Def Leppard & Journey Announce 2024 Orlando Stadium Concert
Inductee Joe Elliott of Def Leppard performs at the 2019 Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame Induction Ceremony - Show at Barclays Center on March 29, 2019 in New York City.
Def Leppard and Journey have announced a stadium tour across America next summer and Florida has one of the first stops on the itinerary. And the opening acts on this tour are headliners themselves! The Steve Miller band, Heart and Cheap Trick will rotate as supporting acts for The Summer Stadium Tour 2024.
Orlando will get the second stop on the tour on July 10, 2024. It will be the only Florida stop on the nationwide trek for Def Leppard and Journey. Our opening act will be a local favorite: Cheap Trick. The show will be at Camping World Stadium. Presales begin December 13 with the general public on sale happening Friday, December 15 at 10AM.
For those up for a road trip, other notable stops along the tour include Atlanta at Truist Park with the Steve Miller Band July 13. Or if you’ve never been to Boston, I’d fly up there to see the tour at Fenway Park when Heart will open the show. Here are the rest of the dates on the tour:
July 6 – St. Louis, MO (Busch Stadium)^
July 10 – Orlando, FL (Camping World Stadium)^
July 13 – Atlanta, GA (Truist Park)*
July 15 – Chicago, IL (Wrigley Field)*
July 18 – Detroit, MI (Comerica Park)*
July 20 – Nashville, TN (Nissan Stadium)*
July 23 – Philadelphia, PA (Citizens Bank Park)*
July 25 – Hershey, PA (Hersheypark Stadium)*
July 27 – Pittsburgh, PA (PNC Park)*
July 30 – Cleveland, OH (Progressive Field)+
August 2 – Toronto, ON (Rogers Centre)+
August 5 – Boston, MA (Fenway Park)+
August 7 – Flushing, NY (Citi Field)*
August 12 – Arlington, TX (Globe Life Field)*
August 14 – Houston, TX (Minute Maid Park)*
August 16 – San Antonio, TX (Alamodome)*
August 19 – Minneapolis, MN (Target Field)*
August 23 – Phoenix, AZ (Chase Field)*
August 25 – Los Angeles, CA (SoFi Stadium)*
August 28 – San Francisco, CA (Oracle Park)*
August 30 – San Diego, CA (Petco Park)*
September 4 – Seattle, WA (T-Mobile Park)^
September 8 – Denver, CO (Coors Field)^
*with Steve Miller Band
^with Cheap Trick
+with Heart
'Hysteria': Every Track on the Classic Def Leppard Album Ranked
Def Leppard released their classic album Hysteria on August 3, 1987. It’s a masterclass of mixing hard rock edge and pop polish that creates a sound that’s impossible to ignore. Of course, the journey to get to Hysteria was long and not without its significant challenges.
First, famed producer Mutt Lange dropped out of producing the album due to exhaustion from working nearly non-stop since about 1976. During those years, Lange not only produced Def Leppard’s High ‘N’ Dry and Pyromania, but he also helmed AC/DC’s Highway to Hell, Back in Black and For Those About to Rock We Salute You, Foreigner’s 4, The Cars’ Heartbeat City and many other titles.
This led to Meat Loaf songwriter Jim Steinman being brought in. To put it lightly, it was a disastrous move. In addition to working with Def Leppard, Steinman was working with Meat Loaf at the same time on Bat Out Of Hell II, and he wasn’t able to give the band his full attention. Joe Elliott and Phil Collen recalled the eight weeks of working with Steinman in an April 2021 interview with Classic Rock. Elliott said there are recordings from that eight-week period, but they’ll never see the light of day.
TRAILER: ‘Step Inside: Hysteria at 30’
“We would never release that stuff,” said Elliott. “There’s nothing finished. It’s like the worst bootleg you’ve ever heard. Those tapes are locked away in my library. And that’s where they’ll stay.”
Collen added, “[Steinman’s] ideas seemed a bit hokey. Maybe it was a class thing. It was obvious that we were way more ‘street’ than he was. Jim’s stuff was a bit theatrical, which is great, but it wasn’t us. We were polar opposites.”
And then, things took a dramatic turn for Def Leppard on December 31, 1984 when drummer Rick Allen got into a car accident. The accident resulted in Allen losing his left arm. Instead of kicking him to the curb, Def Leppard stuck by Allen as he recovered from the traumatic incident. During this time, Allen developed his hybrid drum kit utilizing foot pedals to compensate for only having one arm.
Also during that time, Lange got the rest he needed and rejoined Def Leppard in the studio to work on what eventually became Hysteria. This is when the album finally started to take shape. However, with Lange ever the perfectionist, this made the recording process even longer. Per Billboard, the album ended up costing a whopping $5 million to make. To simply break even, Hysteria had to sell millions and millions of copies. Fortunately, the album became a smash selling 20 million copies worldwide, with 12 million copies sold in the U.S. alone.
To celebrate the album’s anniversary, here is every song from Hysteria ranked.
Hear Geno on the air weekday afternoons. Geno's passions include fat guy food, concerts, sports, travel to Europe and South America. He loves 80s and 90s music, from MTV hairbands to old school freestyle, alternative rock to TRL era jams. Geno's radio career began in his hometown of Portland, Maine. Since then he's been on the air coast to coast from Boston to Las Vegas, Tampa to California.
