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“You guys seem to like the old sh-t, huh?” Motley Crue vocalist Vince Neil asked the audience Thursday night in Calgary.
It was not far into the cosy set at the Saddledome — which clocked in at less than an hour-and-a-half —when Neil made the unnecessary query. Any band that has chugged along for nearly 45 years can safely assume it’s primarily the “old sh-t” that keeps people coming back. But Thursday’s show showed Motley Crue to be an enterprise fuelled entirely by nostalgia and memories of (presumably) better days.
The show was the first of four arena concerts programmed this year by the Calgary Stampede and kicked things off with a suitably loud, flash-over-substance vibe that kept the party-ready crowd enthused. The Crue — which now features Neil, drummer Tommy Lee, bassist Nikki Sixx and guitarist John 5 — took to the stage after some piped-in uplifting choral and orchestral music and a funny, technically savvy video intro that had a newscaster prattling on about rioting in the streets and pirate radio (or something like that.) Opening numbers Primal Scream and Too Fast For Love flew past in a screechy, dry-iced haze, but the band quickly found its groove with old chestnuts such as Wild Side and Shout at the Devil.
Motley Crue never seemed the likeliest candidate for longevity, creatively or otherwise. Not unlike their business-savvy forbearers KISS, the band has wrung a lot of life from what was often stubbornly ordinary songs. With a few exceptions — the killer guitar riffs in Dr. Feelgood, for instance — Motley Crue’s thin canon of memorable music often seemed custom-designed to highlight the comparative brilliance of peers such as Guns N’ Roses, especially in the song department. Nevertheless, with 43 years under their belts and 100-million albums sold, Crue has chalked up enough sing-a-long hits to anchor a show, particularly one that is relatively brief and encore-free.
Dogs of War, an impressively thundering metal anthem, was the only recent song in the mix. Sadly, it was saddled with a silly video and sexy back-up dancers sporting elaborate masks that gave it all an unfortunate Spinal-Tap vibe. The fact that it was followed by a lengthy and old-school “let’s-give-the-band-a-breather” guitar solo by John 5 didn’t help matters in that regard.
In fact, not all of the Crue’s schtick has aged particularly well. At one point, Tommy Lee emerged from behind the drum set for a pep talk, imploring the audience to raise their beers and bare their breasts in order to capture some sort of Stampede spirit . It gave off a whiff of sad desperation. “Even male titties are good!” Lee pleaded.
But Thursday’s show also had its highlights, including a fierce run through the aforementioned Dr. Feelgood and a fun medley that featured Crue’s version of Smokin’ In the Boys Room and covers of the Beatles Helter Skelter, the Sex Pistols’ Anarchy in the U.K., The Ramones’ Blitzkrieg Bop and the Beastie Boys’ (You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party!) The inclusion of the Pistols and Ramones seemed to echo the perhaps dubious argument made by many a hair-metal band over the years that they were the true inheritors of punk’s unhinged, DIY approach. Whether you buy into that or not, it seems like those sharp genre divisions have faded over the decades.
A case in point was opening-act Default, a Canadian band in the Nickelback mode that embraced a phase-two, grunge-lite sound in the late 1990s. The act’s secret weapon is vocalist Dallas Smith, who has enjoyed a second career in mainstream country. Among the songs Default offered Thursday was a cover of Like a Stone by Audioslave, the supergroup led by the late Chris Cornell of Soundgarden.
These days, it’s easy to forget that the grunge genre once seemed poised to rid the airwaves of Motley Crue and their hair-sprayed breathren for good
That obviously didn’t happen. Thursday’s show suggests the Crue will continue to chug along with mercenary zeal as long as the crowds continue to show up.
So it probably didn’t matter to many that Neil’s voice — never the most pliable of instruments — often strained to maintain its screechy pitch above the din Thursday night. It’s easy to overlook the sudden weariness that seemed to overcome that band when they launched into their swaggering hit, Same Ol’ Situation (SOS). It’s easy to overlook Neil’s mistimed fist pumps during Girls, Girls, Girls.
This is a train fuelled by nostalgia, not creativity or precision. Judging by the all-ages makeup of the crowd, that fuel doesn’t have to come from people who were actually around during the band’s heyday, either. In the end, the Crue remain easy to enjoy and their fans remain easy to impress. That’s the perfect recipe for nostalgia.