MÖTLEY CRÜE / ALICE COOPER (Live)

at Metro Radio Arena, Newcastle, U.K., November 2, 2015

ALICE COOPER (Live at Metro Radio Arena, Newcastle, U.K., November 2, 2015)
Photo: Mick Burgess

Last year Mötley Crüe pledged that when this tour comes to an end it will be indeed their “Final Tour” and have signed Cessation of Touring Agreements to prove it. There will be no long drawn out tour, no reunion in a few years and no more Mötley Crüe full stop. Alice Cooper has cheekily offered to guillotine them on their last night to hold them to their promise.

It is rather fitting that Mötley Crüe is their Special Guest on this historic tour and there’s no one better to kick off the evening’s festivities the and the original and the best Shock Rocker.

Of course everyone expects the show and Cooper delivers big time with monsters, ghouls, zombie nurses and snakes culminating in his nightly execution only to return decked in top hat and tails for School’s Out.

It’s not all about the show though as Cooper has a catalogue of classic songs that never gets old from No More Mr Nice Guy to Billion Dollar Babies and I’m Eighteen every one is a winner.

Over the years many band members have passed through the ranks of his band but Cooper has the knack of picking his band to perfection. The triple guitar attack of Ryan Roxie, Tommy Henriksen and new girl Nita Strauss rips kicking and screaming through the set, each guitarist complimenting the others and combining to deliver an almighty punch. They look and sound fantastic.

Ending the show in a carnival bubbles and balloons and the greatest anthem of them School’s Out, which segued neatly into Pink Floyd’s Another brick In The Wall meant that Mötley Crüe had one gargantuan mountain to climb to match that.

Whereas Cooper’s show was pure Halloween, Mötley Crüe was more Bonfire Night with enough firecrackers, bombs and flamethrowers to launch World War III.

The old Rogers and Hammerstein classic So Long Farewell lulled the crowd into a momentary serene state before the double whammy of Girls, Girls, Girls and Wild Side kicked into gear and if ever there was a pair of songs that summed up the Crue’s hedonistic Rock ‘n’ Roll lifestyle it was these.

With songs from right across their career from the gang vocals of Looks That Kill to the grinding riff of Dr Feelgood right up to their latest Saints of Los Angeles, the Crue had all bases covered other than there was no song from the debut album that laid the foundations for everything that came later.

Frontman Vince Neal may be a little less nimble on his feet these days but he still covered a marathon’s worth of distance on stage while bassist Nikki Sixx looking like a renegade from a Mad Max movie and guitarist Mick Marrs, the sinister undertaker flanked him either side of the stage. Behind them all Tommy Lee back behind the drums after a couple of missed shows through illness and sitting atop an enormous drum riser which leapt into life during his solo taking him on a roller coaster ride…..literally.

An explosive Kickstart My Heart which tells of Sixx’s near death experience, brought the main set to a cacophonous climax with Sixx and Neil on huge hydraulic platforms stretching way out into the middle of the hall before their big ballad Home Sweet Home with Lee behind the piano brought an end to one of the very last shows of a career that has spanned well over three decades.

Mötley Crüe had promised to out with a bang and they made good on that promise and then some. The Crue have left the building and left at the top of their game and you can’t ask for more than that.

Author

  • Mick Burgess

    Mick is a reviewer and photographer here at Metal Express Radio, based in the North-East of England. He first fell in love with music after hearing Jeff Wayne's spectacular The War of the Worlds in the cold winter of 1978. Then in the summer of '79 he discovered a copy of Kiss Alive II amongst his sister’s record collection, which literally blew him away! He then quickly found Van Halen I and Rainbow's Down To Earth, and he was well on the way to being rescued from Top 40 radio hell!   Over the ensuing years, he's enjoyed the Classic Rock music of Rush, Blue Oyster Cult, and Deep Purple; the AOR of Journey and Foreigner; the Pomp of Styx and Kansas; the Progressive Metal of Dream Theater, Queensrÿche, and Symphony X; the Goth Metal of Nightwish, Within Temptation, and Epica, and a whole host of other great bands that are too numerous to mention. When he's not listening to music, he watches Sunderland lose more football (soccer) matches than they win, and occasionally, if he has to, he goes to work as a property lawyer.

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