Bryan Adams - Wednesday 30th May - SSE Wembley Arena

The first of 2 nights of Bryan Adams. A painful journey up to Wembley was followed by a long queue to get in. Luckily the compensation was our great seats - 2nd row central.

No support, meaning a 2 hour plus show from Bryan who was in excellent voice. A decent setlist too including a couple of well chosen covers made for a 9/10 evening. Always good to hear "Whiskey In The Jar" - whoever the artist!

Looking forward to tomorrow at the O2!

Setlist
Ultimate Love
Can't Stop This Thing We Started
Run to You
Go Down Rockin'
Heaven
This Time
It's Only Love
Please Stay
Cloud #9
You Belong to Me
Summer of '69
Here I Am
When You're Gone
(Everything I Do) I Do It for You
Back to You
Somebody
Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman?
The Only Thing That Looks Good on Me Is You
Cuts Like a Knife
18 til I Die
I'm Ready
Brand New Day
+
I Could Get Used to This
I Fought the Law 
Whiskey in the Jar 
Straight From the Heart
All for Love

Thunder - Saturday 20th February - Wembley Arena

So, following their warm up show at the tiny 100 Club, here is the full on arena show at the cavernous Wembley. A decent turn out (curtain 2/3 of the way back) and a large standing area probably meant a crowd of around 6,000 at a guess. And they were loud!

We'd taken the decision to skip the supports (King King and Terrorvision) and actually had a very enjoyable hour in the 'Duke of York' near Marylebone, watching the Swedish heats of qualification for the Eurovision Song Contest (I kid you not!).  Top tip - put a couple of quid on Lisa Ajax to win it - you heard it here first!

Anyway, back at Wembley, you'd have found us in the 'normal spot' - about 6 people back on the left hand side. And what a great show it was. Slightly different (and extended) set. The Wonder Days new songs sounded fantastic at volume and the old classics are timeless. Even one of my least favourite Thunder songs - Empty City - sounded good. The finale of Dirty Love romped past the 10 minute mark, wining my bet with Rich. Great crowd, great band, great night. 

Setlist 

Wonder Days

Black Water

River of Pain

Resurrection Day

Like a Satellite

The Devil Made Me Do It

Empty City

Backstreet Symphony

I'll Be Waiting

The Thing I Want

When the Music Played

Love Walked In

I Love You More Than Rock 'N' Roll

+

Serpentine

Dirty Love (inc Shakin' All Over)

Def Leppard - Friday 18th December - Wembley Arena

A double (or even triple) header with Def Leppard co-headlining again with Whitesnake, this time with the Black Star Riders (ex Thin Lizzy) as support.

We arrived part way through the Black Star Riders set - which sounded pretty good. Ricky Warwick's voice is stunningly similar to Phil Lynott's and the sing-a-long Whiskey In The Jar at the end was sung enthusiastically by the filling arena.

Whitesnake were up next. Supporting their latest album of Deep Purple covers, the setlist included many from that. Not being a big Deep Purple fan, many of these sounded pretty dull to me. David Coverdale's voice however seemed to be back in form and the final 4 songs of the set went down well.

Def Leppard opted to start with a song from their rather good new album and that set the scene nicely. Joe Elliott's vocals were strong and not even the site of a topless (from the start) Phil Collen could detract from the musicianship. I suspect hard-core Def Leppard fans could complain about a fairly static setlist, but for the casual fan (ie me) this hit the right balance.

Setlist - Def Leppard
Let's Go
Animal
Undefeated
Dangerous
Love Bites
Armageddon It
Rock On 
Two Steps Behind (acoustic Joe Elliott)
Rocket
When Love and Hate Collide
Switch 625
Hysteria
Let's Get Rocked
Pour Some Sugar On Me
+
Rock Of Ages
Photograph

Setlist - Whitesnake
Burn 
Bad Boys
Love Ain't No Stranger
The Gypsy 
Give Me All Your Love
Ain't No Love In The Heart Of The City 
Mistreated 
You Fool No One 
Drum Solo
Soldier Of Fortune 
Is This Love
Fool For Your Loving
Here I Go Again
Still Of The Night

Setlist - Black Star Riders
All Hell Breaks Loose
Are You Ready
The Killer Instinct
Jailbreak 
Bound For Glory
Kingdom Of The Lost
Finest Hour
Whiskey In The Jar 

Bryan Adams - Wednesday 26th November - Wembley Arena

So it turns out Wembley is now called the SSE arena. I'm not old enough to call it the "Wembley Empire Pool", so I'm sticking to "Wembley Arena" where Mr Adams was making his 27th appearance (or so he told the crowd). I'll need to work out how many of those I've been at - must be 20 odd I'd guess. We had pretty average seats (Block B, row 9) - and I was feeling decidedly less than 100%, but that didn't really matter as Bryan delivered another strong show. Very similar to Saturday, but a different "bonus", a first hearing (for me) of "The Boys Night Out" which did leave a large portion of the crowd slightly bewildered. The rest of the show followed the pattern of the other recent shows on the tour.

A charity donor had paid £10,000 to perform and did a great job on "When You're Gone".

Bryan encouraged those of us further back to move forward for the encore which we did (Wembley security weren't really keen on this idea in the middle of the arena though!)

All great stuff - roll on show 28 as soon as possible!

Setlist
Reckless
One Night Love Affair
She's Only Happy When She's Dancin'
Run to You
Heaven
The Boys Night Out
Kids Wanna Rock
It's Only Love
Long Gone
Somebody
Ain't Gonna Cry
Summer of '69
Let Me Down Easy 
(Everything I Do) I Do It for You
If Ya Wanna Be Bad Ya Gotta Be Good
Cuts Like a Knife
Can't Stop This Thing We Started
Please Forgive Me
When You're Gone [Acoustic with Lesley Kirkland]
18 til I Die
Cloud #9
The Only Thing That Looks Good on Me Is You
+
You've Been a Friend to Me
C'mon Everybody 
She Knows Me [Acoustic]
Straight from the Heart [Acoustic]
All for Love [Acoustic]