ALLENTOWN, Pa. — When top-selling power balladeers Journey brings its Final Frontier tour to Allentown's PPL Center on Thursday, July 11, it won't be the first act to play a farewell tour in the arena.
Perhaps the biggest final tour that graced the downtown arena was that of Elton John, who on Sept. 8, 2018, kicked off his Goodbye Yellow Brick Road farewell tour at the arena.
But in the arena's nearly 12-year history, it has been host for a handful of "final" tours, starting with Ozzy Osbourne's on Aug. 30, 2018.
“The farewell tours are all well and fine, but I think the overall thing is the level of talent that we’ve been able to bring into the building — and into the Lehigh Valley, right?"PPL Center General Manager Brian Krajewski
PPL Center General Manager Brian Krajewski, who took his position at the arena 15 months ago, said that, "being completely honest with how the industry works ... I think farewell tours, honestly, are bastions of coincidence."
But Krajewski said the broader idea is that such concerts "speaks of the level of talent PPL has had in the past."
“The farewell tours are all well and fine, but I think the overall thing is the level of talent that we’ve been able to bring into the building — and into the Lehigh Valley, right?" he said.
"There’s a lot to offer here and these bigger artists recognize that, so we can bring them in.”
'Farewell' not always the end
Krajewski also noted that "farewell" tours often don't end up being the final performances for a lot of artists.
He noted, for example that Osbourne's tour was cheekily named No More Tours 2 — a play on his 1992 "retirement" tour.
But the tour that brought Osbourne to PPL Center actually was the end: He played just 17 full concerts after that one before his July 22, 2025, death.
Another farewell tour that played PPL Center and truly was the end was painted-face rockers KISS, who played the arena on Feb. 5, 2020.
Yes, the last concert of the group's final tour show came nearly three years and 238 shows later — including an eight-month layoff during the height of the COVID pandemic. But it was the same tour.
Conversely, a PPL Center concert by Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers — the arena's second concert ever — on Sept. 16, 2014, wasn't part of his farewell tour, but it ended up being closer to Petty's end than KISS's tour was.
Petty played just 69 concerts after the PPL Center show to mark The Heartbreakers' 40th anniversary before his death three years later.
Starts, not finishes
Krajewski said that, while PPL Center has seen "farewell tours, we’re also having a lot more conversations around starting to kick off tours."
That also wouldn't be a first. PPL Center, with its location near Philadelphia and New York, since it opened has been touted as a place to start tours.
Neil Diamond, for example, kicked off his 2015 tour — his first in 2 1/2 years — with two shows at PPL Center after rehearsing the tour there. (Diamond retired less than three years later after a Parkinson's disease diagnosis.)
“The thing about this building is we can kick it off and we can finish it. It doesn’t have to be a farewell tour — we’ve got the infrastructure and a really great asset here in the Lehigh Valley to do that and show people what we have to offer.”PPL Center General Manager Brian Krajewski
And John also started his tour there, with about 20 tractor-trailers arriving at PPL Center a week earlier to prepare the setup.
"Hopefully in March, we'll kick off a tour that will be very big, so that’s something we have to look forward to," Krajewski said.
“The thing about this building is we can kick it off and we can finish it. It doesn’t have to be a farewell tour — we’ve got the infrastructure and a really great asset here in the Lehigh Valley to do that and show people what we have to offer.”
Farewell tours at PPL Center
Here's a look at the other farewell tours that have come through PPL Center:
OZZY OSBOURNE — Aug. 30, 2018.
Without Osbourne, heavy metal music would hardly be imaginable — so significant has his music, and his persona of the Prince of Bloody Darkness, was to that genre.
Did the concert measure up to expectation? Perhaps what he played did — much of it still exciting and powerful. But in a set of just 12 songs in 95 minutes — one taking up 20 minutes of that — you could argue it didn’t.
There were plenty of flashing lights and band bombast, though Ozzy delivered his part in a flat, if emphatic, tone for much of the night.
On a seven-minute version of “Crazy Train,” which closed the main set, it was the crowd that was going off the rails — so much energy it was crazy, indeed.
And he closed with Black Sabbath’s biggest hit, “Paranoid.” In the case of that song, a faithful version was precisely what was called for. These years later, it's still a strong song.
But Osbourne skipped Black Sabbath’s biggest song, “Iron Man,” and, worse, skipped one of his biggest solo songs, “Flying High Again.”
In such a compact set, those omissions were egregious. Hardly what you would expect from a proper farewell.
ELTON JOHN, Sept. 8, 2018:
In kicking off the tour, John approached the show not as the start of a marathon tour, but sprinting at full speed, ceding nothing to age as he roared though 24 songs over two hours and 45 minutes.
That road has yellow bricks for a reason: It’s paved with gold — and platinum, as in the more than a dozen gold and platinum hits John played.
Certainly the show was a stroll down memory lane, as he sang songs from throughout his career — 18 of them Top 10 hits.
But it also was one of defiance. He opened the show with a roaring, forceful double-platinum “Bennie and The Jets.”
“Good evening, Allentown, and welcome to the very first show of my farewell tour,” he told the crowd of 10,000 — a record-fast sellout for the arena.
The highlights were many, and he closed the main set with a blazing version of “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting.”
It’s telling that the biggest complaint was you wanted more.
He opened with his encore with his breakthrough hit, “Your Song,” and, of course, closed it with the song that gave the tour its name, “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.”
KISS, Feb. 5, 2020
Paul Stanley, lead singer for the rock band KISS, stood onstage at PPL Center, two thirds of the way through its farewell tour concert, and addressed the nearly sold-out audience.
“Yes, we play Philadelphia. Yes, we play Pittsburgh,” he said. “But tonight, no city has anything on you people.”
And through the band’s effects-filled, 21-song, two-hour-and-six-minute concert, KISS performed as if that actually was true.
From its start with an explosion and a deluge of sparks and flames, and the band’s four members being lowered to the stage on huge risers, KISS offered up a career retrospective of not just songs, but classic concert tricks.
Bassist Gene Simmons, amid a roaring siren, spit fire and drooled “blood” all over his torso. Guitarist Tommy Thayer shot sparks out of the front of his instrument like a rifle at least a half-dozen times. Drummer Eric Singer played a 10-minute solo that included him rising atop a 30-foot riser.
Then Simmons and Thayer rose on similar risers. Stanley flew over the crowd on a zip line.
As could be expected, KISS played a career retrospective — songs from its earliest discs, and from 1980s discs.
The hits were among the night’s best songs, but some deeper cuts stood up surprisingly well, too.
