L.A. Guns frontman Phil Lewis has taken aim at Deep Purple and Mötley Crüe, saying the two bands’ current live performances after their farewell tours leave him disappointed.
Speaking with TotalRock, Lewis discussed acts that announced farewell tours and then changed their minds and returned to the road. He named Deep Purple and Mötley Crüe as the clearest examples of what happens when veteran singers keep chasing material written for much younger voices.
“But I’ve recently heard some stuff that [Deep Purple is] doing live. And it’s disappointing. I think that it’s very much a young man’s game, and I absolutely worship [Deep Purple’s] Ian Gillan as a vocalist. And [Led Zeppelin’s] Robert Plant, to a degree. Not to a degree — absolutely,” Lewis said.
“Robert Plant got the right idea. He toned it down, and he’s not trying to do the screaming ‘Whole Lotta Love’ bit, all the sort of fake orgasm stuff. And that’s most unbecoming for a gentleman at that stage in his life. And I really feel that Ian could take a lesson from that, honestly. I saw him struggling, ’cause [Deep Purple] opened the set [on their recent tour] with ‘Highway Star’, and that’s a motherf*cker to sing that song, those high parts. It’s legendary.”
“And it breaks my heart a little bit to see him struggling through that, to do that. And I’m not suggesting they should bust out mandolins and banjos and turn it into a folk song or anything. But at some point, you gotta say… And [that’s] very much the case with Mötley Crüe. They retired and they came out of retirement, and I’m not necessarily sure that that was a good thing,” he continued.
“I know I’ve got kind of a reputation for slagging off bands. I don’t slag ’em off. All I’m doing is saying it how I see it. And I’m never gonna tour with Mötley Crüe or Deep Purple, so I don’t care what they think about it. I’m just [saying it] from a punter’s perspective more than anything. I don’t see them as peers. They’re so, so way above me in the stratosphere. But just as a fan, I’m a bit disappointed to see that, to be honest.”
The retirement Lewis refers to is well documented, because Mötley Crüe made their farewell unusually official. The band launched its two-year “The Final Tour” in 2014, signing a “Cessation of Touring Agreement” at a January 2014 press conference that was billed at the time as the first deal of its kind in rock. The run ended with a show in Los Angeles on December 31, 2015.
At the time, the contract was presented as airtight. Bassist Nikki Sixx explained the mechanics of the agreement by saying: “Legally, we can’t play again. The only loophole is if all four band members agreed to it, we could override our own contract.”
That loophole was eventually used. In November 2019, Mötley Crüe announced their return in a video that showed the members literally blowing up the cessation of touring agreement, then confirmed a stadium run with Def Leppard and Poison. The trek was pushed back by the pandemic and finally began in June 2022.
Deep Purple’s own farewell framing follows a similar pattern of expansion. The band launched The Long Goodbye Tour in 2017 and presented it as a final worldwide outing, but the tour stretched on for years and the group has remained active on the road well beyond that farewell branding. Ian Gillan, born on August 19, 1945, is now in his early eighties, and songs such as “Highway Star” sit among the most demanding pieces in the band’s catalogue.
Robert Plant, meanwhile, has taken the opposite route with his own back catalogue. Rather than reproduce Led Zeppelin’s original recordings night after night, he has rearranged the material for his solo sets. When Plant performed “Immigrant Song” in Iceland in July 2019 — his first time singing it since 1996 — the publication observed that “The 70-year-old can’t quite get the high notes on the wailing ‘ah-ah ah’s.”
That contrast is exactly the point Lewis was making. As a fan rather than a peer, he says he would rather hear veteran singers adapt than watch them fight material their voices can no longer carry.
