Def Leppard at Download Festival

[heavyharmonies]

Just caught the Download Festival show on PalladiaHD. Some of the acts were surprisingly good and engaging, e.g., Faith No More and believe it or not, Korn's cover of Pink Floyd's "Just Another Brick in the Wall."

 

Def Leppard, on the other hand... yeesh. Utterly uninspired performance. Elliot can't sing on key to save his life, has the stage presence of a bewildered Ozzy Osbourne at the height of his drug-induced fog, and looks like my Aunt Marge.

 

I could not possibly have been less impressed. Talk about going through the motions.

 

Don't tell me it's about age. I'm now watching "Iron Maiden: Some" and Dickinson could just absolutely wipe his ass with Elliot from an energy and stage presence perspective. He gives 110% and actually looks like he gives a shit.

 

Don't tell me it's about the crowd. Def Leppard is (all things considered) playing to a home crowd numbered in the tens of thousands. I saw an order of magnitude more energy and enthusiasm from the performers at the MelodicRock.Com 10th anniversary concert and there were less than 1,000 people there. Heck, I've seen bands like Cage, Jag Panzer, Steel Prophet, and Vicious Rumors give balls-out performances to crowds that numbered in double digits.

 

Apparently some bands get it. Def Leppard doesn't.

[heaven&hell]

I saw some of this on the That Metal Show special last night with many performances from Download and I agree about Def Leppard. The vocals sounded like shit and my wife even made a comment about Joe's voice and his "man boobs" as she put it. Tesla on the other hand rocked big time at Download.

 

Last night VH1 Classic also had some Friday Night Concert series with live stuff from the Leppard/Poison tour and neither band sounded all that great especially Def Leppard.

[Jez]

I saw most of it and it was a pretty flat preformance to be honest. I had heard reports that they had been on real form live recently aswell. On the other hand, as Dan says. some of the other bands really were good, I saw three of Tesla songs and they seemed on good form. I watched the Journey show live as it was streaming and they were really going for it and put on a good show aswell - very comparable to the Monsters Of Rock show I saw in Milton Keynes 3 or so years ago. Whitesnake were so so from what I heard, with Coverdale struggling somewhat..

[hsf]

Just taped this today and watching it now.

 

Holy crap does Joe Elliot sound horrid! There was a split second I was bummed about missing the Def/Poison concert. After hearing that crap, no more! (I've seen them both enough times that I think they might both be done with for good.)

 

Hoping there's something later that will redeem this show. (I'm guessing that's why they put Leppard on first. haha)

 

**edit** - Tesla's on right now and Jeff Keith sounds pretty damn bad himself. I remember seeing them on the Into the Now tour and thinking he still had something in the tank. But seemingly every live performance I catch lately, he's just dropped another notch.

 

**edit** - Watching/listening to Tommy Lee is ALWAYS uncomfortable. (It's like Tom Arnold.) ADD? Drug-after effects? I don't know, but just makes me itchy inside.