Burlington, IA - Media Reviews

Good boating, great band: Def Leppard brings rock to BSD stage By Bob Saar

Last night was a perfect night for Boatin'.

Just warm enough, just humid enough for summer clothes. No rain or wind, and no may flies swarming the carnival lights. More than 100 pleasure boats drifted off the waterfront for the evening's concert.

"I love Steamboat Days," Mike Jackson of Missouri said. "This is just a great deal."

Jackson plans his summer vacations around the June fest.

After a set by LMNOP on the south stage, Def Leppard, an enduring band from Sheffield, England, took over the main stage with no opening act, preferring to enjoy the time on stage as long as possible.

Thursday's headliners, Poison, for example, wanted an opening act to ensure darkness for their pyrotechnical displays.

Leppard picked up the hard rock banner laid down the night before by Poison; both bands are popular rock warhorses with modern day drawing power.

The audience was a typical melange of fans, from old hippies and bikers to yuppie dads and soccer moms with children.

Leppard's music, although of the same basic guitar bass drums vehicle that all heavy metal heroes adhere to, is more primal and less cerebral than Poison's; the Les Pauls and Stratocasters are not passed to stagehands in exchange for acoustic guitars; pianos are not employed.

This is straightforward arm pumping rock anthemia.

Rick Allen's legendary drumming - he plays most of his specially designed drums with his bare feet laid down a solid foundation for Leppard's hits, including "Armageddon It," "Pour Some Sugar On Me" and "Love Bites."

Leppard was distinctly louder than previous bands this year. The sound pressure level measured at the audio tent, about 30 yards from the stage, was above 100 decibels.

That would put the music at more than 130 decibels in front on the stage in the VIP area.

The bottom end was particularly heavy, but savvy concertgoers used to Steamboat Days' high energy weekend bands wore earplugs.

"I couldn't walk for a week if I got that close to that bass," one onlooker joked from in front of the auditorium.

Though somewhat cliche ridden in their stage delivery, Def Leppard carried on the tradition of throbbing metal concert hysteria in high style, and the appreciative boatin' crowd loved them to the end.

By The Hawk Eye 2003.

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Def Leppard mixes new and old By Criss Roberts

Day Two of '80s Weekend. Def Leppard takes the stage in what is one of those great coups that the Steamboat Days Committee regularly seems to pull off.

They got 'N Sync while they were rising up the charts. Same with 98 Degrees.

Def Leppard has been around before, playing arenas that the whole town of Burlington could fill three times over, but this reunion tour was hugely successful when it stepped off the bus for the current tour.

But to call this an '80s band is to underestimate them.

"I would hate to be called a nostalgia act," said Joe Elliott, lead singer for Def Leppard in a recent interview with the Saint Paul Pioneer Press. "For one thing, we're still creating and playing new and original material. We've put out albums in 2002, 1999, 1996 - we're still putting out records and touring.

"And we're not playing small clubs. We're playing arenas and large theaters."

This tour is in support of "X," the band's 10th studio album. There certainly will be some choices from that, but Def Leppard has no intention of leaving its hits off the program.

"Of course, when we get into the home stretch of a show, there are certain songs - I don't want to say we have to play them because we don't, but there are certain songs we will play, like 'Pour Some Sugar on Me,' because we enjoy playing them," Elliott told the Pioneer Press. "And we don't want to disappoint people."

The wailing guitars, pounding drums and other heavy metal/hard rock accouterments still have that certain charm for the band's hugely loyal fan base, who are expected to swell the riverfront crowd to near record proportions, waiting to be sweetened up.

By The Hawk Eye 2003.

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