MÖTLEY CRÜE drummer Tommy Lee spoke to Terry "Beez" Bezer of Knotfest.com about the postponement of the band's "The Stadium Tour" with DEF LEPPARD , POISON and JOAN JETT & THE BLACKHEARTS to the summer of 2021.
"The Stadium Tour" was scheduled to kick off in less than three weeks — 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.
"We were just about to start [rehearsing]," Lee said (see video below). "We were gonna start at the beginning of May, rehearse everything, get the production and everything ready, all of May. We would have been in Miami right now rehearsing in the stadium — we had locked out five days in the stadium to rehearse. This week, we would have left rehearsals here in Burbank and we would have been on our way to go set up shop at the stadium and we'd be ripping it right now."
Asked what people can expect from the CRÜE 's stage show when the tour eventually happens, Tommy said: "Dude, oh my God. I wish I could tell you… Alls I can tell you is, once again, be careful what you wish for. We take it seriously, and what you can pull off in an arena, I think we've pulled off pretty much everything you could possibly ever even fucking think of. So now we get to play with a fucking ginormous stadium that has no roof on it… I'm just telling you right now: the production… And it's still there — it's just put away in a couple of giant warehouses. But, dude, can I just say it's fucking ridiculous?"
Lee went on to say that he can't wait until that time to come when its okay for large gatherings to occur again once the coronavirus pandemic has subsided.
"I want to be on stage when that day comes and it's okay for a fucking stadium to be filled with people going fucking crazy for the first time," he said. "Dude, that's where I wanna be when this is over. People say, 'What do you wanna do when this is all kind of over?' That's what I wanna do. I wanna be on stage. Because that energy? Can you imagine? I mean, you're seeing it now with people fucking rioting, although it's for many different reasons, but you've got a lot of fucking pent-up anger, energy, and people are going fucking bananas. And I can't wait for it to go in that other direction of excitement in, 'Oh my God! We're fucking going crazy, and the music's loud as fuck, and everything's cool.'"
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 .
Tickets ranged from $150 to $400, not counting some varied pricing that reflected demand as part of "dynamic pricing."
When it happens, "The Stadium Tour" will mark the CRÜE 's first live dates since wrapping its 2014/2015 farewell tour. CRÜE toured with POISON back in 2011 and DEF LEPPARD teamed up with POISON for a string of road dates in 2017 — but the upcoming jaunt marks the first time all four acts have hit the road together for an extended tour.
In the face of the coronavirus pandemic, thousands of concerts and festivals have either been postponed or canceled, as social distancing and self-quarantining make performing live music and attending live shows all but impossible.
More than 7.1 million coronavirus cases have been reported worldwide and more than 407,000 deaths so far, putting public health systems and emergency services under immense pressure.
U.S. officials have repeatedly urged Americans to heed what federal, state and local officials are asking of them in order to curtail the spread and dampen the impact of the virus on the population.
