So Tommy Lee recently appeared on ANTHRAX guitarist Scott Ian’s radio show to discuss the band’s forthcoming ‘The Stadium Tour’ which sees the return of MÖTLEY CRÜE to the road along with DEF LEPPARD and POISON.
Now of course the “big deal” with this tour is it marks the “Return of MÖTLEY CRÜE after vowing in 2015 to never play together again. Even oing as far as to sign a “cessation of touring” contract at a “press conference” before embarking on said tour. Well it turns out that didn’t mean shit as CRÜE announced last December that they would be hitting the road in 2020. Even going as far as to “blow up” that cessation of touring agreement. At a “press conference”.
Anyways, Tommy started off discussing the success of “The Dirt” and how it affected the CRÜE’s planned comeback as part of “The Stadium Tour”, saying: “I stay in touch with fans all the time; I’m pretty active. Imagine being a 16-, 17-, 18-year-old kid, [and] you’re, like, ‘Woah! Was that what it was like back then?’ Not to make us feel old — it wasn’t that long ago — but that was a time when anything went. People weren’t even wearing condoms. It was just like a free-for-all. And I think a lot of younger kids see that and go, ‘Man, we missed that. We missed out on crazy town.’ So I have a feeling that that does have a lot to do with it, where people wanna come and see what that shit was all about. It ain’t out there now, you know what I’m sayin’?”
According to Tommy, MÖTLEY CRÜE didn’t have a “master plan” when it completed its farewell tour in December 2015 to reunite several years later and stage a comeback run that would see the band playing to bigger audiences that ever before.
“For real, 2016, I think it was like New Year’s Eve, at the Staples Center, that was it,” he said. “We were, like, ‘Dude, let’s just go out like…’ We don’t wanna just continue this thing on and end up playing fairgrounds and shit we see so many of our bands we grew up on doing that. We were, like, ‘We don’t wanna do that.’ We wanna go out on top, be, like, ‘Mic drop. We’re out. We’re done.’ And that was it, man. We all said goodbye and we didn’t hardly even speak — I mean, we spoke to each other here and there, but literally, that was it. And then, what is it, four or five years later, Live Nation calls us and says, ‘We’d like to do a stadium tour,’ and all of us were, like, ‘Hold up. That’s the last thing on our mind.’ We were done, and we were all moving on to other things. And that’s the one thing… Yeah, we’ve all played stadiums, festivals here and there, but never your own stadium tour. Fuck! We were, like, ‘Hold on. Let me think about this. Okay.’ It was a no-brainer. And I wish I could say there was some weird master plan, because if there was, that would have been really smart, but that’s just not how it happened at all.”
Last month, MÖTLEY CRÜE, DEF LEPPARD, POISON and JOAN JETT & THE BLACKHEARTS announced the rescheduled dates for their “The Stadium Tour”.
“The Stadium Tour” was slated to kick off on June 18 at TIAA Bank Field in Jacksonville, Florida and run through September 5 in Los Angeles. The bands reportedly also booked time at VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena in Jacksonville to rehearse for the tour.
As of January 30, “The Stadium Tour” had already grossed $130 million from one million tickets sold, plus another $5 million worth of VIP seats, according to Billboard.