My first visit to the legendary ‘Monsters of Rock’ festival
at Donington Park was when I was just 14 years old.
It was an incredible day, with what is widely regarded as the best ‘MOR’ line
up ever assembled. Opening the whole shebang was a fairly new band from California called Motley
Crue. The Crue were riding high on the success of their breakthrough second
album ‘Shout at the Devil’ (sadly an album which they would never come close to
equalling and the last with any plausible metal credibility).
It was the first time I had ever seen a band playing in
broad daylight and that was kind of weird. But the whole set up, the huge stage
and the towering speaker stacks made a big impression on me. I seem to remember
arriving very soon before MC took the stage and watching them from a fair
distance, but by the time Accept came on I was right down the front. The only
thing was though, because the stage was so high it was actually quite hard to
see much below the band’s waist.
This was ultimately my only chance to see Accept and I
remember enjoying it a lot. The standout memory for me was Wolf Hoffman’s
guitar solo which incorporated elements of Prokofiev’s ‘Peter and the Wolf’.
The setlist was drawn almost exclusively from the band’s ‘Restless & Wild’
and ‘Balls to the Wall’ albums with just one other song (‘Son of a Bitch’ from
the Breaker album) added in.
Next up came Y&T, who I believe must be the first band I
ever saw twice (I previously saw them at the DeMontfort Hall, Leicester right
at the end of 1983). Since my last encounter with them they had released the
slightly poppier ‘In Rock We Trust’ album (their last really good album) and
were well on their way to watering down any rock credentials they still had
from their early days. They also looked ridiculous, especially in broad
daylight… they wrote some great songs but they were trying to compete with much
younger and much prettier bands and it was never going to end well.
I do remember one funny thing, which was that the wind caught
Y&T’s backdrop from behind and since it was only secured at the top corners
it lifted high up in the high and then flopped down all over Leonard Haze and
his drumkit. Roadies rushed the stage to fix things and Leonard didn’t miss a
beat, but it really was a moment worthy of inclusion in the ‘Spinal Tap’ movie.
I honestly had zero interest in watching Gary Moore playing,
so I went and bought a tiny box of orange juice that had been floating in a
bowl of lukewarm water for several minutes for a pound before wandering around
a bit and then heading back to watch Ozzy Osbourne, who despite already being a very
successful solo artist was only third on the bill!
I don’t honestly remember too much about it, but I’m sure it
was pretty much the same as any other Ozzy gig; lots of clapping, stomping left
and right, and shouting ‘Let’s go crazy’ every five minutes. Jake E Lee was
still in the band at this point (Ozzy was touring for the ‘Bark at the Moon’
album) and I remember he was pretty good.
Once Ozzy finished I started to come from the front and up
the side of the crowd, while at the same time others who were desperate to get
down the front for Van Halen were coming the other way. This quickly turned
into a horrendous crush and I don’t honestly think I’ve ever been quite that
scared again. The pressure got worse and worse and people started to clamber
over the wooden fence to try and get away. I looked up and I saw a couple of
guys standing on top of a Transit that was parked behind the fence reaching
down to help pull people up and out of harm’s way. As the pressure grew and
grew the inevitable happened and the fence suddenly collapsed and we spilled
over it into the backstage area. A lucky escape.
Bottles of piss filled the air as the original line-up of
Van Halen took the stage… and it really was quite something to behold. Van
Halen definitely played by their own rules and they were so successful in the USA that they barely bothered to tour overseas
after their first album (when they supported Black Sabbath in the UK). But here
they were now, second only to the bazillion selling AC/DC and on their way to
becoming one of only five bands to ever score TWO diamond certified (10 million
units sold) albums.
Sadly this was one of Van Halen’s last shows with their
legendary frontman Dave Lee Roth and I’m really glad to have seen them in their
prime. The whole show was fairly ludicrous with huge amounts of time wasted on
guitar solos, drum solos, bass solos… even Dave got a solo section where he
told jokes while the others dicked around on the their instruments. But then
VH’s entire recorded output with DLR only amounted to about three hours anyway,
and half of Diver Down was filler.
What really mattered was that they opened up with two of
their best songs (Hot for Teacher & Unchained) before Alex launched into
his drum solo. Yeah, I’m not even joking. Then we got On Fire, Running With the
Devil, Little Guitars and House of Pain before it was Michael Anthony’s turn
(largely just him making a bunch of noise with a bass shaped like a bottle of
Bourbon). Four more songs followed, culminating in Jump and then Eddie began
his 13 minute guitar solo. I’m pretty sure there was at least one more drum
solo in there as well, but Setlist.fm doesn’t mention it..
Finally VH closed out with Panama and The Kinks song ‘You
Really Got Me’. I must admit I used to have a bootleg recording of this show
and I listened to it quite a few times, probably more than any of the other
bands on the bill actually (I had tapes of all the bands bar Gary Moore I think).
I also caught a plectrum thrown by Michael Anthony, so I must have been pretty
near the front again.
Finally, it was time for AC/DC…and while I was never the
biggest AC/DC fan, like most anyone with a penchant for loud music you couldn’t
help liking at least some of their songs. AC/DC were touring for their ‘Flick
of the Switch’ album, which it has to be said (despite selling over 2 million
copies) was considered a bit of a commercial failure after the HUGE success of 'Back in Black' and to a lesser extent ‘For Those About to Rock’.
I quite liked it at the time, and I still rate ‘Guns for
Hire’ as one of their best songs. Quite why it didn’t open the album I do not
know, but when the spotlight hit Angus standing on one of the ramps on the side
of the stage, he started playing the intro to the song to massive applause... and once again the sky was filled with hundreds if not thousands of plastic bottles
as the band launched into a hard hitting set.
Honestly I could have done without ‘The Jack’. It’s just a very,
very shit song and I could happily go to my grave without ever allowing it to soil
my ears again. But the closing track ‘For Those About to Rock’ was truly epic with
two huge cannons firing at each other across the stage before the night sky was set ablaze
with fireworks!
What a day. I cheated death, saw four great sets (plus a couple of okay ones) and by the
time I got home I was thoroughly exhausted - but not as exhausted as I would be the
next time I visited Donington!
