Nikki Sixx spoke to Yahoo! Entertainment about MÖTLEY CRÜE‘s “The Stadium Tour” with DEF LEPPARD which was originally scheduled to take place last summer but ended up being pushed back to 2021, and then to 2022, due to the coronavirus crisis.
“We thought we were gonna tour this year,” the CRÜE bassist said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET). “Then the delta variant came. And some of my friends went out and did it, and some have had no problems, some have had big problems.
“On a business level, you can’t get COVID insurance. So if you’ve got a big show — MÖTLEY, DEF LEPPARD, POISON and JOAN JETT — that’s generating a lot of… If that show goes down because somebody whatever, you just lose money, and you can only lose so many shows and then you’re basically on tour for free. So we chose to stay back, waiting to see how AEGs and Live Nations and how other bands were gonna handle it. And I think we made the right decision.
“We restart designing the show in April,” Nikki continued. “It’s basically designed, but there’s some new technology that happened in the last few years we might wanna involve. And then we’ve already got our set — it’s done — so it’s not like we have to have that meeting where it’s, like, ‘I wanna play this song’ or ‘I wanna play this song.’ Everybody agreed on these songs, and it’s a really cool set, and there’s some medleys in it.
“We start band rehearsals in May,” Sixx added. “I don’t know what that looks like. We like to rehearse for three or four weeks. Even if we have four weeks and we’re pretty tight at three weeks, sometimes you lose a day here and there — a guy gets sick or someone’s car breaks down — so we always [give ourselves] four weeks. And then we go to Atlanta where the tour opens and we do pre-production with everybody on the bill and we set the show up and tear the show down so it all fits. And then June 19th, I think, the tour starts. And I can’t wait.”
This past July, Sixx told Marci Wiser of the 95.5 KLOS radio station that MÖTLEY CRÜE “really did wanna go” on the road “this year. It’s a little scary to go out there and have the tour maybe get canceled half way,” he said. “And I know a lot of bands are out there and they’re testing the water and it looks really positive; I’m super excited.
“We have 30-some stadiums in America [booked for the tour],” he continued. “And we’ll see. Maybe we might even drag it to Europe, South America, Japan — we don’t know yet. Right now it’s a little far off. But us and DEF LEPPARD are super close; that’s great. And we’ll just see what version of ‘The Stadium Tour’ might fit for other countries, if we decide to go. Maybe it’ll be the same lineup. I know people are super stoked for the lineup. It’s a good outdoor fun party evening.”
As of January 30, 2020, “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.
