5 things you missed if you weren't at Motley Crue-Def Leppard's Comerica Park extravaganza

Motley Crue and Def Leppard brought their much-ballyhooed Stadium Tour to Comerica Park on Sunday, making good on a pandemic-postponed date initially set for the summer off 2020.

There was a festival vibe at the ballpark on a long, loud day that included Poison and Joan Jett & the Blackhearts, an entertaining romp in '80s nostalgia for a rock ‘n’ roll army of about 37,000 at the sold-out stadium.

They helped wrap a bang-up music weekend at Comerica Park that drew more than 100,000 fans for concerts that included Chris Stapleton (Friday) and Billy Joel (Saturday).

Sunday's show came full of highlights and at least one big downer — Motley Crue’s garbled blob of sound to close the night. Here’s a recap:

Hits — lots and lots of them

This isn’t a scientific count, but among the four acts, there were oodles of hits played onstage Sunday. To be a little more precise, the day featured at least three dozen songs that are solid fixtures in rock’s canon of classics.

For Motley Crue’s 90-minute, 15-song set — which closed the night — that meant hot nuggets plucked from the band’s early glam-metal period (“Looks That Kill,” "Shout at the Devil") up to the commercial heyday of “Dr. Feelgood” and “Kickstart My Heart.”

Def Leppard provided the top performance of the day. More than four decades in, the British quintet retains a sense of sincerity and devotion to craftsmanship that serves it well onstage. Joe Elliott was in fine voice as the hits flowed, from the ringing harmonies of “Animal” to the timeless glam of “Rocket” and unhurried dreaminess of “Hysteria.”

Toward the end of the 90-minute set, “Pour Some Sugar on Me” got its second Comerica Park performance in two nights, following Elliott’s surprise Saturday cameo with Billy Joel, where he sang the song backed by Joel and his band.

More: Chris Stapleton turns in stellar performance to make his mark at Comerica Park

More: Billy Joel hits Detroit at last — with Def Leppard's Joe Elliott as a surprise guest

Pointing out that much of the Stadium Tour had been plagued by rain, Elliott sounded a note of relief about the nice weekend weather in Detroit, including that prior evening: “It was a beautiful night, for many reasons,” he said of his Joel appearance.

Poison was dependably fun and high-spirited, rolling through a brisk 50 minutes of hits that included career standards “Talk Dirty to Me” and “Every Rose Has its Thorn,” a mood encapsulated by the set-closing “Nothin’ but a Good Time.”

Jett cut an ageless figure onstage in a spiky afternoon performance. The stadium was still filling with arriving fans as she tapped material from her Runaways years and the chart-topping solo career that followed (“I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll,” “Crimson and Clover,” “I Hate Myself for Loving You”).

A little new stuff

It wasn’t just about the gold and platinum hits.

More than anyone on Sunday, Def Leppard treated its set as something beyond a retro exercise, emphasizing three songs from the new album “Diamond Star Halos” — even opening with “Take What You Want,” whose thick attack and squealing guitars held its own among the vintage fare.

Jett and company served up an acoustic “Runaway” from the March album “Changeup,” while Motley Crue made a spot for “The Dirt (Est. 1981),” a 2019 soundtrack single from the band’s biopic.

Some Detroit love

The red-blooded rock market of Detroit has been very good to Sunday's performers through the years, so it was no surprise that Crue drummer Tommy Lee sported a torn T-shirt emblazoned with a royal “D” and Poison introduced its performance by blasting Kiss’s “Detroit Rock City."

Before kicking into the Runaways’ “You Drive Me Wild,” Jett relayed an anecdote about an early visit with that group — when they were “scared” teenagers opening for J. Geils Band. Poison’s Bret Michaels lavished particular love on the city, fondly noting the band’s early days playing clubs such as Blondie’s and Harpos, and pointing out 1991’s “Ride the Wind” video was filmed at Joe Louis Arena.

Big production

The day started with a no-frills Joan Jett and finished with a reliably larger-than-life Crue after sunset: From the dramatic Mozart requiem that preceded the band's set to the massive smoke clouds pumped across the stadium, the L.A. four-piece pulled out the stops. On the nearly 11,000-square-foot stage with an assortment of video columns, Motley Crue had the strobes and lasers in full effect, along with giant pronged metal platforms for the trio of scantily clad female dancer-singers who accompanied the proceedings.

Motley Crue’s mess

Much has been made of Vince Neil’s declining voice, but that was hard to confirm Sunday because it was often buried under a booming, bottom-heavy mix. The muddy rumble across the ballpark was almost tolerable at field level but was especially bad at the back of the stadium, where critical propulsive energy was drained from songs like “Too Fast for Love” and “Live Wire.”

Hordes of fans in those back seats and in Comerica Park’s suites were streaming out of the venue several songs into the show. “I couldn’t even tell that was ‘Wild Side,’” griped one departing fan about the Crue’s opening number.

After a weekend of Comerica Park performances that sounded pristine by stadium standards — including Stapleton on Friday, Joel on Saturday, and up until 9:45 p.m. Sunday — things wound up finishing in a musical mush.

Contact Detroit Free Press music writer Brian McCollum: 313-223-4450 or bmccollum@freepress.com.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: 5 things that defined Motley Crue-Def Leppard's big day in Detroit