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Hot Summer Nights With The Monsters Of Rock & More: A Look Back At 1988's Amazing Concerts And Sweltering Heat
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The summer of 1988 was hot.
Ronald Reagan was still in office, Kurt Cobain and Nirvana toiled away as an unknown indie band and Dick Goddard talked about 40 days eclipsing the 90-degree mark, as well as the recording of Cleveland's highest temperate to date -- 104 degrees.
However, there was a six-week summer run of concerts -- when Van Halen's "When It's Love," Guns N' Roses' "Sweet Child O' Mine" and Def Leppard's "Pour Some Sugar on Me" ruled MTV and the radio airwaves -- that seemingly marked the apex of '80s glam metal with coming-of-age and acid-washed Gen Xers mingling alongside Baby Boomer audiences.
Here's a look at a handful of shows that are still talked about today:
The 1988 "Monsters of Rock" tour played two dates at the Akron Rubber Bowl. (John Benson/cleveland.Com)
"Monsters of Rock" (June 22-23 at Akron's Rubber Bowl)"Hot summer nights, that's my time of the year" (Van Halen, "Hot Summer Nights")
With roadies watering down the sunbaked "Monsters of Rock" crowds at the Rubber Bowl, perhaps no photo better epitomizes the 1988 summer concert season.
Cooling the 1988 "Monsters of Rock" crowd at the Akron Rubber Bowl. (Jim Gayloe/The Plain Dealer)Cleveland Plain Dealer
For two days and nights at the since-demolished Akron venue, fans weathered the heat to see Van Halen, Metallica, Scorpions, Dokken and Kingdom Come rock the Rubber City.
It wouldn't come as a surprise to learn today Northeast Ohio dermatologists put their kids through college based on those sun-drenched days.
The girls' hair-sprayed hair didn't move while the shirtless guys had their T-shirts wrapped around their belt loops.
The 1988 "Monsters of Rock" tour played two dates at the Akron Rubber Bowl. (John Benson/cleveland.Com)
The shows proved top-heavy with Metallica's growing impact palpable while Van Halen supported "OU812."
The lasting memory is of the latter act's performance of "5150″ album track "Summer Nights."
Just as smiling Eddie Van Halen and Sammy Hagar (still on good terms at the time) started the song, a hot summer wind blew in almost as if it was designed to be a part of the show. What a night!
Whitesnake with Great White (July 15 at Blossom Music Center)
Whitesnake with Great White performed July 15 at Blossom Music Center. (John Benson/cleveland.Com)
"In the still of the night, I hear the wolf howl" (Whitesnake, "Still of the Night")
Whitesnake's victory lap at Blossom Music Center on July 15 kicked off a week's worth of amazing rock shows in Northeast Ohio.
After toiling around in hard-rock obscurity for a decade, former Deep Purple singer David Coverdale -- embodying a calculated Sunset Strip sound and look with long locks, bare chest and frontman bravado -- finally found an audience.
The band's self-titled 1987 effort produced hits "Here I Go Again" and "Is This Love. But it was the encore tune "Still of the Night," a Led Zeppelin rip-off if there ever was one, that showed the group's true colors.
The only thing missing from this show was Coverdale's future wife Tawny Kitaen provocatively dancing on the hood of a Jaguar.
Aerosmith with Guns N' Roses (July 19 at the Richfield Coliseum)
Aerosmith with Guns N' Roses performed July 19 at the Richfield Coliseum. (John Benson/cleveland.Com)
"I'm alone, I don't know if I can face the night" (Aerosmith, "Angel")
The newly reformed -- and sober -- Aerosmith brought its "Permanent Vacation Tour" through Northeast Ohio for a raucous show at the old Richfield Coliseum.
The Toxic Twins (singer Steven Tyler and guitarist Joe Perry), whose drug use was so bad The Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia once expressed concern, tempted fate by bringing out the then-rising act and decidedly not sober Guns N' Roses.
Tyler has since commented they asked Axl Rose and company -- who were finally breaking thanks to "Sweet Child O' Mine" -- not to do drugs backstage.
Music-wise, fans were treated to the popular Aerosmith single "Angel," which they really haven't played since.
Also, this was so early in Guns N' Roses' rise to fame that the band didn't even play "Paradise City."
That video -- featuring singer Rose in a less-than-flattering white leather jacket -- would be shot the following month.
Def Leppard with Europe (July 20 at Blossom Music Center)
Def Leppard with Europe performed July 20 at Blossom Music Center. (John Benson/cleveland.Com)
"I'm hot, sticky sweet" (Def Leppard, "Pour Some Sugar on Me")
There's something about seeing a band at the height of its musical prowess and mainstream popularity.
That said, the epitome of '80s rock for many folks would be Def Leppard's wet and wild "Hysteria" tour stop in the summer of 1988.
Yes, the band came through earlier that year at the Richfield Coliseum with Tesla, but the Blossom Music Center gig had an extra "Pour Some Sugar on Me" frenzy with a packed lawn audience who had to weather a torrential downpour and what still feels like the longest line of cars heading into the Cuyahoga Falls venue.
Wearing his mullet proudly as adoring female fans screamed with approval, frontman Joe Elliot started the evening off with the fun "Run Riot" and didn't look back.
David Lee Roth with Poison (Aug. 1 at Blossom Music Center)"This must be just like livin' in paradise/And I don't want to go home" (David Lee Roth, "Just Like Paradise")
The thing to remember about David Lee Roth -- who a few years earlier destroyed fans by leaving Van Halen -- was at this time he could still sing.
Diamond Dave was touring in support with his second full-length album "Skyscraper," which didn't stand the test of time but included radio hits "Just Like Paradise" and the underrated "Damn Good."
As far as the Blossom Music Center show, the concert sounded great with the singer's ego front and center.
The vivid memory is of Roth being paraded around on an oversized surfboard during his cover of The Beach Boys' "California Girls."
The self-centered singer also said something to the effect of "How do you like my band?"
The problem was Roth had assembled a veritable all-star band featuring virtuoso guitarist Steve Vai and bassist Billy Sheehan.
The comment rubbed some in the audience -- and perhaps the band members -- the wrong way.
Both Vai and Sheehan were about to leave Roth's band for greener pastures.
The former's solo career continues today; the latter formed Mr. Big.
What was obvious during Roth's set -- which featured Van Halen hits "Ain't Talkin' 'bout Love," "Hot for Teacher," "Jump" and "Panama" -- was without his former band he "Ain't Got Nobody."
Also on the bill was a young Poison, still showing off what the cat dragged in, taking notes and waiting in the wings for its headlining shot that was just around the corner.
The summer of 1988 was a momentary magical paradise that those who experienced can still feel the heat, hear the tunes and remember why hot summer nights are their time of the year.
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"Van Halen Could Do Nothing, Night After Night, To Stem The Charge Of This Godzilla": How 1988's Monsters Of Rock Tour Was The Making Of Metallica
America had long been crying out for a regular hard rock festival. Fuelled on the memories of the 1970s California Jams, the Bill Graham Presents Day On The Green stadium bashes, and a legendary heavy metal night at the US Festival in 1983 – which hosted the likes of Judas Priest, Ozzy Osbourne, The Scorpions and Van Halen all gaining the sort of rave reviews which would become gold standards in their live careers – it was only a matter of time before someone devised a Monsters Of Rock for the US market.
The year was 1988, when word filtered through that there was, indeed, to be a Monsters Of Rock festival in the States. The hair was big, the riffs were bigger, and hard rock was enjoying enormous success in the US. In fact, it seemed that all you needed was a bit of tight denim, some scarves near yer mic stand and some pouffy locks to immediately get platinum status, so this was a logical, and seemingly bound-to-succeed, step.
Legend has it that this 23-city US Monsters Of Rock came about first as an idea of Sharon Osbourne, but that somewhere along the line of conceiving and arranging the concept, she decided it didn't feel right. Thus, in came Van Halen and their manager at the time, Ed Leffler.
Having suffered the trauma and potential marketing nightmare of David Lee Roth's departure in 1985, Van Halen had recruited ex-Montrose rocker Sammy Hagar to lead the charge with devastatingly successful results. Thus with their second Hagar album, OU812, ready for release in the summer of '88, Leffler and company saw their moment to book Van Halen's biggest ever tour into stadiums with the sort of bill that would have Head & Shoulders begging to sponsor.
Monsters Of Rock poster
Finding that perfect big band, who wouldn't complain about playing right before Van Halen, would be tough, but The Scorpions were more than happy to take the slot.
More than likely the memories of that supporting US Festival stint were still fresh and, in hindsight, the German band were smart. With a new album themselves in Savage Amusement, the Scorps could enjoy the exposure without the pressure of leading from the front.
Behind them were Dokken, and with them one of hard rock's great modern pantomimes, with singer Don Dokken seemingly always fighting with guitarist George Lynch. These two hated each other, but managed to check the negativity once they realised that their albums were going platinum.
Holding up one of the two bottom slots were a bunch of ragamuffins called Metallica. They'd caused a stir on Ozzy Osbourne's US tour in 1986, and seemed to be a bit of an underground metal hit. Their new album, ...And Justice For All, steadfastly refused to entertain a conventional single, instead being a thoroughly radio-unfriendly offering.
Finally, opening the festival would be Kingdom Come; effectively The Darkness 15 years before their time, and ineffectively trying to channel Led Zeppelin through every riff – hence their unofficial yet adopted by all name, Kingdom Clone.
Metallica at Monsters Of Rock 1988
As was the way with the 1980s, Monsters Of Rock in the US was all about size and show. The eventual touring production would cart about a reported 971 tons of equipment and carry 250,000 watts of power, supplied by two sound systems weighing 440,000 pounds, suspended over a huge 168-by-60- foot stage, all transported by 51 48-foot trucks. Heavy metal? Very heavy indeed, we'd say.
The press conference to announce the tour saw the bands take their seats at a long table planted firmly in front of the Godzilla in Universal Studios theme park.It was an early morning conference – not very metal – and the questions coming from the press corps were asked with the enthusiasm of a bunch of freeloaders who'd showed up for a free breakfast.
Herman Rarebell, then The Scorpions' eccentric drummer, tried to entertain a few of the assembled reporters by eating one of the fake bananas on display – giving true context to that phrase 'it's the thought that counts'.
The most memorable moment came when someone asked The Scorpions a question which required them to remember Van Halen bassist Michael Anthony's name, and as Rudolph Schenker stumbled over this, stuttering "Michael... Michael..." Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich leaned into his mic and proudly blurted, "Schenker!" to a loud chuckle from the room.
Yes indeed, pickings were slim. In fact it should've been a forewarning of the tour to come, where the young upstarts – namely Metallica – proved themselves unafraid to take a pop at the old, established rock legends.
Metallica Monsters of rock 1988
And so it came. Monsters Of Rock. To a stadium near you. The whole thing looked well-conceived and well-assembled... The only problem was that the upper half of the bill just couldn't deliver what one band on the lower half of the bill were delivering. That is to say: raw, crisp, fuck-you-festival-style energy.
As Metallica's reputation quickly escalated, so the crowds came earlier and earlier, until very soon there were 40-50,000 people inside at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, ready to hear them lay sonic waste to whoever was in the way.
The tour's most extraordinary feat was how, on Kingdom Clone's departure, within 30 minutes, tens of thousands of people streamed in and started hooting and hollering like the headliners were about to come on. They weren't, of course – and for the first few shows, the arrival of all these baby headbangers to see the scruffy rookies that were Metallica '88 was viewed as almost cute by the bigger fish at the top of this food chain.
But by the time the tour rolled through Detroit's Pontiac Silverdome, it was abundantly clear that this 'small fish' had the appetite of Jaws, gorging on audience energy and returning it tenfold. Indeed, as thousands and thousands of fists pumped the air to signal For Whom The Bell Tolls, Monsters Of Rock 1988 suddenly became the tour where Metallica were destined to become the proper rock monster and Van Halen could do nothing, night after night, to stem the charge of this Godzilla.
By the time the tour reached the Los Angeles Coliseum, people were getting pissed off that Metallica only had a 60-minute set. This culminated in a riot at the Coliseum as fans stormed the field from the stands to get closer to the band. Soon, arses were engaged in hauling seats everywhere as opposed to sitting on them. It's fair to say that this punk-like energy was not what the promoters had fully expected.
Subsequently, when Van Halen came to close the show, it was a little more than they could handle. Always a fine live act, there just seemed a little too much snap-happy-doo-dah about their performances, at times more Jimmy Buffet than Jimmy Page. And anyhow, they were dealing with a seriously flagging crowd by then. Of course, you might question the wisdom of a two-hour-and-20-minute set that included solos, but hey, rock'n'roll baby; in the land of leather pants and egos, no headliner could be seen playing a minute less.
Van Halen did their damnedest to make everyone feel welcome – particularly Metallica, with whom Sammy Hagar got a little obsessed. Crowds came out to play, and right now it's tough to remember why Monsters Of Rock '88 wasn't considered a success that ended up spawning a regular festival.
Perhaps America simply wasn't quite ready to embrace a travelling concept like this. After all, when Ian Astbury tried to assemble the Gathering Of The Tribes the following year it fell apart after a few dates. It did open the door for Lollapalooza, but this, too, had limited shelf-life.
In fact one of the only true touring rock festival to annually succeed in American history has been Ozzfest, which actually feels like a Donington or Reading circa the early 1980s as opposed to a headline act with some support bands in a stadium.
And the fact is, when people look back at the US Monsters Of Rock '88, they invariably end up trying to remember it for a while before exclaiming: "Oh yeah, didn't Metallica do that one?"
Didn't they indeed.
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Monsters Of Rock: Are We Ready To Challenge China In Rare Earths Supremacy?
Speak to just about anyone in the rare earths game and they'll tell you just how challenging it is to make a dent in a sector where China has so much control.
A planned economy of sorts, China worked early and quickly to ramp up its rare earths industry in recent decades.
Not only is it the main source of supply, but it holds key competencies seen in few other places around the world when it comes to turning rare earths oxides to metal and then to the magnets which wind up in EV motors and wind turbines.
We've begun to see bolder commentary of late about the prospects of rare earths producers to head further downstream.
Take Iluka Resources (ASX:ILU) for instance, which plans to turn a stockpile of monazite mineral sands waste kept at its Eneabba site for years into the feedstock for Australia's first rare earths refinery, churning out around 4000t of NdPr a year.
It used its half-year financials last week to reveal the company was looking to head further downstream, commissioning a $15m study into the construction of a metallisation plant in WA.
Other players, notably leading rare earths miner Lynas (ASX:LYC), are fielding similar questions.
A tie-up with the US Department of Defence that will see US$258 million in funding thrown Lynas' way to develop light and heavy rare earths separation facilities in Texas has some analysts' tongues wagging about the potential it could go further downstream.
It comes as capital estimates ratcheted up today for Lynas' Kalgoorlie cracking and leaching plant to $730m, with another $50m potentially to be capitalised for pre-commissioning and commissioning activities ahead of the site's opening this financial year.
Mine to magnet a long term dreamLynas is one of the few producers of rare earths of any scale outside China, and Lacaze warned how long the dream in the West of having a major mine to magnet producer had been.
"The first time (COO Pol Le Roux) saw a PowerPoint slide talking about mine to magnet was in, I think, 1999, yet we have not achieved it outside of China today and so, there are reasons for this," she said.
"The competencies at each of the stages are actually quite different and it's very easy to say well, let's just do X or let's just do Y, but frankly what you need to know and be good at to be good at mining is different from what you need to know and be good at to be good at the chemical-processing step which is essentially what we do.
"We'll be doing in Kalgoorlie what we do in Malaysia. And then metallisation and magnet making bring in a different set of skills fundamentally from what you've got in your chemical-processing area.
"So it is absolutely the sort of thing that you can't just wake up one day and say I'm going to be doing this. You need to look for good partners, skilled partners, people with the right sort of technical knowledge and expertise in those areas."
That isn't to say it can't be done. Lacaze says Western companies need to form partnerships to compete with China and its quota-based production system.
"What we have done in the US is that we have selected a site where we will be able to accommodate both further downstream activity and recycling activity. If you have a magnet factory you need to be able to recycle your spa, and it's unstable so you can't be shipping it long distances and those sorts of things," she said.
"We see this as a real opportunity and we are engaging with sort of relevant potential partners which may be a partnership that goes anywhere from supplier-customer partnership through to some sort of a joint venture and where we are actively engaged in that process as we speak.
"The success of developing an outside-China industry is important for all of us. Sometimes I think that the desire is to set up outside China operators as if they're sort of competing with each other when in fact, the main game is China, right? That is our competition.
"For the rest of us, our success is going to be about building this outside-China industry. Otherwise, we simply produce material that ends up going into China for finishing and further value adding.
"So I think that we do need to work together in this area and we are certainly very focused on engaging with relevant potential partners on further developing downstream activities."
Lynas reported a 43% drop in NPAT to $310.7m in FY23 as lower rare earths prices hit despite achieving a record in NdPr production in the second half of 2023.
It plans to hit a rate of 12,000tpa in 2025 via the Kalgoorlie development, developments at its LAMP facility in Malaysia and a $500m expansion of the Mt Weld mine and concentrator near Laverton in WA, one of the world's largest individual sources of rare earths.
Lynas Rare Earths (ASX:LYC) share price today Profits for West African, DDH1It was not just the big dogs in the battery metals space reporting today.
West African gold producer … err … West African Resources (ASX:WAF) delivered a tidy profit on first half gold production of 113,009oz at an all in sustaining cost of $1169/oz.
That bankrolled $109.9m in cash flow, $309.7m in revenue and $82.4m in profit after tax, with $167m of cash and $24m of unsold gold in the bank at June 30.
There's no dividend yet since the main game for WAF lies in expanding beyond its Sanbrado mine to develop the Kiaka project, also in Burkina Faso where from 2025-2032 it plans to produce over 400,000oz of gold a year.
WAF will produce 210,000-230,000oz at AISC of US$1175/oz in 2023.
READ: Diggers and Dealers: Who's running as far as they can from investment bankers?
One company that will pay a dividend for FY23 is drilling stock DDH1 (ASX:DDH), which is flying towards a merger with mining services giant Perenti (ASX:PRN) later this year.
The largest standalone drilling company on the ASX, DDH1 saw revenue rise 8.6% to $550.4m in FY23, with operating EBITDA up 7.1% to $119.4m despite a minor 0.3% fall in margins.
Its NPAT rose 18.4% to $42.5m, backing a 1.96cps final dividend, fully franked, though that was 26% lower than the payout at the end of Y22.
The previous paid interim dividend had been 32.7% higher at 3.33cps.
MD Sy Van Dyk said DDH1's performance had come in a "challenging operating environment" and "tight labour market".
"Notwithstanding the short-term hurdles, we continued to strengthen the quality of our fleet, invest in our people, and position our business to benefit from long-term demand drivers. A highlight was the performance of Swick, which recorded its first full financial year as part of the DDH1 group. Swick continued to flourish and demonstrated significant operational and safety performance improvement," he said.
"FY24 will be another transformative year for DDH1 and its stakeholders.
"The proposed merger with Perenti will create the ASX's leading contract mining services group. The strategic fit between our group and Perenti is exceptional. Our combined expertise and service offering will provide additional value to clients and stronger growth opportunities for our businesses.
"Clients and employees stand to benefit from our shared commitment to safety, service excellent, innovation and sustainability. Following successful completion, I am looking forward with great enthusiasm to leading our strong brands under the new Perenti Drilling Services Division."
DDH1 (ASX:DDH) and West African Resources (ASX:WAF) share prices today SUBSCRIBEGet the latest Stockhead news delivered free to your inbox.
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