Def Leppard - 12th November, 2003

(Click the thumbnails for the big picture.)

We arrived at Zenith a little before things kicked off. In true German fashion, at 8pm on the dot the MC, or possibly just a roadie, came on and introduced the first support act, Ricky Warwick (www.rickywarwick.com). I've never heard of the guy before but I'll certainly be buying his CD, "Tattoos & Alibis". Arms covered in tattoos, Warwick hails from Belfast and plied his trade here in Munich with an acoustic guitar and a strong gravelly voice. During one song he was joined on stage by Lepp guitarist Vivian Campbell.

The sound is rich, honest and not a million miles away from an early Springstein. Definitely one to watch out for.

Next up on the playlist were "Skid Row". It was great to hear some of the songs that I remembered from their 1989 debut album which I still have on vinyl somewhere. Tracks like '18 & Life', 'Youth Gone Wild' and 'I Remember You' brought back a lot of good memories. Sebastian Bach looks pretty rough. Kindof a cross between Kid Rock & Axel Rose but without the true stage presence of either.

Constantly swearing like "We're Skid F*cking Row", "Thanks to Def F*cking Leppard", "Mother F*cking Yeah!" & "Lemme hear ya F*cking sing" did nothing more than make him look like an aging rocker desperate to convince people that's he's still wild and crazy. They played a couple of tracks from their new album, "ThickSkin" which I have to admit were pretty good, although claiming to be the 'New Generation' is stretching the bounds of credibility just a touch. After the allocated 30 minutes we'd heard plenty and it was time to move on.

After a huge welcome it didn't take Def Leppard long to establish the fact that, unlike Skid Row, they've still got it where it counts. The music and stage presence of Joe Elliot & co was spot on the money!

Sorry for the poor quality of some of these shots, I didn't have much room to set up a tripod!

The venue holds about 5,000 people in all but they had slung a curtain up about halfway up the hall, so I'd say there were probably 2500-3000 people in the place, and the beer was flowing nicely!

Now my sister won't be happy with me for saying this, in fact she may disown me altogether, but Joe is definitely looking a bit chubby. Not that I've exactly got a six-pack myself (more of a Waschbärbauch than a Waschbrettbauch) but there's no getting away from the fact.

It was interesting to see some of the rockers in the audience. Clearly a lot of people who'd gotten baby-sitters in for the night and were out re-living their youth. Either that or there are actually a lot of women here in their early to mid thirties with long permed hair and jackets with patches on...yikes!! Also we were thankful that there weren't too many mullets on display. Having said that, there was a prize winning one stood right next to us for most of the night.

The gig was fantastic although the sound was a bit off. Not saying it was too loud, but it didn't seem to be particularly clear so for example some of the guitar was a bit distorted. And no smart-arses, it wasn't just a distortion effects pedal!!

Anyway, don't think I'd hesitate to go see them again next time they come round.

The playlist was as follows:

Action
Make love
Foolin
Hysteria
Women
Long long way
Four letter word
Promises
2 steps behind
Rocket
Armageddon it
Photograph
Animal
Pour some sugar
Rock of ages

...followed by a 2 song encore of...

Love bites
Lets's get rocked

I also have a number of mpeg videos from the show, a total of about 55MB over 14 mpegs. Rather than put them here and completely destroy my allocated bandwidth, if you want to see them drop me a line to info@keydeck.com, with the subject "LEPP MPG" and I'll put them somewhere on the server.

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