7. Aerosmith

THE O2 ARENA

15 June 2010

Steve Tyler shuffles onstage looking more like your great-aunt who hoards scarves than a godfather of glam rock. He is swathed in so many bandanas that he’s basically a walking haberdashery. The mic stand is similarly dressed in a Technicolor nightmare of fabric, looking like it’s seconds away from structural failure, snapping under the weight. But hey, it’s Steve Tyler, and “subtlety” left the building decades ago.

Despite looking like he’s just narrowly escaped a botched mummification experiment; Tyler’s got the energy of a teenager who just discovered Red Bull. He’s twirling around, unleashing enough neck-scarves to outfit a small circus, whilst pouting at Joe Perry and preening at the crowd. Yes, the whole act is basically Mick Jagger cosplay, but who cares? Tyler belts out stadium-sized rock anthems like his vocal cords signed a pact with the devil.

Perry takes it to peak Spinal Tap levels when he appears with a double-neck guitar, because of course he does. But just when we think we’ve fallen into a parody vortex, he rips out a face-melting version of “Livin’ on the Edge”, whilst Tyler gyrates against his mic stand with such fervour that it might need years of therapy to recover from the incident.

Then the unmistakable riff of “Walk This Way” kicks in, and the crowd, twenty thousand strong, transforms into bobbing puppets on invisible strings, whilst we all try forgetting just how troubling the lyrics of that song are. For a few glorious minutes, it’s 1975 again, and these boys remind us why they’re rock royalty and, whilst they may look like they walked out of a gas explosion at the local flea market, they can make a stadium jump.