Mötley Crüe’s Vince Neil Cancels Second Show of 2021
Presumably looking to avoid a repeat of his so-disastrous-it-went-viral performance in Iowa last month, Mötley Crüe singer (“singer”) Vince Neil has cancelled a show set to take place at the Batavia Downs Gaming & Hotel in Batavia, NY this Friday, June 18. It would have been his second concert of 2021.
Neil hasn’t acknowledged the cancellation on any of his social media networks as of this writing. But a statement from the venue outright threatens to ban any fans who dare to mention Neil’s recent embarrassment:
“Batavia Downs Gaming & Hotel announced today that due to circumstances beyond their control, the concert on June 18th, 2021 will no longer feature Vince Neil. Batavia Downs hopes to welcome Vince to Batavia Downs next summer. Please note that any comments on this post that use profanity or degrade any artist will be removed and you will be banned from our Facebook page.”
Luckily, this isn’t the Batavia Downs Gaming & Hotel Facebook page, so we can say whatever the fuck we like.
Neil’s voice has been in wretched shape for a long time now. He still sounded okay when he re-joined the Crüe in 1997, but by 2000, he was already starting to lose it, and things went downhill fast after that. He already had a rep for sounding shitty before the Iowa footage took the Internet by storm…
…but that show was still a total PR nightmare. Mötley Crüe, their management, and even Neil himself made assurances that he’d be in fighting shape by the time the band’s reunion tour, then scheduled for 2020, rolled around. If he actually did get into shape during that time, he definitely let is slide after the tour was pushed back to 2021.
Even with the trek being pushed back again, this time to 2022, someone recently asked Def Leppard — the Crüe’s scheduled co-headliner — about the video of Neil. I imagine that resulted in a flurry of phone calls from the Def Lep camp to the Crüe camp that ostensibly said, “Okay, now you’re fucking with our money, so get your goddamn house in order.” And since Neil was never gonna be able to get his ass in gear after just a couple of weeks, the June 18 show had to be cancelled.
And hey, look: there are plenty of people who will absolutely go see Mötley Crüe regardless of how Vince Neil sounds. I mean, they’re not Dream Theater — even at the height of their success, they were never acclaimed musicians.
But those hardcore fans probably aren’t enough to justify a co-headlining slot on a massive summer stadium tour. So if I was on Team Neil, my #1 priority right now would be a) getting Vince to work with a vocal coach and b) getting a few shows where he doesn’t sound like garbage onto the Internet as a means of reassuring skeptics. And it sounds like that is the actual Team Neil’s #1 priority right now, too.
Either that or the dude just came down with a cold or something and the cancellation is completely unrelated to the Iowa incident. Who can say, really?
If you wanna roll the dice, you can buy tickets to the Mötley Crüe/Def Leppard tour here. Poison are also on the bill, and for once, Bret Michaels may not be the worst singer on a tour!!
