Twice delayed due to covid-19 and two years later than planned, The Stadium Tour – featuring co-headliners Def Leppard and Mötley Crüe, plus Poison and Joan Jett & The Blackhearts – finally got under way at Truist Park in Atlanta, Georgia on June 16. It didn’t take long for the tour, which comes to Europe next summer, to produce the drama that had always seemed inevitable.
The opening night made instant headlines around the world when Crüe drummer Tommy Lee left the stage in agony after just five songs, handing his sticks to Tommy Clufetos for the rest of the set
Former Black Sabbath, Alice Cooper and Ted Nugent man Clufetos had been waiting in the wings after Lee, on the tour against medical advice, broke four ribs before it commenced. “I wish I had a cool story for you, [but] I won’t say how [it happened] because it’s fuckin’ bullshit,” Lee later commented from the stage. Def Leppard frontman Joe Elliott says that, like just about everybody behind the scenes, he’d had no idea of Lee’s injury until show time.
“I had seen Tommy on the final day of production rehearsals towards the end of May, and of course I gave him a big hug – ouch,” the singer say, wincing. “I’m told it was a completely sober accident,
