It was a big weekend in St. Louis for artists with ’80s heydays — first Debbie Gibson on Friday and then Bryan Adams with Joan Jett on Saturday. While Gibson showed plenty of vintage MTV footage on screen during her River City Casino show, legendary VJ Alan Hunter was not on hand; however, Hunter was indeed front and center for Bryan Adams though not as front nor as center as Ralph Morse, a classic rock superfan who wears black decorated bowler hats and scores the choicest seats for every legends show in town these days. But that’s another story.
This story is about a tight, lean rock & roll concert at Enterprise Center featuring one member of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and another artist who has so far been feloniously left off the ballots. Seats were sold in the lower-levels only — the upper bowl was curtained off — and the staging and lighting designs favored spare minimalism apart from the video screen behind the stage that offered blitzes of career-highlight imagery and rock-dream kaleidoscopic imagery.
It was a night of straightforward guitar rock delivered by musicians — eight men and one woman — dressed all in black. Joan Jett started things off, and for those who caught her opening set during the Mötley Crüe and Def Leppard concert at Busch Stadium last summer, this was a far comfier setting than the triple-digit heat and mile-away vantage points of that show. This set also offered more time for Jett to dig beyond her hits, including tunes from her new EP, Mindsets, released last month. She played five of that EP’s six songs, and damned if they didn’t sound like instant Joan Jett classics.
Taking the stage in her patented Fonzie jacket then paring down to her metal-girl vest, she was vintage Jett, all teased hair and eyeliner, hunching over her power chords, still with that razorblade voice, adding urgent gusto to classics like “Bad Reputation” and “I Hate Myself for Loving You” as though she hasn’t sung them thousands of times. Speaking of which, she flubbed the first line of “I Love Rock ’n’ Roll,” if you can believe such a thing, and had to start over. Maybe she was sick: Lots of copious nose-blowing throughout the set. But it didn’t matter. Joan is a rocker’s rocker, an unstoppable pro, and she proved it, as always, leading her three Blackhearts through Runaways cuts (“Cherry Bomb,” natch but also “You Drive Me Wild”), hit covers (“Everyday People,” “Crimson & Clover”), and old fan favorites (“Fake Friends,” “Do You Wanna Touch Me (Oh Yeah)”).
Jett is the quintessential rocker raised on ’70s New York punk, loving nothing more than catchy, sing-song melodies delivered with crunchy guitar punch, and she invited the audience to carry a lot of those big background vocals, building an arena of honorary Blackhearts. A blistering “Bad Reputation” would have been a suitable ending, but she surprised us by finishing with a new song, “Whiskey Goes Good,” which sounds like Joan Goes Country, a droll drinking song that felt just right for these (or, let’s face it, any other) days.
Just before Bryan Adams’ set, a balloon shaped like a convertible car with “Bryan Adams” painted on one side and the title of his latest album, last year’s So Happy It Hurts, on the other was floated over the crowd like a Pink Floyd pig. Other than that, Adams kept things simple, letting the music do the talking with a five-piece band that included his great longtime guitarist Keith Scott.
Looking fit and clean cut, Adams remains a stunningly great rock singer, and he played a set designed to tickle both casual fans — he left virtually no recognizable hit unplayed — and to delight diehards with career-spanning deep cuts. With mic stands placed at stage left, center and right, Adams worked the whole crowd, and with only the lower level filled, it felt like an intimate gathering for an arena show. While many in the audience remained stubbornly seated for the majority of the night, Adams was careful to rave about the St. Louis crowd, even taking out his phone to film the scene at one point.
The set opened with a hokey John Cleese voiceover about God creating a rock band, leading into “Kick Ass” from the new album, which served as a sort of manifesto for the kind of sturdy night of well-played rock ahead, and Adams ticked off a bunch of those kinds of songs early with decades-old tracks like “Can’t Stop This Thing We Started” and “Take Me Back.” Of course, Adams is now as well-known for his ballads as for his full-throated rockers, and those worked remarkably well, some, like “Please Forgive Me,” backed by just piano, and “Heaven,” given the full-blown power-ballad treatment with a gorgeous solo from Scott (“That’s a good one!” Adams said afterward).
Adams’ tenor rasp is undiminished, as heard on a diamond-cut rendition of “Everything I Do (I Do It For You)” and “Summer of ’69” (the whole crowd finally standing for that one) that were both way up in those original keys. The upright bass came out for a two-song rockabilly segment, fusing “You Belong to Me” from 2015’s Get Up to its doppelganger, “I’ve Been Looking For You” from So Happy It Hurts.
Like Gibson the night before, Adams paid tribute to Tina Turner. Before playing their hit duet, “It’s Only Love,” Adams said of Turner, “It was a great loss to me as a friend because she was really good to me, really good to me and took me on tour with her, and I got to sing with her every night.” (Hey, Tina lovers: Sean Canan’s Voodoo Players will present Voodoo Tina Turner on July 12 at Broadway Oyster Bar. And can you keep a secret? I’m handling those Bryan Adams vocals that night.)
Adams also took a page from his buddy Bruce Springsteen’s book by taking sign requests as a mindset audible section. The winners on Saturday were true-fan dream picks that went way back: “Lonely Nights” from Adams’ 1981 pre-fame release You Want It You Got It, “Remember” from his 1981 debut and “Hearts on Fire” from 1987’s Into the Fire. It was a kick watching Adams and Keith piece those together on the spot with decidedly eloquent results.
Adams wasn’t going to send the audience home without “Run to You,” complete with its harmonizing guitars breakdown, and “Cuts Like a Knife,” both played late, but he also threw a last-call curveball with a beautifully sung cover of Frankie Valli’s “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You.” Then, as has become a Bryan Adams custom, he wrapped things up with solo-acoustic performances, this time with “Straight From the Heart” and “All for One.” The latter was the Adams-penned hit collaboration with Sting and Rod Stewart, an appropriately affectionate sendoff to a city he hadn’t performed for in seven years and one he rewarded with a good long show.
Subscribe to Riverfront Times newsletters. Follow us: Apple News | Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | Or sign up for our RSS Feed
