Nearly 7 hours of heavy metal from Mötley Crüe, Def Leppard and many more in South Philly

After a two-year wait, 90-degree heat wasn’t about to discourage the hard-rock faithful from turning out to Citizens Bank Park on Saturday for the straightforwardly named Stadium Tour. The monster package tour, co-headlined by Mötley Crüe and Def Leppard with marquee-value support from Poison and Joan Jett, was originally scheduled for the summer of 2020, then postponed twice for reasons that are by now all too familiar.

“You can’t kill Mötley Crüe,” declared bassist Nikki Sixx during the band’s closing set, nearly seven hours after the show had kicked off. “More importantly, you can’t cancel Mötley Crüe.”

It’s not clear that anyone has been trying to other than the band members themselves. When they last played Philly, at the Wells Fargo Center in 2015, the show was billed as the band’s Farewell Tour. Granted, retirements never seem particularly permanent in the rock world, but the Crüe had taken the typically over-the-top step of signing a so-called Cessation of Touring Agreement to make the finality legally binding.

Then, after the 2019 Netflix biopic The Dirt suddenly made the fading rockers relevant to a new generation of fans, they took the even more typically over-the-top step of physically blowing up the contract.

Vince Neil’s vocal performance now at 61 was an improvement on his 2015 appearance, when he sounded atrociously out of shape, wheezing and mumbling through much of the set. On Saturday his thin voice pitched into a shrill shriek in the higher range (and was somewhat buried in the thundering mix to compensate), but he kept pace and even summoned some of the piercing vigor of old on classics like “Live Wire” and “Looks That Kill.”

Drummer Tommy Lee also appeared to be on the mend after breaking four ribs just before the tour began. While Lee reportedly played only four or five songs on earlier shows, he was behind the kit for nearly half of Crüe’s set in Philly, splitting the gig with Tommy Clufetos, drummer on Black Sabbath’s most recent reunion tour. Lee also played piano for the hit ballad “Home Sweet Home” on a rampway projecting from the stage into the crowd.

Def Leppard didn’t shy away from nostalgia — nearly half of the British band’s set was culled from their biggest album, 1987′s Hysteria — but they were the one band of the day that transcended it. (Even young Los Angeles band Classless Act, which played the thankless 3:45 p.m. opening set for a sparse crowd of early arrivals, was an energetic throwback to a Sunset Strip golden age.)

For the most part, an audience member who’d been cryogenically frozen at the first mention of the word “grunge” in the early ‘90s could’ve awoken on Saturday and still sung along with virtually every song of the day. But Leppard actually included four songs from their new album, Diamond Star Halos, which meshed perfectly with the classics.

The band’s refusal to concede that its best days are in the past went a long way toward making Def Leppard’s set the standout of the day. The voice of 62-year-old front man Joe Elliott sounded virtually untouched by the decades, while the band threw itself into vital performances of career-spanning material, from “Bringin’ on the Heartbreak” and “Rock of Ages” to power ballad “Have You Ever Needed Someone So Bad.”

The five-piece band moved to the rampway for an acoustic mini-set that included Elliott’s solo rendition of “Two Steps Behind” and the new, country-tinged song “This Guitar.” The megahit anthem “Pour Some Sugar on Me” brought audience members to their feet as the sun set for a rousing run of songs that ended Leppard’s appearance with “Photograph,” accompanied by vintage snapshots of the band.

While Poison’s dopey sex-and-party glam has always fallen short of its peers, the band can’t be faulted for enthusiasm. Bret Michaels remains the consummate front man, winning over the still-filling stadium with irrepressible charm throughout the band’s hour-long set. Michaels leaned hard on the band members’ Pennsylvania roots, name-checking Pottsville and Harrisburg while drummer Rikki Rockett sported a Phillies jersey. The midafternoon set drew entirely from Poison’s first three albums, flashing images from hairspray-laden early videos as the band played exuberant renditions of “Talk Dirty To Me” and “Nothin’ But a Good Time.”

A video set to Bikini Kill’s “Rebel Girl” provided a brief history of Joan Jett before the 63-year-old rocker’s 4:30 p.m. set, from her early days in the Runaways to her 2015 induction in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Struggling with her guitars in the sweltering heat, the Wynnewood native presented the most raw rock performance of the day, tearing through “Cherry Bomb,” “I Love Rock ‘n Roll,” and “Bad Reputation,” among other hits, with her black-clad band The Blackhearts.