and drummer Tommy Lee, 51, personified the notion that excess makes the heart grow fonder. I could never have enough explosions flashpot eardrum-breaking; no shortage of shooting plumes of fire; no limit in the showers of fireworks raining down on the stage for the band to feel they were doing anything less than a disservice to more than 16,000 filled the place.
With their amps they went to "11" (and my second point of view section, the instruments always high enough to wash over sharp ridge of Neil), these dukes of debauchery spared no expense on the visual heavy pyrotechnic up such an extent that his two female harmony singers and dancers with long legs and busty often change their costumes.
And the public, perhaps anxious in this era of political correctness musically to cut loose and be transported back in time to relive their fantasies of heavy metals - or maybe just realized that this could be a historic occasion as to Crüe final appearance in Toronto - the love returned tenfold.
With some of the men who wore wigs and some throwback women squeezing in low-cut dresses she wore for the first time for decades that partied like it was the 80s glam-metal scene again, singing at the party top of your lungs with Neil for "Wild side", dancing in their seats and on top of each other during the "Shout at The Devil", hoisting their glasses of beer and high-fiving each other in the great celebration of witness their antiheroes in action.
"How many of you out there you are crazy mother * $%! Res?" Asked rhetorically Neil almost to the point of the series 20-track half way, as if I knew the answer I would get.
Neil and Sixx - the old account that looked long enough in the tooth to give up the glamor makeup of his youth, the latter ignoring that same lesson - spent time stalking the stage and work the crowd, leaving Mars worrying thick chugging riffs and leads anthems like "Dr. Feelgood" and "Kickstart My Heart" and Lee pound out rhythms giant elevator.
And yes, according to tradition, solo Lee was to be attached to
"The Cobra", a long subject, steel neck that allowed the battery to slide to the top of the stage, turned 360 degrees, and you to demonstrate their gravity-defying stick handling skills . . . although, to his credit, played along with pre-recorded instead of the usual exhibition of 180 beats per second that the batteries are prone to making music.
Another highlight was about Nikki Sixx as he unapologetically colorful and told the story of the birth of Mötley Crüe, expressing gratitude for "being alive", although his version of events ignores some of the rough edges after the band endured and ultimately survived.
There was bad blood spilled tonight, and that the band took its final bow on a small b-stage in the middle of the crowd serenaded with "Home Sweet Home", one wonders if this is the final or just a short break on the way to Reunionville.
It is with no small sense of irony that his warm-up act, the eternally ageless and legendary Alice Cooper, is celebrating its 50 years of unofficially in music, and shows no signs of slowing.
In fact, the old Black Eyes seems to be improving with age, making a tight set of 13 songs that focused on his series of early 70s rock anthems -
"Hello Hooray", "No More Mr. Nice Guy "and" I'm Eighteen "among them - and an emphasis on theater forever.
With a tight five-piece band with three guitarists, including Nita Strauss, Cooper appeared with a red-striped suit and spats. Before the next 50 minutes were over, I'd be wearing a lab coat, a straitjacket, a boa constrictor (and man, the snake was huge!) Being attacked by a zombie nurse, transforms into a giant Frankenstein's monster, and loses his head through the guillotine.
It was a masterful performance, and something of a homecoming for the star born in Detroit, the Toronto connection, producer Bob Ezrin, was recognized in silence for the end of "out of school" that segued into Pink Floyd "Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2), "Ezrin both productions.
So while Mötley Crüe grinds to an end in early 2015, Alice Cooper becomes Dorian Gray. Something tells me this may not be the last we see of this heterogeneous group.
