Joe Elliott Shares a Bummer Detail About the 'Stadium Tour'

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Joe Elliott is still thrilled about the success of The Stadium Tour. The tour featuring Motley Crue, Def Leppard, Poison and Joan Jett & the Blackhearts was one of the most successful tours of 2022. While the tour grossed $173.5 million, there was one part of the tour that was a bit of a downer.

Def Leppard frontman Joe Elliott touched on this in a new interview with Classic Rock. When asked if the whole lineup hung out off-stage, he said, "Not much. The safest way for us to keep that show on the road was just to avoid human beings as best we could."

Elliott continued, "I caught covid at home before the tour. It’s still out there. So all of us in Leppard traveled separately, which is the smartest decision we made. I didn’t stay in hotels. I lived on the bus, just me and Dale, my driver, in total isolation."

He added, "That’s the price of doing business in 2022. If we cancel a stadium show in Arlington, Texas at four in the afternoon, people will have traveled hundreds of miles and spent hundreds of dollars to get there. So we avoided contact, we tested every day, and it worked. We didn’t lose one gig."

However, there were some moments where the acts mingled, including one funny moment when Elliott and Motley Crue's Nikki Sixx went out for dinner.

"The one guy I hung out with a lot was Nikki," said Elliott. "One night in Denver we went for sushi and talked about everything but music. It was funny, we didn’t realize Tommy [Lee] was in the same restaurant until we could hear him! He’s quite loud, you see."

For more details on rock tours in 2022, keep scrolling!

Top 20 Highest-Grossing Rock Tours of 2022

The tour industry bounced back significantly in 2022 following a shutdown of nearly 18 months due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Billboard has an extensive breakdown of nearly every fact and figure related to touring in 2022. The biggest ranking of them all is the top 100 list of the highest-grossing tours of the year. While rapper Bad Bunny topped the list grossing over $373 million, many of rock's biggest names weren't far behind. In fact, five rock artists made up the top 10 highest-grossing tours of 2022.

So, which artists are likely swimming in tour revenue cash Scrooge McDuck-style? Scroll below to see the top 20 artists that grossed the most money on the road in 2022.

Machine Gun Kelly

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$40,778,471 (Ranked #48 on Billboard's Top Tours of 2022 chart.)

Metallica

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$43,398,993 (Ranked #47on Billboard's Top Tours of 2022 chart.)

Dead & Company

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$45,943,957 (Ranked #45 on Billboard's Top Tours of 2022 chart.)

Trans-Siberian Orchestra

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$54,649,313 (Ranked #36 on Billboard's Top Tours of 2022 chart.)

Dave Matthews Band

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$62,563,364 (Ranked #34 on Billboard's Top Tours of 2022 chart.)

Billy Joel

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$65,906,424 (Ranked #33 on Billboard's Top Tours of 2022 chart.)

Phish

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$68,598,398 (Ranked #31 on Billboard's Top Tours of 2022 chart.)

Roger Waters

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$69,813,262 (Ranked #30 on Billboard's Top Tours of 2022 chart.)

Iron Maiden

Maria Ives

$76,147,773 (Ranked #26 on Billboard's Top Tours of 2022 chart.)

Genesis

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$81,935,379 (Ranked #25 on Billboard's Top Tours of 2022 chart.)

Imagine Dragons

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$87,531,563 (Ranked #21 on Billboard's Top Tours of 2022 chart.)

My Chemical Romance

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$87,926,378 (Ranked #20 on Billboard's Top Tours of 2022 chart.)

Guns N' Roses

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$93,383,197 (Ranked #17 on Billboard's Top Tours of 2022 chart.)

The Eagles

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$104,175,869 (Ranked #16 on Billboard's Top Tours of 2022 chart.)

Paul McCartney

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$105,077,796 (Ranked #15 on Billboard's Top Tours of 2022 chart.)

Def Leppard & Motley Crue

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$173,474,649 (Ranked #8 on Billboard's Top Tours of 2022 chart.)

Red Hot Chili Peppers

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$176,998,650 (Ranked #7 on Billboard's Top Tours of 2022 chart.)

The Rolling Stones

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$179,349,815 (Ranked #6 on Billboard's Top Tours of 2022 chart.)

Coldplay

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$208,000,727 (Ranked #5 on Billboard's Top Tours of 2022 chart.)