Performers: Steel Panther / Florence Black (support act)
Concert date: Saturday, 2 July 2022
Venue: Tvornica Kulture / Zagreb / Croatia
Steel Panther hardly need a detailed introduction anymore. They’re a band that cleverly carved out a niche on the rock scene where they could grab the attention of the masses — and they broke through. Steel Panther chose the role of parody, breathing life back into the glam metal years and the carefree days of the California Sunset Strip scene in the ’80s. And they didn’t hold back. Their approach was wildly bizarre. Well, not really — not for those with more open minds. It’s hardly shocking at all. Others will say Steel Panther went way, way over every line of good taste. Those are the prudes responsible for the Parental Advisory stickers on so many albums. A band that really started breaking through once they transformed — adopting the look and costumes of Mötley Crüe, Ratt, and Poison — and proceeded to run a first-class circus of refined onstage mimicry, reviving those bands’ customs and habits while cranking everything the Sunset Strip was notorious for up to bizarrely absurd extremes. They’d have gotten nowhere, though, if the individual members weren’t also genuinely exceptional musicians. Not just as performers, but as songwriters too. Few can hold a candle to Satchel. He’s a real pocket Eddie!
The Re-Erections tour finally wound its way to Zagreb — after a very ‘winding road.’ The show had been postponed several times. First they were due to play a standalone show on 12 June 2021, then the concert was pushed to 2 July 2022. When Whitesnake’s Zagreb date was confirmed and it turned out to be the same 2 July 2022, there was an opportunity for Steel Panther to open for Whitesnake at ŠRC Šalata — together, in other words. But then Whitesnake, just before arriving in Zagreb, were forced to cancel all remaining European tour dates, and Steel Panther’s show nearly went down the drain right along with them. The promoter managed to save it, though, relocating the band from ŠRC Šalata — which holds around 3,000–3,500 people — to Zagreb’s Tvornica Kulture, which fits about a third of that. Did anyone seriously think this show would be poorly attended? No chance. A packed Tvornica Kulture proved that Steel Panther already have a rock-solid fanbase in Croatia who follow them devotedly. Encouragingly, the vast majority of the crowd was a younger generation of fans — proof that the glam metal revival is here to stay.
What comes next doesn’t quite fit our usual curious spirit, but we skipped Florence Black this time around and crossed them completely off the concert attendance list. So Google them yourself if you want to find out more about them. We preferred to cool our heads with another round of beer at a bar across Šubičeva avenija during their set. Walking in just after nine — Florence Black had just wrapped up — you could feel the incredibly bright mood, the positive vibe, that real charge in the air, sparks crackling everywhere. Everything was signaling that tonight — a night with Steel Panther — was going to be something truly special.
Then everything went dark. A taped intro featuring the Van Halen classic Unchained laid the perfect runway for blasting off back to an era that has passed but lives on today in the shape and work of Steel Panther — top-shelf comedy and parodic show theatre. Everything revolves around the excesses of boundless imagination: images woven from the world of male sexual fantasy and the gulping and inhaling of various substances.
Steel Panther hit the stage straight through the ‘back door.’ What does ‘going in the back door’ (Goin’ in The Back Door) actually mean? You probably don’t need it spelled out. Alongside the permanent members — vocalist Michael Starr (real name Ralph Saenz), guitarist Satchel (real name Russ Parish), and drummer Stix Zadinia (real name Darren Leader) — bassist Lexxi Foxx (real name Travis Haley) was absent, replaced by Joe “Spyder” Lester. Spyder is a former bandmate of Starr and Satchel from their days together in The Atomic Punks, a Van Halen tribute band. Spyder also served as Steel Panther’s tour manager at one point. Foxx is genuinely hard to replace — if he’s replaceable at all. He really isn’t. Not because of the bass playing — Spyder is his equal there, if not technically superior. But simply because of his stage presence, the very embodiment of ‘all the glam metal of all possible glam metal in one place,’ and the excess and mischief the former bassist got up to onstage — especially while constantly checking himself out in a pink mirror, seated at a vanity table full of makeup and props demanded by the bizarre bizarreness of the parody. Sadly, that piece of the magic is never coming back. But that doesn’t mean anything was lacking from the Steel Panther show at Tvornica Kulture.
The band had tried out quite a few bassists in the interim, but for the current European Re-Erections tour they entrusted the four-string duties to Spyder, who had already filled in for Lexxi Foxx at a handful of individual shows back in 2018.
The band devoted half the setlist to material from their first two albums: Balls Out (2011) and Feel The Steel (2009). From both they fired off the most defining moments of their career — songs that long since became must-plays and part of the band’s iron-clad repertoire. The first standout bit of onstage comedy that stuck in the memory was gallows humor aimed at Def Leppard drummer Rick Allen. For the occasion, Zadinia pulled his left arm out of his sleeve and tucked it under his shirt so he looked one-armed, then started drumming the intro to Asian Hooker with just his right hand. Meanwhile Satchel held forth about the strange inclinations and irresistible magnetism of the Def Leppard drummer toward Asian girls.
With Steel Panther, half the show is actual music and the other half is comedy theatre where you struggle to hold back tears of laughter. The highlight of the show belonged to exactly these comedy moments, opened when Starr appeared dressed as Ozzy — Lennon shades, slicked-back long hair, full Ozzy tremor and that signature shuffling walk — while the band launched into Crazy Train. Then Satchel headed to the drum kit (while the crew up front set up a Nord keyboard, more on that shortly). Satchel entertained the crowd by hammering the snare with his right hand while running through a medley of some of the most iconic riffs in metal history with his left. Then came the guest of the evening. A man who was supposed to be playing Zagreb that same day as part of Whitesnake. Zagreb’s own Dino Jelusick (originally Jelusić). A man whose staggering vocal talent stunned and enchanted David Coverdale himself. Someone who, from this small Balkan corner of the world, achieved what very few manage: a Slav in an Anglo-Saxon band with iconic status. Sincere congratulations to Dino! How many talents like that are still hiding in this part of Europe? Tvornica erupts at Dino’s arrival, and the band rolls into the Van Halen classic Jump, followed by The Final Countdown (Europe), with Dino picking up a keytar — a contraption the Slovenian language still hasn’t coined a word for, even though we know it well from the Modern Talking era.
The probable highlight came when the band invited the first girl onstage. Zadinia sat down behind the Nord keyboards while Starr theatrically wooed the girl as the band performed the ballad Weenie Ride — in extended fashion. More girls followed onstage after that. Anyone who’d been to a Steel Panther show before knew what that could lead to. Well, at least back in Graz, Austria (Orpheum Teater, 2 March 2014), during 17 Girls In a Raw the band managed to coax a whole battalion of girls to strip to the waist. But those were freer times — we breathed considerably more freely back then. Evidently the ‘abuse’ of the term ‘correctness’ and its creep into every pore of our lives by 2022 had swallowed the last shred of a sense of humor, so the real peak moment during that song didn’t materialize. The band closed the main set in powerful fashion — with Death To All But Metal.
The band was in phenomenal form. The stage outfits and moves were carved straight from the late ’80s, when the Sunset Strip scene was in full bloom in Los Angeles. Some of the glitter has been lost without Lexxi on that stage — irreparable damage — but a certain ‘spidery’ darkness has crept into the new Steel Panther shows in its place. Satchel in particular was absolutely wired that evening, his mouth running at full speed as he took shots at one band member after another — almost stealing the frontman spotlight from Starr in the process. Meanwhile Satchel and Spyder were flinging handfuls of picks into the crowd, which only confirmed the incredible energy and brilliant atmosphere co-created by the boiling-over audience, who engaged fanatically with the band throughout the entire show — singing along to every word of every song. After Community Property — which fans were demanding well before the obligatory encore — Steel Panther passed a hat around during the big finale, Gloryhole, theatrically chasing it across the stage until it landed on one of Stix Zadinia’s drumsticks on the first throw.
That’s what it is. The party you come for. Nothing more, nothing less. An evening packed with bubbling optimism and wild fun. Beer flowed in rivers and the floor turned into a proper skating rink. The fumes of too many alcoholic beverages and the boiling humidity that created an actual haze inside the venue had you sweating buckets all on their own. Nobody — absolutely nobody — would have complained if Steel Panther had played another hour that night. Maybe not even the band themselves. It was one of those evenings where the memory stays sweet forever. One of those concert parties you never forget for the rest of your life. The kind where you walk out and say you’d go straight back and do it all over again.
Text: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Steel Panther setlist:
Unchained (orig. Van Halen) – taped intro
1. Goin’ in the Backdoor
2. Tomorrow Night
3. Asian Hooker
4. All I Wanna Do Is Fuck (Myself Tonight)
5. Fat Girl (Thar She Blows)
6. Crazy Train (orig. Ozzy Osbourne)
7. Guitar Solo (incl. Rock You Like a Hurricane / Seek & Destroy / Breaking the Law / Eruption/ The Trooper / Maste)
8. Jump (orig. Van Halen)
9. The Final Countdown (orig. Europe)
10. Weenie Ride
17. Girls in a Row
18. Death to All but Metal
—encore—
19. Community Property
20. Gloryhole
