DEF LEPPARD

TWO STEPS AHEAD

Dave Bowler and Bryan Dray

B~XTREE

Published in Great Brita in in 1996 hyBoxrree Limited,

Hro.ul wallHou-a-, 2 1 Broa dwallc londrm SF.I '11'1..

€> 1')'11'. Dave Bowler and Bryan Dra y

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Front COVl' r design: Shoot T hat Tiger!

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CONTENTS

lntroducnon

Cha pter O ne: Nowhere to Run ? 5

Chapter T wo: All the Young Dudes 12

Chapter Three: O n the Crest of a New W3\'t: 2 1

Chapter Four: Into the Fire 32

Chapter Five: With a Little Help From OUf friends 43

Chapter Six: Wait ing for the Man 52

Chapter Seven: Fireproof 69

Chapter Eight: Animal Ma gic 85

Cha pter Nine: T he Last T ime t 15

Cha pter Ten : T ime for a Change? 131

Cha pter Eleven: All We Wa nt Is Everyth ing 138

Discography 142

Sources 147

DEDICATION

To Mom and Dad' Bicycles, mu scles, cigarettes' - Raymond Ca rverAnd for DeniseTh e half moon in the sky to night, bright eno ugh to come up withan answer .. .Alwa ys

David

To Trish, Emma and RebeccaFor a ll th eir love and support.And Mu m, Dad, Gran , Jo yce and Wa lFor all their help.

Bryan

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

It wouldn't be possible [0 put together any book without the help ofa number of people. Param ount among these are Clare Hulto n atBoxtree and Tarija Howarth an d Mark Hayward who continue to

take care of business. We are grateful to the m all.Mu ch of the initial basic research was conducted at the Na tional

Sound Archive, an excellent facility. We are very grateful to all thestaff there who were unfai lingly helpfu l and able to suggest num erousavenues of enquiry. T hanks to o to those at the Colindale NewspaperLibrar y. Above all, we are most grateful to Den ise Dean who, asusual, gave far too much time to the resea rch of (his pro ject , as wellas offering tho ughts on the text .

Than ks too are due ro th e very legendar y Hot Press. Q. Select,Vox. New Musical Express. Kerrangl, Melody Maker. Raw, MetalHammer an d Record Mirror whose articles on the band were anexcellent source of information.

Withom th e help of 'Ant hology 2' fro m the Bearles, sanity wo uldhave passed away much sooner than it did . T he same applies to

Maria McKee's 'Li fe Is Sweet ' and the Cowboy J unkies' '200 MoreMiles', No collection is complete witho ut them.

Finally, if there's anyone on the lookout fo r other Def Leppard fansto share information with, you should send a large SAE to Kate atMid lands Metal International, 47 T hackeray Walk, Sta fford,Staffordshire ST17 9SE.

INTRODUCTION

'We wanted to be the biggest rock han d in the wo rld.' Beforeembarking on the story of Def Leppard , it's important tha t yo u takenot ice of that single phrase. As espoused by lead singer Joe Elliott,

tha t has long been the co re philosop hy of th e band, their manifesto,the ir raison d'etre. Since their form ation in Sheffield some twentyyears ago at th e height of the punk wa rs, virtually every move hasbeen made with that goa l uppermost in thei r minds. Backed by anAmerican management ream that move wit h the prec ision of anymajor indu stri al corpo ration, they have un fli nchingly aimed for theto p and have made all th e personal sacr ifices necessary to get there.As l.eppard 's story unfold s, it becom es appare nt that that baldstatement of fact and of amb it ion has been centra l to th eir survival.You ma y feel it is a perfectl y sensibl e goa l. You may commend theirhonesty in ope nly confessing to the hidden agen da that motivatesmost gro ups. Altern ati vely you may he repelled by such nakeddetermination to pursue relentlessly the rewards of commercia lism,and be concerned that sales figures have obstr ucted the search formusica l pur ity, if such a thing exists. That is your choice, bur it doesnot cha nge the facts. Def Leppard wanted to be big.

T he reason s for dwelling on thi s particular po int will become clearlater on in this ta le. Suffice it to say tha t these d reams lead themunerringly towards expulsion fro m their ho mela nd early on in theircareer, victims of the vitriol of British fans at a time when the musicalroost was ru led by the independ ent , by the DIY ethic, by the belief

Def Leppard

that small was beautiful and th at majo r label co rpo ratism was thekiss of death for honest musical exp ression . Ridicu led in the earlyeight ies by the English press, Def Leppard had to make it abroad,notab ly in America, before the British too k them to their hearts; bythe time ' Hys teria', its big roc k so und and goo d time attitude mad ethe airwaves in 1987, the ba nd was finally in sync with the prevailingzeitgeist all over the 'c ivilised' world, including the UK. Dreams ofglobal do minati on had seen them through th at initial rejection andhad helped them weat her person al tragedy in the most d igni fied andcourageous manner. As a consequence, some see Dcf Leppard as aco llection of manipulative, cynical maneuverers, backed up by ascheming, Machiavellian management team . Yet wh ile rio-one wouldpretend that they a re nai ve idea lists - such people do not exist at thetop of the musical tr ee - single-minded determinat ion, a qu ality theypossess in spades, is the rea l secret of their success and their longevity.

If Def Leppard have been prophets without honou r in their ownland, then at least the profits pou ring in from ot her lands haveprovided ample conso latio n. Joe Elliott was to boast later , with goodreason , that Leppard had rewritten the rule book when it came towriting and record ing rock music. Equally, th ey helped changeBritish attitudes to the function of rock music and especially tocommercial success. Altho ugh criticism wounded them, theirdeterminati on to make it big, to ma ke themselves ' recession proof' asElliott termed them, enabled them to rise above the sto rm. DefLepp ard are living proof that success can be had , enjoyed, it can besurvived and it can be wort h having. all ideas that were largely al iento a British perspective. Na me any British band that became aninternational success in the seventies an d you'll find a gro up that wasinstant ly reviled. Q ueen and Genesis are excellent examples of theprevailing mindsct; lauded as innova tors at th e outset of their ca reers,once they began to accumulate a few go ld records, the wa rmthaccorded them by the crit ics fell in d irect proport ion . Keen studentsof rock history, l.eppard knew that a simila r fate wo uld inevitablyawait them and so simply set thei r faces agai nst it a nd got on with th ejob in hand, creating mouldbreaking, classic rock music.

Of course, such a view docs simplify th ings a litt le too much.Credibility, rhar nebulous ideal, dictates that it is almost alwa ys the

2

Introduction

dance acts, the remix ers, the DJs and the avant garde industrialistswho get the cred it for pushing back the musical fro ntiers yet Leppa rddid as much as an yone to bring music into the d igital age. T heir wo rkwith Robert ' Mutt' La nge was tr uly gro undhreaking and even such asage as Bono remar ked th at ' Hysteria' was the first technologica lreco rd and one that had an intellectua l impac t on the direction U2too k for ' Achtung Baby' and the n 'Zooropa', ut ilizing the equ ipmentthat was at their disposal. Just as Queen had blazed a trail in their era,Dcf Leppa rd were the fi rst han d of their vintage to stretch therecord ing stud io to its limits and ro use it as another instru ment, aperfect ly valid respon se to the bewilderi ng gro wth in musicaltechnolog y thro ugh th e 1980s.

People's suspicions a bou t Leppard a re generally rou sed by th eirmanagement structure. So str ingently are their affairs managed thatthe music seems to be just another division of Dcf Leppard Inc., amultina t ional moneyma king conglomerate. M usic should have aromantic air about it, th ere should be a hint of the medieva lrroubadour abo ut ar tists, minstrels mak ing their merry way from(Own to town. Sadly, the modern world do es not live on ro mance huton hard cash and again, Leppard were among the first ro realize thatharsh fact of life. T hey'd seen man y musicians run crying ro thepapers to tell sto ries of how they'd been ripped off and they vowed itwould not happen to them. More than that though, they quicklyreal ized - and were speedily educated in the realities by managerPeter Mensch - that the y could only reach the top and then stay thereby giving their ab solute arrenrio n to the finest of deta il. Genesis wereperfect examples of that and by th e end of the 1970s th ey were oneof the top acts in the world . Their blueprint was followed and builtupon by Mensch and his staff to ensure that everything within theLeppard organization worked smoothly. Given thei r ability to att ractprob lems, it was as well that they had such a staunch and shrewd allyas Mensch to fall back on - few other bands wou ld have survived thehostile reception that l eppard got at Read ing in 1980, the criticalpanning they received in the UK in the early eight ies or the t rials andtribu lations that sur ro unded the making of ' Hyster ia' . It wa s as mucha tribute to Mensch 's wise counsel as the innate good sense of theband th at they not only surv ived bur prospered . Goo d business sense

3

Def Leppard

can be seen as soulless, the men in suits ruling the grou p, but that's agross d isto rt ion of the facts. Even if it were true, such globalpenetrat ion of the Leppard sound means that everyone has a chanceto hear their records and, if you're a fan of classic rock, that can onlybe a good thing. Def Leppard are anything but a bunch ofma nipulated meatheads.

Self-sufficiency is their creed and their greatest gift, crucial in thechanges they are currently going through. Unlike a number of theircontemporaries - not ab ly on the west coast of America - themembers of the band are down to eart h blokes who can live a nor ma llife away from the stage. Jt's hard to believe, but some rock musician sare so pampered that they don't know how to buy postage stamps!Def Leppard arc o rdinar y men who have an extrao rdinary job. T heyare in tou ch with their fans, know that they a re appreciated and arenormal eno ugh to enjoy the privileges. But above and beyond that,they are content with the music they mak e. T hat has a lways been thesupreme test. If they make a record and love it at th e end of therecording process, that is now the real success, an indication of howtime has changed their att itud es. With more mon ey in the bank th anthey could ever need, sales graphs are less important. Having been thebiggest band in the wo rld , Leppard embarked on a different roadwith 'Slang' . Now they want to be the best. 'Slang' lacks the tota lconfidence and convict ion that such a bold move requires, bur it is avery enco uraging fi rst step and one that few in their position wouldhave tried. But that is Def Leppa rd in a nutshell - the most self­sufficient, self-confident band in the world.

How do they justify such arroga nce .. .

4

1

NOWHERE TO RUN?

' Def Leppard will play here in 1980: A simple scrawl on the granitewall of Sheffield 's City Hall in the bleak midwinter of 1978. Anephemeral cha lk mark wa shed away by a rain storm, few would haveseen it at the time, yet Joe Elliott 's co ncise sta tement is archetypal DefLeppard, for it reads in such a matter of fact manner th at it seemedincontrovert ible, defied quest ion . In Def Leppard' s case o f co urse, theexperience of the last twenty years adds immense significance to thewords. Viewed that way, it does look like a sta tement of fact, a lmosta warni ng to the punters to book ea rly to avoid disappointment. Sucha co nclusio n might reason abl y be dismissed as plain daft. the resultof hindsigh t and an un quenchab le desire to ro manticize fur ther thestory of a ma jor league rock ban d, sugges ting th at the hand of destinyhas always been guid ing Def Lep pard's fort unes. After all, there ateplenty of similar messages written on halls in most major towns andcities, th e despera te words o f an ambitio us youngster lookinghopelessly for a break, trying to gain extr a attent io n for his o r hergro up. The odd thing abo ut it th ough is th at Joe honestly believedthat those wo rds were a matt er of fact, that th ey were a warn ing toget in line for tickets becau se he never had any doubts th at his bandwould soon be treading th e boards th at had already been graced byhis heroes, gro ups like M ort the Hoop le and Thin Lizzy.

Like man y kids of his age, Joe Elliott found the mid sevent ies dan kand depressing times. Born in Sheffield o n 1 August 1959, he had fewaca demic pretensions and left school at th e first o pportunity, going

5

Def Leppard

straight out to work for a living - these were the days when Sheffieldwas still a thriving town and the epicentre of the world's steelindustry. Jobs were plentiful and lads like Joe with no realqualifications nor ambitions for a career were thought of as idealfactory fodder. Early on he found himself working for SmithWiddowson and Eadem Limited, on the treadmill in a factory thatproduced cutlery, one of the city's staple products. With fewprospects and the tedious grind of the nine to five stretching outbefore him for the next forty or fifty years, Joe was understandablyfilled with the desire to escape. Again, nothing there to distinguishhim from thousands of others across the country, making thecontemporary journey into the heart of the rat race. Joe followed thetraditional escapist routes, immersing himself in pubs and football,but he always felt that there had to be more to life than just this.

Music was his greatest passion, providing a very necessary outletfor his fertile imagination. Later, he recalled that 'the first concert 1ever saw was T Rex at the Sheffield City Hall in 1971. Marc Bolanwas the first pop idol 1 ever had'. The twelve year-old was bitten bythe rock'n'roll bug, those waking hours not reserved for SheffieldUnited being spent on dreams of pop stardom. Those formative yearsback in the early seventies were played out to a very strong popsoundtrack, with glam rock holding sway in the charts, courtesy ofSlade, the Sweet, Gary Glitter, Roxy Music, David Bowie and Mottthe Hoople. That period is often ridiculed now, largely because of theatrocious fashion sense displayed by the stars of the era , but if youcan ignore the lack of anything approaching sartorial elegance andinstead listen to the music, it's clear that there were some excellentsongwriters and musicians around at the time. Following in theaftermath of the Beatles, whatever happened would have had to beanti-climactic but in retrospect, the power pop sensibilities of JimmyLea and Noddy Holder in Slade, the innovative intelligence of DavidBowie, Mick Ronson, Bryan Ferry and Brian Eno and the sheerstupidity of Gary Glitter conspired to create some memorablemoments.

Joe Elliott was among those moved and inspired by what washappening in the Top Twenty. 'I got off first on people like LedZeppelin and then on the commercial side of rock - glam rock if you

6

Nowhere to Run ?

like, harder edged pop. Mott the Hoople were my favourite band andthe good thing was that you'd get to see them and the Sweet or Sladeon the TV on Top ofthe Pops but you only ever heard about Zeppelinat parties or from friend s.' With typical pugnacity, Joe decided thereand then that he was going to be a pop star, going so far as to informhis careers teacher of the fact . Bands like Mott had such a hold on hisimagination that he created his own imagina ry band, daydreamingabout playing the City Hall wh ile lessons went on around him. Heeven went so far as to design gig posters for this ment al combo whichhe had named Deaf Leopard. His determination and his desire wereonly reinforced every time he heard 'All Th e Young Dudes','Suffragette City' or 'Blockbuster' , though predictably his teachershad little faith in his ability to emulate his heroes and were notsurprised when he quickly found his way on to the factory floor.

Exposure to the tedium of work onl y hardened Elliott's attitudes tothe future. Changing jobs, he felt even less inclined to build a futurefor himself within a local firm. He remembered later the reason forhis belief in 'Deaf Leopard' . ' I wanted to get into a band to get out ofthe factories. I was a storekeeper at Osborne Mushet Tools, stuck ina basement where I had to buy in everyth ing from paper towels toSwarfega to oil rags to nuts and bolts to grinding wheels. The wholeidea of being in a band was to escape boredom, so I just created myown form of escapism. When I was working, I just wanted to have agreat time at night before I went to sleep and woke up to the same oldcrap. That's what I did for five year s. I used to listen to my AliceCooper tapes during dinner hour and think " I don't want to workhere for the next fifty years. Anything to get out of this shit" .'

It' s a con venient phrase that we've all used countless times: 'I'd doanything to be able to pack in this job and be rich and/or famous.'Few people actually do anything about it though. They don't reallymean it, don't have the courage, the conviction, the determination,the vision or the talent to do anything but dream. What set Joe Elliottapart from the rest was his intense determination to succeed and hisincredible blind faith in his own ability to deliver that dream. Giventhat Yorkshiremen are often fairly opinionated and sure that theirway is the right way, perhaps Joe's own self-assurance was just amatter of heredity - it is the county that spawned the likes of Fred

7

Def Leppard

Trueman, Harvey Smith, Geoffrey Boycott and Foggy Dewhurst afterall and none of them could be described as shrinking violets orlacking in self-confidence. Once he had embarked on a life in a band,the very idea of failing simply didn't occur to him. Such confidence,bordering on arrogance is remarkable when you bear in mind theenormous failure rate within the music industry. Look at any localgig guide and you can find dozens of bands of all kinds playing in thepubs and clubs of your town or city - the chances are that none ofthem will ever amount to anything more than just a good night outin your locale. The likelihood of any of them becoming the mostsuccessful band in the world is so infinitesimally tiny as to be notworth considering. With a band up and running, Joe turned that ideaon its head so that the chances of them not becoming the biggest bandin the world weren't worth considering.

However good or determined you are though, luck always has apart to play. Joe's particular stroke of good fortune came when heteamed up with another young man who was equally convinced ofhis own particular destiny. Richard Savage was a year younger thanJoe, born in Sheffield on 2 December 1960. A useful guitarist, he wasan even more promising foot bailer and was on the books of SheffieldUnited which was ironic since he spent his Saturdays on the terracesat Hillsborough, home of Sheffield Wednesday. United were in theFirst Division for much of his time as a schoolboy there and they werekeen to offer Savage a contract to stay at the club. The chance of aplace with a top flight football club is an offer that most young ladscould only dream of, yet for Savage the decision to sign or not wasmore complex. He had ambitions that extended beyond the game offootball, for at the tender age of sixteen and with no realisticexpectations of success, Rick was adamant that he was going to be anall-conquering rock musician. With the same swaggering arrogancethat characterized the teenage Elliott, Rick felt that it was just amatter of time before he was in a major league band, an even moretempting prospect than playing professional football. Oddly enough,it was a decision that Iron Maiden's founder, bassist Steve Harris,was making at the same time at West Ham United. Savage reasonedthat rock music was his first love, that music was much morelucrative in those pre-Premiership days and that the rock'n'roll

8

Nowhere to Ru n?

lifestyle was more fun . You could stay out late, didn' t have to worryabout what you ate , drank or smoked, wh ile Sheffield Unit ed didn'tget a lot of action on the gro upie front either. Most compelling of allthou gh, it was the hated United rather than his beloved Wednesdaythat were making him the offer. If Wedn esday had come in for hisservices, who knows? Maybe Def Leppard wo uld never have seen thelight of da y. Turning his back on the beau tiful game, Savage took upan apprent iceship with British Rail , though he never looked on thatjob as more than a mere time filler until the day sta rdom beckoned.

While Joe was looking for a break and going to each and everyrock gig at Sheffield' s City Hall, Rick was taking the first tentativesteps towards putting a band togeth er. At the time, Rick 's gro up, inwhich he played guitar, went und er the unappetizing moniker AtomicMass, a wholly and hopel essly derivati ve name, centred on heavymetal 's preoccupation with horror and holocaust. Alongside him inthe band was another local guitarist, Pete Willis. They had met atTapton Comprehensive School and had been kicking ideas aroundtogether since they were fourteen or fifteen. Willis was clearl y themore promising of the two on guita r, a more fluent and technicallycapable player, but if anything it was Savage who remained thedriving force behind their dreams. Savage wo uld not be deterred bysetbacks while the diminutive Willis was more reserved in hisambitions.

Mo st school groups cru mble when the time to leave comes around,the individuals all going their sepa rate ways, but for some it is thecritical moment that propels them forward . Having to get a jobmerely brought home how ordina ry their futures might be and howimportant the band could be as a launchin g pad towards betterthings. Sharing similar tastes to Joe Elliott, Atomic Mass wouldrehearse a mixture of glam classics and hard roc k sta ples, such thatthey were never rooted purely in heavy metal but instead had apoppier element to their sound, even at that earl y stage.

Joe met up with Pete Willis at the school's youth club and when, in1977, Pete and Rick , along with drummer Ton y Kenning, werelooking for a singer, Elliott came to mind. At th at stage, Joe thoughtof himself as a guitarist and freely admitted that ' the onl y singing I'dever done previously was in the junior school choir. Apart from that,

9

Def Leppard

I once played Elvis Presley in a school play when I was eleven. Theyonly asked me because I was the only person who could play theproper guitar chords to "The Wonder Of You".' But Elliott hadmade an impression on Willis who recognized in him the samewholehearted commitment that made Savage such a valuable bandmember. Such was Savage's desire to succeed, he had given up guitarand moved to bass when no suitable bassist could be found, a la PaulMcCartney in the post-Sutcliffe Beatles. Nothing would stand in theway of Atomic Mass becoming rock gods, so Rick himself pluggedthe glaring gap. In the face of that sacrifice, Joe's protestations wereeasily overcome. After all, he was tall, cut an imposing figure at thefront of the stage and wanted out every bit as badly as the others did.Despite making a hash of 'Suffragette City' and 'Stairway to Heaven'at the band's first rehearsal together, Joe was in.

So now they had a four piece, the classic Zeppelin and Sabbathline-up of voice, guitar, bass and drums. Even as teenagers though,the nucleus of Willis, Elliott and Savage could see the limitations ofsuch a rudimentary set-up. Willis in particular felt the band would berestricted if he was the only guitarist and pointed to favourite bandslike Thin Lizzy, ACIDC and Judas Priest, all of whom used twinguitars. In fairness to Willis, who is often seen as something of a fallguy in the band's history, his was a very farsighted view for such aninexperienced player and it was also a particularly unselfish one .Given that guitarists are very often the focus of a heavy metal band,over and above the singer, he was choosing to give up much of thespotlight and share it with someone else. Since being in a band issupposedly the best way for a young lad to attract girls and given thatWillis was not the most prepossessing physical specimen in the world,it is even more remarkable that he was willing to concede suchterritory. Clearly with Elliott in place, he too was beginning to feelthat Atomic Mass might be on the move and was gripped by the sameprofessionalism that marked those two out.

If they were on the move though, there were still a few things to besorted out, most notably the name. Atomic Mass was, quite simply,useless. It was hard to imagine posters outside Earl 's Court orMadison Square Gardens proclaiming the much awaited return ofAtomic Mass. Joe gathered the rest of the lads together in his

10

Nowhere to Run ?

bedroom for a band meeting. Making the most of the territorialadvantage, he resurrected his dream group, Deaf Leopard andsuggested that this was a more promising handle for the group.Support was initially muted, but by the end of the evening, Joe hadgot his way. The onl y concession he had to make was in the spelling.Def Leppard wa s born.

11

2

ALL THE YOUNG DUDES

Creating a successful rock band that can live and work together overa long period is a delicate operation, akin to building a successfulfootball team. Pure blinding talent is not always the vital ingredient,though naturally it' s an important element. However, simply puttingtogether a collect ion of brilliant individuals does not guaranteesuccess, for you can over-egg the pudding and upset the balance. Thearrival of Fau stin o Asprilla at Newcastle United has proved that. Ifwe look back into the late sixties, to the days when super groups werespringing up with monotonous regularity, few survived. Most, likeBlind Faith for instance, simply fell apart under the weight ofpowerful egos, combustible characters and individuals who simplydidn't get on together.

Balance is the vita l and oft en elusive component of an y band withpretension s to longevity and it's why groups that start as an extensionof a social life have so much more chance of survival. Gene sis beganas songwriters at school and whil e none of them was necessarily avirtuoso musician to begin with, the chemistry within the line-up wasright. Th e same is true of U2, who formed a band as something to doafter schoo l. In tha t light, the omens were always good for DefLeppard. Willi s and Savage had met at their comprehensive; they'drun into Jo e at their local youth clu b. Even before they got a bandtogether, a camaraderie existed.

By 1977, they 'd all read enough to understand just how importantpersonal relati onships were within a group. Ian Hunter's Diary of a

12

All the Young Dudes

Rock 'n 'roll Star had been published, whil e interviews in the musicpress pointed out time and time again that when a band wa s on tour,the members had to live in on e another's pockets for months at atime. Though Willi s, Savage and Elliott were very keen to findanother guitarist, the y were equally concerned that whoever joinedtheir ranks should not upset the chemistry of the gro up. Once more,fate smiled upon them. Pete Willis was required to attendStannington College as pa rt of his job as an apprentice latheoperator. Using the opportunity to his own adva ntage, he used thecollege library to expand his own knowledge of the guitar, workinghis way through the technical manuals the y had there. It was while hewas reading an effects book that Steve Clark introduced himself, thetwo falling into conversation about their favourite bands, influencesand so on. Clark had already worked his way through a few groups,leaving them when it became clear that they lacked the ambition toturn their hobby into a way of life. Again , as he had done with Joe,Willis identified the similarity between Clark's ambition and that ofSavage. This time though, he wa s a little more wary, worried thatClark might not fit in with the group. Equally, now that push hadcome to shove, perhaps he was having second thoughts about sharingthe spotlight with such a supposedly accomplished performer, onewho might usurp him in the band.

Clark wa s not a conventional guitari st by an y means. AnotherSheffield lad, born in the Hillsborough district on 23 April 1960, hehad received his first guitar as a Christmas present from his parentsin 1971. The present was given on the understanding that Stevewould study the classical guitar and indeed he took a series of lessons,learning pieces from Bach and Vivaldi . By the time he wa s into histeens though, rock music had taken its hold on his imagination andpretty soon Bach was replaced by Blackmore as a musical hero.Nevertheless the classical lessons had been a vital part of his musicaleducation, providing him with a vocabulary that few contemporaryplayers could equal. It was obvious that here was a precocious talent,greater than that of anyone else in Def Leppard, so it'sunderstandable that Willi s should balk at the idea of bringing himinto the band. After all, someone like Clark who knew what he wasdoing might easily eclipse the rest of them and take charge of the

13

Def Leppard

whole affair. Th e tw o parted after Willis had issued a vagueinvitation for Clark to come up and see them some time at theirrehearsal room above a spoon factory in Bramall Lane.

If Willis wa s unsure of Clark's value to the band, joe Elliott had nosuch reservati on s. A co uple of da ys after his meeting with Willis ,Clark bumped into the two of them in the bar of the City Hall priorto a judas Priest gig. Following Jo e's rather warmer enco ura gementand impressed by his hopes and dreams for Def Leppard, within amatter of days, on 29 januar y, Steve was rehearsing with them.Almo st at once, he becam e an integral part of the band, sha ring theirvision of a glori ou s future together.

We're forced to return again and again to this incredible self-beliefthat surrounded Def Leppard, a belief that far outstripped theirability as musicians. Th ey worked tirelessly, trying to play somenumbers of their own, always ready to fall back on the clas sics for alittle relief, but as 1978 wore on, rehearsals began to become staleand musical progress was painfully slow. Steve had been in a numberof groups that had talked a good game but then failed to do anythingabout it and it was sta rting to dawn on him that perhap s Leppardwere just another in a long line of time wasters. By the end of June,he had had eno ugh and taking refuge in the Dutch co urage offered bysevera l pints of bitte r, he told the band that if they didn 't sta rt lookingfor gigs, then he was leaving.

This came as something of a bombshell to the rest of the band whohad been conten t simply to wo rk hard in practice. j oe admitted that' I panicked beca use 1knew th at if Steve left, it could be the end of theband ' . Less na tura lly gifted performers than Clark, they wereund erstandabl y nervou s abo ut making the next leap forward on to

the concert stage and there was a general feeling that they weren'tready yet, having been togeth er for just a few months. Steve's decisionto quit back ed them into a co rne r and, despite their individualanxiet ies, they rea lized that they couldn't take the risk of him leavingthe group for he was beginning to show promise as a songwriter too.Clark's ga me of Russian roulette had paid off and on 18 july, DefLepp ard pla yed their first ever co ncert .

Th e venue for th is earth-shattering event wa s the gymnasium ofWestfield School, th e band pock eting the princely sum of five pounds

14

All the Young Dudes

in return for their efforts. The gig itself may have been as low key asthey come, but it was absolutely critical in setting Def Leppard on thepath they would follow for the next three years, where playingconcerts would be central to their strategy. Their performance maywell have been ramshackle but it did prove to them that they hadsomething when they played together, that there was a certain qualityabout them as a band, a spark that separates the men from the boys.

Physically of course, Def Leppard were little more than boys at thisstage. Joe was only just approaching his nineteenth birthday, Stevehad just turned eighteen while Rick and Pete were just seventeenyears old. The naive enthusiasm was enough to keep them going inthis early phase of their career, but equally, it did cost them their selfrespect as they followed the dictates of youthful fashion. As Joeremembered later 'you should have seen the ridiculous clobber wehad on to start with! Stripy trousers and leopardskin T-shirts and silkand all that crap. We thought we were very sexy and, of course, weweren't. It's amazing what you think when you're nineteen.' Some ofthe photographs have survived to tell the tale, turning up regularly inthe more unflattering press features on the band.

Sartorially challenged though they might have been, Leppardsoldiered on . Having got the taste for live performance at long last,they wanted plenty more of it. Again, they received another stroke ofgood fortune by virtue of their geographic isolation from London.1978 was the height of the punk and new wave boom that hadsupposedly swept away all the old ideas about rock music andreplaced them with a brand new order. In London and the south eastwhere the word of the NME was law, rock venues were changingtheir allegiance overnight in order to capitalize on this newmovement. Clubs and pubs that had regularly played host to hardrock and heavy metal acts for years on end now refused to look at anyband that was not covered in safety pins. If you had long hair, you'dhad it. Iron Maiden, for example, had a terrible time finding places toplay in London when they were first starting out, Steve Harrisfighting an ongoing battle with all manner of promoters just to keephis music alive.

In Sheffield, punk was just another musical fashion that had comealong from out of the blue. At a distance of a couple of hundred

15

Def Leppard

miles, th e punters were less impressed by outlandish clothes andantics and more interested in the product. Indeed, that wa s very muchth e sto ry of punk away from th e metropolis. Musicall y it was abreath of fresh air, a who lly necessary chance to take stock of thefuture d irect ion of roc k'n' ro ll, breaking free of th e shackles of pomproc k and insipid pop music. The good bands survived th e punkonslaught, th ose wi th noth ing left to offer died beneath its witheringfire. But it 's wrong to run away with the notion that punk was rock's'Yea r One'. It wa s anything but, for the new wave was as ro oted inthe past as any other offs hoot of rock 'n 'roll. Jo e Elliott knew his stuffby th e tim e 'Never M ind th e Bollocks' was released and hisassess ment of it was spot on:

You have to realize th at in Sheffield we didn't see th e Sex Pistol spla ying th e 100 Club, we didn't get all of those new fan zines, wedidn 't see Johnny Rotten vomiting down the Kin gs Road. All wegot was th e record of 'Anarchy in the UK' in th e local reco rdsho p at nin e o 'clock on th e Monday morning it ca me out. Wegot th is already ma rketed product . And when their album ca meout, I thou gh t 'This is fuckin' brilliant, hea vy rock th e wa y I likeit! Ballsy but three chordish' . It had thi s guy th at co uldn' t singand a gu y th at couldn't play so los, but basically it was a roc kreco rd . So all the publici ty th at sur ro unded punk didn' t mea nanything. We just had another grea t roc k reco rd to listen to' .

T hat wa s the tale throug h mu ch of provincial Britai n. Mohica nha ircuts rem a ined a pre tty rare sight outs ide th e ca pita l and thingsmu sical carried on as normal, wi th th e new wave sha ring th e localscene with mo re traditiona l roc k bands. For that reason , punk neverthreat ened th e evo lution of Def Lep pa rd, nev er had th e opport unityto stunt th eir growth by de nyi ng th em outlets for th eir so ngs. Ifanything, th e pu nk revolution pushed Def Leppa rd into thespotl ight before they were ready for it, but th at' s a sto ry for a littlelater on .

If punk had littl e obvious mu sical impact on th e band, socio­logicall y it was mo re significant. T hree-minute songs were back invog ue after years in wh ich no song was wort h its sa lt if it didn't

16

All the Young Dudes

include a three-minute solo. The excesses of progressive rock werebrutally hacked back so that rock music had to be concise once again.Indeed, it had to be written in such a way that it might compete in thesingles chart, a revolutionary thought given the scorn that bands likeZeppelin and Floyd had heaped upon the Top Twenty. For a rockband , the ideal wa s now Thin Lizzy or Queen, groups with guts butwith an ability to turn out classic rock singles. That was an importantshift in emphasis for Leppard , for that was precis ely the directionthey were heading in, propelled by their collective enjoyment of glamrock.

Punk's other great legacy was the notion that you could do ityourself. A punk band might write a song on Monday, record it onThursday and have it out in th e shops on their own label thefollowing week. The idea of some patriarchal multinational recordcompany deciding what should and sho uldn' t be released wasbecoming an outmoded concept as small independent studios beganto pop up around the country, offering a decent sound at veryreasonable prices. With pressing costs coming down too, a band witha local following could easily record a single, recoup the cost byselling it at their gigs and still have enough co pies left to send to radiostations all over Britain.

The unswerving self-belief that Leppard had in themselves andtheir destiny has already been mentioned on numerous occasions, forthat incredible will to win was probably their stro ngest suit. Runningit a very close second was their ability to look two steps ahead ofwhere the y were, a knack they have yet to lose. As soon as they hadbecome a live band, they began to con sider where the y wanted to besix months hence and how the y would get th ere. Getting beyond theconfines of Sheffield was the most importa nt step, on e which theywould accomplish only by succeeding locally and by having somekind of calling card to show to promoters further afield - their ownsingle would do that job very nicely. There's no doubt that that wasthe next goal they were working towards. Th ey had scarcely left thestage at Westfield School before they had begun to calculate whenthey would be ready to make that first recording.

Now if punk never became the all-conquering force in the norththat it was in London, cities like Sheffield needed their own kind of

17

Def Leppard

music, music that could unite teenagers across the city. Like many ofthe great industrial towns north of Watford such as Birmingham andNewcastle , Sheffield 's music of choice was heavy metal and the CityHall hosted shows by all the major members of the metal fraternity.It was a rare week indeed when one rock band or another wasn'tpacking in 2200 fan s. Clearly then, Def Leppard had a base fromwhich to work, a reservoir from which to draw support.Paradoxicall y though, Sheffield 's importance on the metal map madethings tougher for them. Th e people knew their rock music and therewere a number of bands trying to break on to the local circuit,playing before crowds that weren't easily impressed - Yorkshire'sclubs are to rock bands what Glasgow's are to comedians, a potentialgraveyard. If that wasn't enough, the very fact that the rock elite weresuch frequent visitors to the City Hall tended to militate against thesmall er clubs. If in anyone week you might be able to catchMotorhead , AC/DC and Gillan for instance, you might be lessinclined to head off to the Limit or the Leadmill to see a band you' dnever heard of on one of your nights off. And woe betide the bandwhose show happened to clash with Whitesnake's visit to the city,because it'd be liable to end up playing to the proverbial one man andhis dog.

Th e network of working men 's clubs that dotted south Yorkshiredoesn't imme diately appear to offer a particularly promising outletfor an aspiring rock band. Typically of Leppard's attent ion to detailth ough, they had evolved a plan in which those clubs were absolutelycentral. Now out and about on the local circuit, Joe recalled that rockvenues offered very littl e by way of payment: 'After th at first show,we played loads of dingy dungeon-type places and got paid aboutfifteen qu id a time. We did the rock pubs for that much and all wecould drink but a van would cost us £35 for each gig. When we didthe wo rking men 's clubs, we got better paid and we'd sign for ourmon ey as Mic key Mou se so that we couldn't be traced . Those gigspaid for what we lost whil e we were trying to break into the rockcircuit.' It' s a tribute to their versatility that they wer e able to get sucha lot of wor k in the working men 's clubs, not normally regarded as aheavy metal hotbed. Their ow n songs were in a slightly lighter veinand, by playing covers such as Thin Lizzy's 'E merald' and 'Ros alie' ,

18

All the Young Dudes

the Bob Seger song they'd appropriated, they were able to keep thoseaudiences happy. The real test though would come on the rockcircuit, as they knew full well.

No-one could accuse the band's members of not working hardenough for, true to their faith, Def Leppard became something of areligion to them. In spite of their day jobs, if they didn't have a gig toplay, they'd rehearse for four hours a night, five nights a week as wellas on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. Transportation difficultieswere finally solved in a novel fashion. Joe Elliott again: 'Eventually, Igot the sack from that store-keeping job - I got caught playing cricketin the basement - and I got a job as a van driver which came in veryhandy!' Surprisingly enough, the delivery van tended to moonlight asDef Leppard's official transport. But even with Leppard's willingnessto play anywhere for anything - they supported fellow Sheffield bandthe Human League at one point - they still found it terribly hard toget gigs, playing a mere handful by the turn of the year. Not that theyweren't busy, for along the way they lost drummer Tony Kenning tothe clutches of a girlfriend who, understandably enough, did notshare the group's enthusiasm for rehearsing nor their unswervingfaith in their glittering future. Kenning was replaced by Frank Noon,so the intensive practice schedule was now geared to helping him fitinto their overall sound.

What was that overall sound? Opinions vary - Joe Elliott was laterto argue that Def Leppard had never been a heavy metal band butrather a commercial rock band. At the time , as an article of faith,Leppard were adamant that they were heavy metal. In retrospect,their sound seems very lightweight compared with what we regard asheavy metal now, played by groups such as Metallica or Anthrax.Nevertheless, at the time, bands such as Kiss and Van Halen wereindisputably from the HM end of the market and Leppard owedmuch to both. In terms of stage presentation, still very much in itsinfancy, they drew on their glam roots, spiced up by references to theeffusive showmanship of Dave Lee Roth. Costumes, for example,were nothing if not garish according to Elliott. 'In those days we stillthought it was cool to have a perm because Robert Plant and MarcBolan had curly hair. So I got a perm done and it looked disgusting.We used to wear women's clothes on stage. We used to buy all our

19

Def Lepp ard

clothes from Top Shop and Chelsea Girl. If you want to look a bitdifferent from the audience, you' re not going to get it in Burtons, soI was regularl y in Top Sho p. We co uldn' t reall y afford an ything else- I only got abo ut £28 a week.' How they survived the wo rking men 'sclub is anyo ne's guess, but survive they did, pro speri ng too, so muchso th at by November they were read y to make that all-impo rta ntdebut recording.

20

3

ON THE CREST OF A NEW WAVE

Having o nly played seven co ncerts, Def Lep pard proba bly went intothe stud io too ea rly in man y res pects, befo re they had had th e cha nceto become a road hardened band in th e way tha t contempora ries suchas Iron Ma ide n had. Yet it was propheti c th at they sho uld choose todo so, for it foreshadowed th e em phasis th ey would place o n the twosides of ba nd life for th e rest of th eir ca reer. Live work co uld be see nas fun , enjoya ble and an important part of the group ex pe rie nce , butit was re hears ing, working o n songs, hon ing them to perfect ion th atwas the reall y important th ing. Putt ing a track down on tap e was th eonly mean s of gua ra nteeing immortality, and before it wa s recorded ,each new so ng had to be just right, hence the hou rs and ho ur s o fpract ice.

With a lmost a year of hard reh earsing behind th em, the nucleu s ofSavage, Ellio tt, Willi s and Clark felt th at they had pu t a nice body o fsongs togethe r, from which th ey co uld select th e bes t. It' s clea r howimportant it was to th em to mak e a reco rdi ng and finall y, th eyseemed read y to make th e ste p. Financial co ns ide ra tions wereupperm ost in th eir minds and ultimately, Joe had to borrow £.: 148.50from his dad to enable th em to mak e th e short tr ip to Hull to recordthree so ngs at Fairview Studios.

Song select ion was crucial, for a ltho ugh they were viewing therecording sess ion as a ch an ce merely to dem o so me so ngs, th ey hadgreater ambition s for th e tapes. Even if it did not turn into th e debutsingle they hoped for , at th e very least th ese so ngs would be th eir

2 1

Def Leppard

calling card when they approached booking agents across thecountry. The first song selected itself. 'Getcha rocks off' was simple,honest to goodness hard rock of a kind that had been especiallypopular in the early seventies. It's most obvious reference point wasDeep Purple, for it bore the hallmarks of their 'Speed king'. Nomasterpiece by any means, it was indicative of a band that couldhandle their instruments and were promising songwriters. Despite thereservations of Joe's mum - 'I can't understand why people like it. 1think it's horrible' - 'Getcha rocks off' had to be the main track. Itwas fitting that that should be the case, for the very idea of 'gettingyour rocks off' was the central plank of Def Leppard's manifesto.They were a good-time band, enjoying playing and loving the chanceto escape from the real world for however short a time.

The second track 'Ride into the sun', was in a similar vein.Lyrically, it was all top-down cars, cruising freeways and drive-inmovies. Clearly the band had been watching plenty of Hollywood'steen movies and were dreaming of the wide open spaces of America.Given that their songs were written beneath the factory chimneys ofSouth Yorkshire in the midst of a particularly drab year for theBritish weather, they could hardly be criticized for having thesewidescreen, technicolour visions of escape to a land of opportunitywhere the sun always shines. What bunch of British teenagerswouldn't want to go and see the land of the free? At the time, such alyrical preoccupation barely merited any comment, but very soon,these lyrical leanings would spark controversy, drawing the sharpestof critical comment.

The final choice for the studio was interesting for it showed justhow heavy metal had changed over the years, thanks to overseasinfluences. 'Overture' featured an extended instrumental blow-out,its style, its execution, indeed its very title influenced by Canada'sRush, notably the 2112 album that had proved extremely popularamong rock fans. Rush had been able to fuse the fairly basic attackinginstincts of metal on to the instrumental intricacy of progressive rock,producing what was a unique hybrid at the time. Def Leppard wereobviously impressed by Rush's success, and that's understandablebecause they were perhaps the seminal hard rock band in the mid­seventies. 'Overture' was inevitably a pale imitation, but it did

22

O n th e C rest of a New Wa ve

showcase th e mu sical ability within th e ba nd . Steve Cla rk inparticular was beginning to create a very inte res t ing and distinct iveguitar so und a ll of his ow n and in th at sense, 'Overt ure' is th e moreinterestin g o f th e three o fferings, showing th e greatest promise. ItsAchilles heel, as with a number o f Lep pard 's songs, was in th e lyricaldepartment. Fran kly, th ey we re abys ma l, wallowing in th e a llegedmystique o f dungeons and dragons, w iza rds and high- priests. If punkwas right abo ut just one thing, it was th at thi s so rt of sub-sci-finonsense wa s now o ut o f place, a fact tha t even Ru sh accepted o ntheir 1980 release 'Perma nent Waves'. Perhaps Def Leppa rd were stilltoo young and inexperi enced to appreciate that , per ha ps they we restill proudl y di splaying thei r lineage, slav ishly copying theirpredecessors rather th an absorbing the lessons and producing theirown individual style. Whatever th e reasons, th ere ca n be no doubtthat 'Overture' , a long with many other ea rly Def Lep pard creat ionswas woefull y short of lyrical origina lity.

Even with th ese reservati ons, reserva tions w hich the head stron ggroup would never have accepted at th e time, they had plenty o freason to be happy with the tape th ey ha d pr od uced at th e end oftheir st int at Fairview. At a time when music was at its most nihilistic,when mu sical accomplishment was supposed to be something to beashamed of, th e band had displayed a promising grasp of th e hardrock form with Clar k particularl y prominent , unleashing animpressive new tal ent. If Sid Viciou s sca rce ly knew w hich wa y up tohold his bass guita r, Def Leppard had illustrat ed th at w hen themusical tid e turned , as turn it must , w hen the abi lity to play wasrevered once more, th ey would be in th e va ngua rd .

Things had gone so well th at th ere was never any q uest ion th at th esongs would be released as a single. T he 'Ce tcha rocks o ff' EP wa s setfor local relea se in January 1979, following the precepts of th e DIYpunk ethic. Having failed to penet rat e the roc k circuit, Lep pardhoped th at th e EP would provide th em with the kind of profil e th eyneeded to help them up on to th e next rung of th e ladd er.

Whatever yo ur feelings abo ut th e band , no-on e could ever acc useDef Leppard of stup id ity . They kn ew just ho w crucia l th e EP was totheir hopes o f getting th e band o ut o f th e blocks and runn ing towa rdsstardom on a national sca le. Showing th e pa tience for wh ich they

23

Def Leppard

were lat er renowned , th ey did realize that they had first to conquerth e local market , so mething th ey had so far singula rly failed to do.Even loca l reviewers were unde rwhelmed by th eir cha rms, as Joeremembered: 'We supported th e Human League and a rev iewe rca lled us " bludgeon riffola" , a compl ete slag off.' Nevert heless,showing resourceful st rength in th e face of ad versity, 'To show th atwe didn't care, we picked up on the ph rase and used it for th e recordlabel' .

T hus 'Getcha rocks off' made its debut on Blud geon Riffola inJanu ary 1979. Starting modestly - a rest rictio n imposed on th em byth eir shoes tring budget - they pressed just 150 co pies with a coverand signed lyric sheet. Stocks of th ese were qui ckl y ex ha usted andwithin wee ks, ano th er 1000 co pies were read y for sa le. Knowing howimportan t local radio and local record sho ps might be, th eybombarded th ese with copies of th e sing le. O ne recipi ent was PeterM art in who ran Revo lut ion Records; Martin bein g wide ly ren own edas someone who wa s onl y too happy to provide a platform for anylocal bands th a t had ma naged to put out a record. O nce he heard DefLeppard's EP, he knew that he was on to so mething a little differentto th e generall y enthusias tic, energe tic, but fata lly flawed punkproduct that he was used to receiving. Never a great punk fanhimself, Martin knew that th e new wave had already seen its bestda ys. As we ente red 1979, it wa s just a matter of time before the nex tmu sical tr end eme rged . W ith his livelihood resti ng on record sa les, healso knew th e va lue of th e much-ma ligned 'classic rock' format, astyle which though un iversall y derided, sti ll made up a sizea bleproportion of his sales. A new, young band in that sty le certain ly hada lot to offer in th e years ahea d.

Martin sent a copy of th e EP on to Frank Stuart-Brown, a we ll­known local promoter, just the sort of perso n that Leppa rd needed tobr ing on boa rd if th ey were goi ng to start takin g things on to anotherlevel. He and Martin had worked together in th e past as sa les reps forWEA before going th eir sepa rate wa ys. Stuart- Brown wa s now asignificant figure on th e mu sic scene in the N orth and, on hearingLepp ard 's songs, realized imm ediat ely th at th e po ssibilities we relimitl ess. Over th e co urse of a phone ca ll, th e two renewed thei rfriendship and form ed a man agement company, MSB, with a view to

24

On the Crest of a New Wave

guiding the career of Def Leppard. Little more than a bunch ofenthusiastic kids trying to find their way through the professionaljungle, Leppard were only too happy to listen to the plans putforward by this ambitious duo and a brief band meeting saw themagree to sign up with MSB. Stuart-Brown had already endearedhimself to them by playing a tape of the EP to an old colleague, AndyPeebles, who had an evening rock show on Radio 1 from 8 untillOpm. Peebles and his producer Jeff Griffin were every bit as takenwith the recording as Stuart-Brown had been. Even at this early stage,Griffin wanted to book the band for a prestigious Radio 1 session.Yet more astonishing, the two of them persuaded the great guru ofthe new wave, John Peel, to air Leppard's EP on his extremelyinfluential Radio 1 programme. In the late seventies, if Peel wasplaying your record, those high up in the record industry would betaking very careful note of you.

Although they were just feeling their way into the music industry,the band weren't short of good ideas. Before MSB had arrived on thescene, the group had come up with a shortlist of people who they feltshould get a copy of the EP. One such was Geoff Barton, a journalistat Sounds. Barton's love of heavy metal, and Kiss in particular wasthe stuff of newspaper legend. Given that Leppard ploughed a similarglam rock furrow to that of Kiss, Barton seemed an ideal contact.Penning a very straightforward letter, asking him to give them alisten, their lack of pretension and self-promotional bullshit intriguedBarton from the off. Playing the single through, he was the next in along line of influential figures to hear the sound of a major rock bandin the making.

In early 1979, punk was in its death throes had we but known it.Though the NME and, to a lesser extent, Melody Maker tried toprolong its life, it had entered the terminal phase that any trend faces.The great bands having already made their impact, it was inevitablethat the bandwagon-jumpers would follow eagerly in their wake,ever-paler imitations of the Sex Pistols and the Clash, cluttering upthe pages with their increasingly desperate attempts to gain publicity.The policy at Sounds had always been a little different. Although ittoo had covered the rise of punk in the minutest detail, it had alwayskept one foot in the rock camp, continuing to give space to bands that

25

Def Leppard

were anathema to the NME. Writers such as Barton were tired ofhaving had the new wave rammed down their throats for thepreceding couple of years and were looking to find a way of movingthe agenda back on to th eir favoured hard rock territory. In itstypically cyclical fashion, it was time for the industry as a whole toreinvent itself, seizing on the glories of a former era . Barton andothers felt th at the era of the metal bands wa s ripe for rediscovery andexpl oitation .

Th ere's no doubt that on a purely commercial basis, the inst inctsof Barton and th ose who supported him at Sounds were quite cor rect.Although there was a concerted campaign to make it seem that heavyrock was now th or oughl y redundant and had no adherents, all itsfollowers having seen the light and crossed over to punk, that kind ofsimplificati on was a long way from the truth. A lot of peopl e hadtired of the dinosaur acts of the early seventies, that wa s wh y punkhad been such a success . But if you looked at an y maj or town or cityin the country, you wo uld find that Uriah Heep had just pla yed there,that Wh itesnake were coming next week and next month you'd beable to see H awkwind. In terms of coverage, rock mu sic had goneunderground - th ough paradoxically that added to its allure - but ithad never perished. T here wa s a huge groundswell of support justwaiting to be tap ped by any up and co ming band that could breathenew life into heavy metal.

Def Lepp ard were ideally qu alified to make the most of thi spossible resurgence of interest in their kind of music. If Barton'sputat ive relau nch of the genre was to succeed, he desperately neededsta ndard bearers, a new act around who m he co uld build hiscoverage. Leppard wer e such a band. Relatively photogen ic ­certainly co mpared with the rest of the new metal bands of the time- their image had possibili ties. Instrumentally they were extremelyaccomplished and professional while if Joe' s voice wa s something ofa weak link, he made lip for it with his confident delivery andimp osing person ality. T heir style, if a littl e cliched, was insta ntlyrecognizabl e and appea ling to roc k fans and there was also apleasingly poppy edge to the material that might allow them to gainsome success on the singles cha rts . All of these were vital ingredients,though London's Iron Maiden might have made very similar claim s.

26

On the Crest of a Ne w Wave

What rea lly d ist ingu ished Leppard from th e crowd was their ex t remeyouth - Joe, th e oldest member of the troupe, was still just nin eteen.That mad e all th e difference, for they had no baggage to carry withthem; none of them had been in ban ds before punk ca me along, nonehad to hid e emba rrass ing membersh ip of some awful hippy gro up in1973. W hen th e new wave had come along, it was supposedlyuntaint ed by th e pa st . Def Leppard could claim simila rly virgi nalstatus for th eir brand of heavy rock .

That claim was substantiated yet further when Fra nk Noon, nevermore th an a tempo rary member of the group, decided to leave theband. A local newspaper ran a sto ry, ' Leppard Loses Skins', a longwith an adve rt for a replace men t. Sheffield's musica l co mm unity hadanother wunderkind at th e time, Rick Allen, born on 1 November1963. This preco ciou s ta lent had drummed wi th loca l gro up Smo keyBlue when he was just a ten year-old but had grown tired of playingdrum s in his ado lescence. It was his father Jeff who first picked up onthe art icle and, fa iling to coax his son into cont acting the ba nd, ca lledDef Lepp ard himself. H e finall y arranged for Rick to meet up withSteve and Joe and, ove r the co urse of a long conversation, it beca meclear th at Allen was th e boy for the job, being offered - and acce pting- the positi on without th e need for an audition. He left schoo l to jointhe band because 'my mum and dad to ld me I was neve r goi ng to getanother oppo rt unity like th is' . Angus Young might dr ess like aschoo lboy with AC/DC, but Leppard went on e better. T hey had areal schoolbo y in th eir band!

No ne of these development s made any dent in Barton's desi re tofeatu re Def Leppa rd . The problem wa s that, as a wri ter based inLond on and wo rking on Sounds' editorial staff, it was difficult forhim to find t ime to see Leppard in action. Given that they ha d yet toplay outs ide th eir locale - and th ey pla yed infreq uently even th ere ­it was an insuperable o bsta cle for some litt le time . By th e time he didget to see th em in th e early Summ er of 1979, Def Leppard alrea dyhad the roc k world intereste d in th em.

A lot of th e cre d it has to go to the MSB management. T hey wereheavily cri ticized later in the group's career, bu t th ey worked longand hard to get things moving for the group and that merits attent ion.In May, th ey ensure d th at ano ther 15,000 copies of 'Getcha roc ks

27

Def Leppard

off' were pressed and so ld, guaranteeing that the record would beavai la ble all over the country, being played in rock discos the lengthan d breadth of th e land. Like Iron Maiden's 'Soundhouse tapes',Leppard's debut offering featured regularly in th e Sounds HeavyMetal charts, spread ing th eir name further and further afield.

With th e success of th at EP came recognition in Sheffield. Pickingup on th e buzz of anticipation that surro unded thi s gro up that hadsudde nly emerged from nowhere, Hallam Radio 's Co lin Slade offeredth em th eir first session, Slade having been th e first person anywhereto pla y th e EP on th e radi o at th e start of the yea r. This th ey acceptedwith alacrity for no t only was it excellent exposure for th eir music, ito ffered th em inva lua ble ex perience in a recording studio. The fivesongs , recorded in M ay 1979, were 'Answe r to the ma ster' , 'Glad I'malive', 'When th e wa lls ca me tumbling down' , 'So rro w is a woman'and 'Beyond the temple'.

T hings were rea lly on th e up and up now, with M SB having aprominent part to play . Stua rt -Bro wn continued to lean on hisfriends hip with Andy Peebles, getting the OJ to broad cast th e EP onRad io 1 q uite reg ularly . Fina lly, th e call came from Bro ad castingHou se to reco rd their firs t sess ion for Peebles. These reco rd ings wereto be mad e in the BBC's Manchester, rather th an London stud ios,and we re to be produced by Jeff Griffin. In one of those niceco incidences that crop up from time to tim e, Leppard were set toreco rd on 7 June 19 79, for tran smission over four days begi nning on18 June, the very week when Geoff Barton 's deb ut feature on thegro up wo uld run in Sounds. T he session we nt especia lly we ll, fourso ngs being recorded witho ut und ue difficulty, th e band clearlybenefi ting from their practice-run at Hallam. T hey chose to play'Wasted', 'A nsw er to the master ' , 'Glad I'm al ive' and 'So rrow is awom an ', th ree of which wo uld mak e it to the ir debut a lbum. T ha t initself was sign ificant for in the mo nth that separat ed th e tw o sess ions,they had clearl y dec ided that a song like 'Beyond th e temple' wa ssimply too ou tdated for conside ration, yet had produced 'Wasted'whic h was a lot clo ser to th e pop rock sound that th ey wo uld go onto pa tent . With its Kiss-like so und, you might even th ink th ey'dwri tten it in honour of Geoff Barton's visit . Whatever the case, DefLep pa rd were on a roll now, producing so ngs wi th ease, consta nt ly

28

On the Crest of a New Wave

updating and improving their repertoire so that they would be readywhen the call came from the majors. For come it surely would .

It was the neat synchronicity of the Peebles session and the Soundsfeature that changed the lives of Elliott, Willis, Savage, Clark and Allenfor good . By the end of June, they were the hottest unsigned propertyin Britain. Geoff Barton's feature was rhapsodic, so unerringlyfavourable that they might have written it themselves. Def Leppardproduce 'high powered heavy rock played to a degree of tightnessusually only achieved after a half dozen gruelling American tours' hewrote, making it clear that the band had his unequivocal support.

Sounds were about to pin their colours to the mast of a newmusical movement, the fabled 'New Wave of British Heavy Metal',the NWOBHM. For those on the staff who shared Barton's musicaltastes, this was no hardship for it gave them the opportunity to reporton the music closest to their hearts. More important though was theeditorial stance on the situation. Britain's three weekly music papers- the NME, Melody Maker and Sounds - were locked into a fairlyrestricted market place and the competition for circulation betweenthe three was fierce, the rivalry intense. By becoming the first paperto distance itself from punk, Sounds was taking something of agamble, hoping that in offering a clear alternative to the two, it mightattract a new readership who had become bored with the triballoyalties of punk. If the NWOBHM was going to give Sounds thatedge, it needed a focal point. There were countless new metal bandsdoing the rounds at that stage and Def Leppard were not the bestknown by any means. Iron Maiden, Samson, the Tygers of Pan Tangand several others had claims to a wider audience than Leppard. Yet,as already noted, Leppard were the group that had everything tooffer, notably a potentially commercial sound where groups likeAngelwitch were still turning out music that was solely rooted in thepast. Def Leppard were the chosen band.

It was ironic that they should be selected to head up theNWOBHM for, even at their inception, they were not really heavymetal, certainly not by any definition that the music's true adherentswould recognize. They owed far more to Thin Lizzy than they did toBlack Sabbath and their attitude and live performance was purposelytransatlantic, their tentative attempts at a glamourous presentation

29

Def Leppard

clearl y having been influenced by Van Halen and Kiss. Quite simply,Leppard were in th e right place at the right time, their FM soundappea ling to Bart on and company wh o wanted to extinguish theflames of punk rock.

No t that Leppard were averse to kicking punk in the teeth either.Steve Clark reckon ed that it had had its da y: 'Young kids used ro beinto new wave becau se it was new, but it isn 't an y more. N ow there'sas man y young kids into heavy metal - probably more - as there areinto punk.' Rick Savage agreed with the thrust of th at argument,inadvertently putting a ca reerist spin on his words that would co meback to haunt them: 'We' re not into punk. We were all heavy rockfans before we formed th is band. I can listen to punk, I thought thePistols were br illiant, it's just that we all grew up on heavy rock andwe're anxious to keep it go ing. If we did play punk rock, we mightdisappear without trace because everybody's doing it now.' Th e fearof disappearing without trace made it seem as if Leppard had merelychosen heavy rock as a vehicle ro get success rather th an out of anabiding respect for the music. It wa s merely a case of someo ne notused ro do ing interviews being unable to say precisely wh at hewanted, but it sowed the first seeds of doubt as to Leppard 's motives.

For the moment, that was glossed over as readers were taken ab ackby the astonishin g confidence displayed by these youngsters. JoeElliott was part icu larly keen to put the band's point of view across,exaggerating the invincibility th ey seemed to possess as a un it with apiece of breathtaking impudence. 'Van Halen came across riding ontop of thi s vast publicity thing. If we had the publicity, we co uld doas well if not better than them.' Since Van Halen were being routedas rock 's grea t wh ite hope, feted with fawning reviews and had justenjoyed four million sales o f Van Hafen II in the Sta tes, with a tenmonth world tour to acco mpa ny it, thi s seemed to be taking self­confidence into the rea lms of fantasy but as Joe remarked later, ' Iknew Def Leppard wo uld be successful, even though we were rubbishwhen we first star ted . 1 just knew we had something' .

With the Sounds piece alerting th e record indu stry ro Leppard'sprowe ss, by the end of June, with their first Radio 1 session broadcastamid a buzz of eager antici pa tion, a chorus of record co mpanies waspaying court to the band. Fortuna tely, with thi s media success behind

30

On the Crest of a N ew Wave

them, th ey were able to play more frequently, allowing an assortmentof A&R men to see th em in the flesh , to see wh at the y were made of.Certainly, Leppard weren 't backward in coming forward, Savagememorably evoking their on-stage charms: 'We' re just doing what wewant to do. Basically it' s just down to the fact th at we're all fuckingposers. We all want to go o ut on stage, po se, wear dinky white boots,tight trouser s and have all th e girls looking a t our bollocks. That 's us.That's it. We're arroga nt bastards.'

Live sho ws in Sheffield 's smaller venues we re unden iabl y impres­sive and th e group's nai ve enthusiasm ca rried th em through an ytechnical shortcomings th ey might have had , notabl y th e fairlyrudimentary nature of Joe's vo ice, th ough he argued strenuou sly inhis defence that 'if it' s perfect live, it' s boring' . As a frontman thoughhe was engaging - essential given that the rest of th e band lack ed anyreal visual impact, Willi s being especi ally introverted. Even so , therewas a certain panache about the group, Rick Allen remarking that'we try to look good, we try to have so me sty le' . Even if their stageclothes were misguided to say the least - th e chubby Elliott might tryto squeeze his ample frame into some imitat ion leather trousers forinstance - it did at least prove that unlike th e rest o f the metal bandswho dre ssed in the regulation jeans and T-sh irt s like their fan s did,Def Leppard might not be averse to an industry image make-over.That, allied to their youth, certainly suggested th at a powerful recordcompany might be able to manipulate the band, pu shing th em incertain industry-friendly directions without too much difficulty. Afinal showcase gig at the Porterhouse in Retford clinched things forLeppard. The band's desire to succeed wa s palpabl e and if a companycould per suade them that it knew best , it would be so much eas ierthan dealing with the stroppy 'idealists' that punk had occasionally ­very occasionally - thrown up . Def Leppard, mu ch as they loved theirmusic and their lifestyle, were hard headed pragmatists. They wantedsuccess, wanted a career and accepted the fact that they needed to sellrecords worldwide. They were clearly willing to do all that wasnecessar y to achieve their goals. In the summer of 19 79, th ey lookedlike a record company's dream, a stra ightforward band that wantedthe big time and were ready for the long haul.

31

4

INTO THE FIRE

By Aug ust 1979, Def Leppa rd co uld have sig ned with any of half adozen major record labels. Finally, after d iscu ssion bet weenth em selves and th e M SB managem ent du o, th ey opted to go withPhon ogr am, signing to th eir Vertigo label, th e hom e of Thin Lizzyamo ng others. T he final adv ance so unde d ex tremely gene ro us ­£ 100,000 for a band w ith just a few dozen gigs to its name, pla yingin a sty le th at had supposedly been killed o ff by punk . In truth,Ph on ogram were playing things cagil y, for th e adva nce actua llyworked out at just £20, 000 per annum for five yea rs, in o rde r tocov er th e costs of record ing - wh at a major miscalculati on th atturned o ut to be! C lea rly th en , th e member s o f Def Leppard did notbecom e rich men ove rn ight and th eir lifest yle barely cha nged .

Wh y were Leppard th e first of th e new metal bands to get a majordeal ? It is im possible to pretend th at th ey we re light yea rs ahead ofth e compe tit ion for th e record ed evide nce suggests littl e to choosebet ween 'Cetc ha rock s off' on th e one hand and Iron Maiden 's'So und ho use ta pes' on the o ther, while th e NWOBHM sa mpler th atfo llowed a ll the med ia ac tivity in ea rly 1980 - 'Meta l for muthas' ­indi cates tha t a number of bands wer e every bit as musicall ypr oficient as Leppard were at th e time. Ther e mu st have been more toPhon ogr am's decision th an a bility alone.

T he Sou nds a rt icle had o bvio usly got th e A&R men interested andth at was a di stinct advantage, for other NWOBHM art icles hadtended to be based on live sho ws wh ere three or fo ur bands had

32

Into the Fire

played, each consequently winning just a fraction of the coverageaccorded Leppard. With Sounds standing foursquare behind them,Phonogram knew that the band had friend s in the right places ,making their marketing job that little bit easier. Yet Def Leppardbrought with them some baggage that was not to the company'staste. For instance, though he was a personable and hugely likeablecharacter, Joe Elliott's voice was, at this stage, useless. Metal musicdoes not always require a vocalist with the range of a Paul Rodgersor a Robert Plant, and some very average singers have survived in thefield, making a very good living in the process. Even so, having asinger who couldn't hold a note in a very large bucket is not generallyconsidered to be a good thing. By punk sta nda rds, Elliott was apositive Pavarotti, but by the standa rds of 1975, when hard rock hadstill been ruling the musical roost, he was depressingly inadequate.To be fair to Joe, it was a failing that he was big enough toacknowledge later on in the band 's career, th ough at the time, he andhis band mates defended his vocal style to the hilt as indeed they hadto.

Neither were Def Leppard the most attractive band, especially oncethey'd burdened themselves with their ludic rous Top Shop stage garband atrocious perms. The bubble headed Elliott mad e Kevin Keegan'sseventies experiments with his own coiffure loo k distingui shed , Allenstill looked like a kid behind the drums while the gro up's youth wasemphasized by the elfin features of Will is. In truth, Lepp ard were aband of all the averages compared with the grea t roc k bands of aprevious era . They looked like a bunch of average young blokes, theirsongwriting offered little that was surprising and their pla ying wasstrictly 'good enough' at thi s stage. The only thing exceptional aboutthem was their age and their ambition. Th at was eno ugh.

So the key question once again. Wh y were Leppard signed up soquickly? The only logical answer is that they had tim e on their side,they had some potential, they were the right band to fill the gapinghole that existed in the marketplace and, most importantly, theywanted it badly enough. Their youth was vitally important toPhonogram for a number of reason s. Not having had the time to getto know the band very well, Phonogram's top bra ss jumped to theobvious conclusion that any hard-nosed business executive would

33

Def Leppard

when confronted with what looked like a group on a school field trip;we can control them. It was an impression that was strengthened bytheir tangible determination to become a major league rock act. Ifth ey're that keen, runs the argument, they'll do anything we tell them.

Their youthful innocence wa s equally important when oneremembered just wh y punk had come along in the first place. Bandshad been populated by men approaching middle age, at least inrock'n'roll term s. Some members of Wishbone Ash were over thirtyfor heaven 's sake! It all added to the impression of tired old music,made by tired old men, recycling the same tired old idea s. Punk hadconspired to make heavy rock look geriatric, yesterday's music. Ifyou were going to try to sell that to a new generation of kids, you hadto have a new generation of heroes. Given that monkey glands couldnot give the gift of eternal youth to Led Zeppelin and their ilk, heavymetal needed a transfusion of new blood. It needed a group ofyoungsters who had lived through the punk era and had still chosenhard rock as their medium to give it a shot in the arm, to reinvigoratea dying art. As Elliott pointed out with uncanny accuracy, ' there mustbe a new generation of heavy metal fans, people who must be pissedoff with listening to bands that were formed over twelve years agolike Zepp elin and Black Sabbath ... they want somebody young' . Itwould not have been possible to find a more youthful, ent husiastic,energetic and altogether unsullied bun ch than Def Leppard , so theybecam e the chose n ones.

Finally, their age, demean our and predisposition towards'g lamo rizing ' their music opened up a whole new market - the femaleaudience. Hard rock had always been an alm ost exclusively malepreserve with only Led Ze ppelin and the chest-b eating antics ofRob ert Plant ent icing girls to their gigs. Jo e Elliott remarked that 'Iwent to all the roc k gigs at th e City Hall from 1976 to 1980, there 'dbe 2200 peopl e there, with about thirty or forty girls' . N o 'new man',Joe offered his considered opinion as to wh y thi s was: 'O ur music'stoo masculin e for girls . Th ey tend to crumble und er the pre ssure.Girl s don 't buy the records, they only buy Boney M and Bay CityRollers singles.' If he didn't want girls at th eir gigs, the idea of somekind of crossover was doubtless rather more than a gleam in anexc ited market ing man 's eye. If a rock band could sell 300,000

34

Into the Fire

album s for ex am ple wh ile onl y a ppea ling to a male a udie nce , howmany might they sell if you could get girls interested to o ? An y bandable to do th at would instantly double its potent ial a udie nce. Thisinconte stabl e piece o f accountan cy was to reach its fulfilment withthe arri val o f Jon Bon Jovi and his chee kbo nes, bu t Def Leppard weremidwives to th e idea , th ere at its birth . W ith such ba by-faced bandmembers as Allen and Willi s, Leppa rd's 'cute q uo tient ' wasundeniable.

Such pr eoccupations at Phon ogram HQ made it very obvio us th atDef Leppard had not been signed mer ely to slog aroun d th e O deoncircuit, relea sing biannual a lbums th at did very nice ly in the UK butmeant nothing anywher e else. Phon ogram 's w ho le marketingstrategy revolv ed aro und putting Leppard on the world market,notabl y in th e States, the world 's mu sic superma rket. If yo u can mak eit there, you don 't need to make it anywhere (else) to pa raphrase MrSinatra .

The band th emselves were not ex posed to such revo lutio narythinking so early in the day. Even at Phonogram, th is may well havebeen mere pie in the sky idealism, hopes that might be unrealizable.But Amer ica wa s very much on th e agenda as fa r as the recordcompany was concerned. Elsewhere however , suc h grandiose ideashad never been considered. For MSB, th ere was a quite different setof priorities, for they were working to a wholly different rul e book .

Def Leppard as a unit had received a hu ge boost in the light ofPhonogram's still-substantial inve stment and they we re given th escope to pack in the day job and concentrate so lely on th e band andon son gwriting. But it wasn't merely th eir effo rts that were beingrewarded. Martin and Stuart-Brown could afford th em selves a pat onthe back for taking their charges from nowhere to internationalrecording art ists in the space o f eight short months - no meanachievement. Sadly for MSB though, per sonal re lations between themand the group were beginning to deteriorate. Though both Martinand Stuart-Brown had some experience o f th e peripher y of the musicindustry, neither had been involved at th e core befo re, nor had eith erof them managed a band in the past. MSB was essentially a 'fly by theseat of your pants' operation, the two evolving their own gro undrules as they progressed, just as Def Leppard were. In truth, it ' s very,

35

Def Leppard

very difficult to criticize MSB, for they did get Leppard the contractthey wa nted and a reasonably favourable deal in the process - theypicked up an industry-standard royalty of 10 per cent, perfectlyacce pta ble for an unknown gro up.

Desp ite Leppard 's 'overn ight success' and the part MSB had in it,murmurings of discontent started to sur ro und them. Person alityclashes did not help matters, but others in the group's ento uragebegan to wonder aloud if perhaps Def Leppard didn 't need a moreexperienced management outfit, and if things could not be run a littlemore profession ally. M uch of the discontent seemed to originat e withPhon ogram who, feeling th at the boys in the band might be will ing to

do their bidding, were not keen on having to deal with managers whohad very clear ideas of their own. Impressionable youngsters st ill,despite their ow n belief in themselves, Leppard started to take someof these criticisms to hea rt .

Things began to go downhill for MSB almost as soon as DefLeppard had inked the cont ract. Though the y were now signed up toon e of the biggest labe ls in the world, the band were still very muchmusical novices, certainly as far as live shows went. Their approachto their career so far had been a softly, softly one , doggedly pursuingand then achieving one goa l before moving on to another. For Stuart­Brown, the danger was that now they had a deal, the pace of eventsmight run away with the band , leaving them crue lly expose d. Hewanted to accompany the Phonogra m re-release of 'Getcha rocks off'with a low-key tour on the ' toi let' circuit, bringing the band face toface with the fans who would make up their hard -core audience. Hewas only too well aware that having released such a popular single,having recorded a successful Rad io 1 session, and been the sub ject ofent husias tic coverage in Sounds, Lepp ard were now anoi nted as thenumber one band in the NWOBHM fold, and were being greetedwith almos t messianic fervour by the heavy metal hoardes. Stua rt­Brown strongly suspec ted, with good reason, that when the timecam e for Leppard to deliver th e goo ds, they would be found wa nting.Th at wa s wh y a club tour was such a great idea in his view. It 's fareasier to play a memora ble gig in the int imate atmosph ere of theM arquee Club where 250 committed punters are bathed in their ownsweat than in the cave rno us atmos phere of Hammersmith Odeo n

36

Into th e Fire

where you know you'll have yo ur work cut out just to get the crowdon your side. With the benefit of hindsight, MSB were probably right.

Phonogram, on the other hand, weren 't int erested in such nicetie s.They filled the group's head s with sto ries of their imp ortance andpopularity, boosting their coll ect ive ego at every tu rn . Nev er sho rt ofconfidence, pretty soon Def Leppard had every reason to believe theywere unstoppable. They wanted to play to as man y people as theycould as quickly as th ey co uld, spread ing the gos pel abo utthemselves. And so it wa s th at th ey found themse lves playing theirfirst nati on al tour in Odeon -sized ven ues as support to America'sSammy H agar.

It should be remembered tha t with the except ion of the Porter­house showcase, Leppard had never mad e any co ncerted att empt toventure an y further afield than their own back yard , gigs wh ere theywould be co mforted by th e sight of familiar faces in the smallaudiences. Having signed to Phonogram , the idea of a yea r spe ntslogging aw ay in the clubs and pubs was dishearten ing, becau se th eyalready felt they were better than that, th e more so because anenticing alternative was being dangled befor e th eir eyes by theirfriendly record company. Reflecting on these ea rly days lat er, Joeadmitted th at 'nobody could tell us an yth ing, we thought we knew itall' . Such brashness can be a mighty weapo n, but it can lead to its fairshare of problems.

It was inevitable that their ideas would begin to diverge from th oseof MSB, for by the autumn of 19 79, they were looking at whollydifferent obj ecti ves, Leppard understandabl y exc ited by Phono­gram's global agenda. MSB were a littl e too rooted in the past,gradually unfolding a ma sterplan th at had now been superseded,fail ing to recogniz e that the British market had shru nk while it wasbecoming far easier to break int o ove rsea s territori es. M SB'srationale was to make Def Leppard a respected and admired group inthe UK, reasoning that if th ey had a so lid base from which to work ,they could tackle th e rest of the world wi th con fide nce . Their who llyexcusable error was to think that such an inexp erienced band wouldbe hopelessly out of their depth in America, th at they would have to

'pay their dues' in the UK for a couple of years, get a couple of so lidalbums under their belt, learn how to be a professional band and step

37

Def Leppard

up the pace gradually. Def Leppard laboured under no suchmisapprehension, certain that they were ready for whateverchallenges the rest of the world might throw at them. Remarkably,almost unbelievably, they were right, but in fairness to MSB, they'dshown no indication that that would be the case.

MSB were using the pre-punks as a prototype, artists like ThinLizzy and Genesi s, who built steadily and surely via gigs in their homecountry before taking off to attack markets elsewhere in the world.In that regard, they had mounted a quite superb campaign, in tandemwith Leppard 's own ideas. The 'Getcha rocks off' EP had wonmassive exposure given its humble origins, while the way in whichthe Peebles session and the Sounds feature coincided was amasterstroke. Even if it had been a complete accident - and there arediffering opinions on that - it was the kind of good fortune thatestablishes reputations. Their ability to keep their eyes fixed firmly onthe ball was amply illustrated again when the group were givenanother BBC session, this time with Tommy Vance's Friday RockShow, the premier hard rock radio show in the UK. Recorded withVance's producer Tony Wilson in the Maida Vale studios on 3October for broadcast on the 26th of that month, the band ranthrough 'Satellite' , 'Rock brigade', 'Wasted' and 'Good morningfreedom', illustrating that they were keen to rehearse, in a studioenvironment, those songs that would be cornerstones of their debutalbum. Once more, the session was well received by a wide cross­section of the metal fraternity and added a little more fuel to the firesof publicity.

As far as the UK wa s concerned, Def Leppard really were the newMessiahs, returning to lead metal into a new golden age. Reviews inSounds were uniformly jubilant, those BBC sessions were among themost requested for repeat broadcast and on the back of all that,'Getcha rocks off' continued to sell, eventually shifting around30,000 copies aft er Vertigo re-released it in September. Def Leppardwere Britain's favourite rock band. MSB had achieved all of theirmajor objectives in the first phase of their overall strategy. It was allthey were given the chance to do. Unhappy with the Hagar tour, theywere distraught when the band were booked on to AC/DC's tour asspecial guests, playing at such atmosphere-free zones as Stafford's

38

Into the Fire

Bingley Hal l. MSB mad e it clea r th at t hey felt this wa s a m istakewhen to the band , it was th e fulfilme nt of everything they'd beenworking for. The writing was a lready on the wa ll, a fac t th at wasmerely underlined w hen th e band met up w ith Pete r Mensc h w howorked for AClDC's management and was looking for a ba nd of hisown - Leppa rd's prestigious guest slot on the tou r had co me a bo utlargely at his instigati on. T he seeds of a new business re la t ions hipwere sown th er e and th en , th o ugh they did not co me to fruition untila little lat er in th e band ' s ca reer.

In th e meantime, th ey'd re leased their first pukka Vertigo single,the Kiss-style sto mp o f 'Wasted ', produced by N ick Ta uber,highlighting th e co m me rc ial po tentia l of the line-up. Ta uber'sproduction skills seemed suited to the ban d thanks to his st ro ng popsensibilit y - some thing that he dem onstrated la te r w ith M arillion ­but he was not thought to possess th e right ha rd rock cre de ntia ls tohandle th e album, for it was vita l th a t Leppard did no t shy away fromthe NWOBHM bandwagon at this ea rly juncture. At th e end o f th edecade, th eir best hope for success see med to be beneath the umbrellaof hard rock.

As a co nse q ue nce, T om Allo m was called in to produce, sessionstaking place in Ascot's Sta rtl ing Stud ios through the first part ofDecember 1979, th eir basic work completed in a mere eighteen days.Allom had a lrea dy ea rned resp ect, w ith Joe particu larl y ha ppy wi thhis wo rk on Judas Priest 's 'U nleashed in the East' , citi ng thi s as th eclinching reason for Allo rri's se lection .

Look ing back at rock records fro m th e la te seventies a nd ea rlyeighties is a diffi cult bu sin ess, not least because of the fac t th at groupslike Def Leppard revoluti oni zed the wa y cont empo ra ry recordssound. M any of th e co nsi dera ble sho rtcomi ngs of 'On T hro ug h th eNight ' ca n be put down to its a troc ious sonic qua lity, which gives themusic all th e impact of a damp sock attacking a rice pudd ing. PerhapsAllom wa s at fault in so me respects - his a ttempts at making ' C ereliarocks off' which see m to ha ve been reco rded live, a nd live in Ame ricaat that, were incredibl y a ma te urish a nd tota lly inexcusa ble. T he rea lproblem, th ough, ca me in trying to ma ke a reco rd in tho se da ys,where th e stud io environment wa s ca ug ht a t a turn ing point, ahalfwa y house th at did no-one a ny favo urs. Recording had moved on

39

Def Leppard

from the naive charm and simplicity of the 1960s. Basic technicalinnovat ions had robbed record makers of the need to use theiringenuity in th e way that George Martin and th e Beatles had atAbbey Road. By 1979 yo u could get the effects that they'd worked onfor days in a matter o f minutes as recording desk s had moved on fromfour and eight-t rack to a more cu stomary sixtee n o r twenty-fourtrack facility. In tha t sense, many musicians and producer s had lostth eir ex plo ratory verve, now th ey were no longe r relying ontechnology th at wa sn't up to the job. Of course, in th e mid-eighties,Def Leppard dem onstrated jus t how far things had moved on whenth ey gra bbed ho ld of 1980s technology a nd bent it to th eir will,making records that were dramaticall y different to a ny thing th at rockhad hea rd befo re, a t least in terms o f th e texture of th e so und . Stuckin Sta rtl ing Stud ios in 1979, they may have belie ved that theeq uipme nt th er e wa s sta te of th e a rt, but sad ly, th at art was in a stateand th e record lost ou t accord ing ly.

Yo u can ' t blame a ll its deficien cie s on th e producti on facilit ieshowever, fo r Dcf Leppa rd were a long wa y from being the newmu sical gen ii tha t the pub lic had been told to ex pec t. Any a lbum th ato pened with a so ng as moronic as ' Rock brigade' was in se rioustr ouble from the o utse t. Ir was nic e and bright, filled w ith enthusiast icvigour , but that was its o nly charm, fo r it was adolesce nt rub bish, a

flush of excitement that they were in a band th at was o ut on th e road.Clea rly they fa ncied it as thei r signatu re, Def Leppard , the ' Rockbrigad e' , coming to yo ur town soo n - th e th em e tune fro m 'T heMonkees' but w itho ut a ny o f the mu sica l accom pl ishment o r to ng ue­in-ch eek hum ou r.

all through the night co ntinued in sim ila rly lacklustre vein, withth e lyr ical d isasters co ming thi ck and fas t. [f 'Wasted' was mus ica llyco mpetent, th e so und of the yo ung Ellio tt bo asting of downingbo ttles o f w hisk y wa s bizarre in the ex treme . T he sa me was eq ua llytr ue of ' It co uld be yo u', Elliott's a ttempt to our-G illan [an Gillan,rega ling his audi ence with tales of gro upies . Where C illa n d id it withpan ach e, a wink and a smile, letting th e crowd in o n the joke, Elliott 'sde livery wa s riven with cl iche, as if he genuine ly bel ieved a ll thisrubbi sh , an d wh en that was added to a stu m bling, echoey chorus,you had a th o ro ugh mess. 'Satellite' was inconse q uent ia l, t he kind of

40

Into the Fire

wild axe blow-out that any half-decent rock band with a Judas Priestor AC/DC album in th eir collection co uld have kn ocked off in half anhour.

'Answer to the master' offered the band the cha nce to introducesome more interesting time changes th at were similar to thoseemployed by Rush, while 'Sorrow is a woman', Leppard 's attempt atshowcasing a 'sensit ive' side, ushered in by some aco ustic playing,flopped woefully. Boasting the abysma l squelchy drum sound thatruined most records at the time, a sound that persisted until PhilCollins and Peter Gabriel almos t reinvent ed drumming for Gabriel'sthird solo LP, its heavy-handed atmos pherics were uncon vincing inthe extreme, as Elliott's voice veered towards Ozzy Os bourne, totallyunsuited to a track of that kind.

'When the wall s came tumbling down' was the abso lute nadir,dabbling in the hackneyed visions of Armage ddon that Sabbath hadbeen dealing in for years, adding nothing new or interesting to thegenre, its ludicrous spoken introduct ion and Joe's unnaturalAmerican accent compounded the original sin of its co mpos ition.

That leaves the few saving graces of a record which wa llowed inthe outdated excesses of hard rock. 'It don 't matte r' was illuminatedby a bluesier , more reflective guitar figure than had been usedelsewhere, and if the lyrics remain ed unexcept ion al , inst rumenta lly itwas perhaps the mo st interest ing piece on the albu m. Ironically, itvied for that distinction with a song ca lled 'He llo America', a trackthat was to cause them more heartache than anything else they wouldrecord. Op ening in an almos t Queen-like fashion , it was distin ctlyunmetallic in tone, even using synt hesizers, ana thema still to mostrock bands in 1979. Queen themselves had only just sta rted toembrace them, despite having defiantly noted th at there were 'nosynthesizers' on their early recordings. If only because it wassomething unexpected, 'He llo America' stoo d out, whil e Elliott gavehis best vocal performance with a decent take on Robert Plant'sphrasing.

Like pretty well everything else on On through the night, the songsuffered through the lack of attent ion that had been paid to the lyrics,lyrics which gave a stereotypical view of the United Sta tes, allfreedom, Greyhound buses and wild times in San Francisco. Mindless

41

Def Leppard

fun, inc onsequential and a bit of a laugh you might think. Joe Elliottcertainly thought so, explaining that 'it was just a song aboutwanting to visit Am erica and see all the places you see on film. I usedto work on a treadmill, making knives and forks; it doesn't cross oveinto a lyric. There's nothing in Sheffield to write songs about. Youcan't w rite " T his is steel city" and mean it. It 'd co me across like abloody heavy met al Hovis ad!'

That was fa ir comment to a degree but punk had shown that youcould be socia lly conscio us and still be lyrically eng ag ing or eni gmaticacc ording to ta ste. W illis did not agree, arguing th at 'ever ybody' s gOIproblem s. If yo u want to go to a concert and hear a bo ut " life on thedole" th en that's up to you, but it were ne ver my idea of a show'. Itis of course a matter of personal opinion as to whether or not groupssho uld become politicized, and there are strong a rguments fromeither side of the fence. In early 1980, with musically inspire dmovements such as Rock Against Racism in full sw ing, singing abouthose old topics of wine, women and song seemed almost distastefulto some and Def Leppard were immediately picked out by th e right­on, politicall y correct press as vacuous airheads, th e so rt of band thatpunk sho uld ha ve exterminated.

Leppard had little reason to worry about suc h matter s though, foe

th ey had clearly found their constituency. Sounds' Christmas issueincluded th e annua l opportunity to vote in th e paper's poll, if.ca tegories suc h as best band, best singer, best new band and so onWhen the res ults wer e finally published in M arch , Def Leppard'isuccess co uld not ha ve been anticipated. They won the Best NewBand ca tegory wi th so me ease , a pleasing performance, if not entireljun expected . W ha t was astonishing was that th ey ca rr ied off the prizefor Best Sing le too with the 'Getc ha rocks off' EP. The poll may no!have been th e most scient ifica lly compiled sa m ple in the world, but it

certain ly pointed to a band in th e ascendant. With 'On Thr ough th:N ight' set to come out just a few weeks later, th e ome ns could nchave been better. Except . ..

42

5

WITH A LITTLE HELP FROMOUR FRIENDS

The Sounds poll victory should have been the cause of muchcelebration in the Def Leppard camp, final vindica tion for the twoyears of hard labour the y'd put in since Steve Clark had joined.Unfortunately, there was a two month time lag between voting takingplace and the results being announced , and if a week is a long time inpolitics, two months in as fickle a business as roc k' n' ro ll is a verita bleeternity. Votes had been cast when Leppard were at the pinnacle ofBritish acceptance. The results came when the wh eels had fallen offthe intergalactic juggernaut that (dis)graced the sleeve of their debutalbum.

What the media gives, the media can also take away. If Sounds hadbeen instrumental in getting the band a contract, in promoting themacross the country and in turning them into the mo st hotly tippednew band since the Clash, it was equally pivot al when the walls cametumbling down around them. Stupidly enough, their demise wasstarted by the release of a single which achieved their first Top Fiftychart placing. 'Hello America' herald ed a rema rkable reverse infortunes.

The whole sorry affair wa s symptomatic of a grea ter mal aise at theheart of the Leppard machine. As we 've alr ead y seen, MSB's da yswith the band were coming to a close. The rights and wrongs of thesituation are complex, there's no obvious ob ject ive viewpo int. Wh atit boiled down to in the end wa s that Leppard's inexh au stibledemands and overriding ambition would, they felt , be better served

43

Def Leppard

by new management. There has to be considerable sympathy forMSB, having taken their charges to the brink of stardom, but DefLeppard are a strikingly unsentimental band. Feeling that MSB hadoutlived the ir usefulness, the y had no compunction in getting rid ofthem, particularl y once Mensch had entered the picture. Joe admittedthat ' it was when we were supporting ACIDC that Peter Menschmade it obvious to us that he wanted to manage the band. Werea lized our old management were out of their depth' .

Ironically, though Me nsch and his partner Cliff Burn stein , anA&R man at Mercury Records in New York, were keen to representDef Leppard, they fought shy at first , disturbed by the eth icalque stion that sur rounds poaching another man ager 's art ists . Anillustrat ion of Leppard's desperat ion to get the tw o savvy Americanson their case came when Rick Allen persuaded M ensch to listen in onone of MSB's meeti ngs with the group. Holding a glass to the wall,M ensch was allegedly shocked by the lack of organization or anycoherent plan shown by MSB. This apparently helped M enschovercome any feelings of guilt that he might have had , and very soonafter, Def Leppard were being managed by him and Cliff Burnstein.

It was an ideal ma tch in many ways, for band and ma nagementsha red the same ob jectives. Joe Elliott remarked that 'we've alwayswa nted to be somethi ng that we probably never will be and th at 's alegend . There are certain bands that peopl e, wheth er they like themor hate them, have a certa in respect for. Bands like Led Ze ppelin .Ze ppe lin are the blueprint'. Peter Mensch was in to ta l agreeme nt,say ing 'the bottom line was always to be the next Led Zeppelin orQ ueen, something with longevity '.

N o-one could suggest that Burn stein and M ensch were lacking inoriginality, in ambition, or in ideas or the future. However, theirexperience wa s almost entire ly Sta teside and they had littleapprecia tion of the UK scene nor gra sp of the man y nuances th at canmake or break a band in th is most credibility conscious of markets.People in Britain are genera lly slow to wa rm to naked ambition,prefer art ists who remain close to their roots and behave with adegree of humility. Na tural modesty was never one of Leppard'sstro ng suits, their utter confidence in themselves often strikin g ajarring note in conversation. To profess that what they really wan ted

44

With a Little Help From Our Friends

was to be successful , r ich and famous was simply too vulgar, not theway we do things here at a ll, th e more so in those immedi ate po st­punk days. W hen Joe argu ed th at 'no ma tter how mu ch a new waveband says "We' re only like th e kid s" , they'd be mi lliona ires if theycould', it wa s akin to heresy, even tho ugh there wa s more th an a gra inof truth in it. Such ambition raised hackles as we ll as susp icions.

Thou gh th ey had finall y played smaller venues in ea rly 1980, theease with wh ich th ey'd ho pped on to tours by H agar and AC/DCupset ma ny and th ere were p lenty of seasoned rock o bserve rs whowould have been onl y too happy to see Def Leppa rd fail, for theywere viewed as cocky up starts, only in it fo r the mon ey and with noreal ties to th e metal movem ent. Such statements by Elliott we re gristto their mill as was the decision to replace MSB with M ensch . If thisdidn't mak e their greed appa ren t to all, w ha t would? Moreimportantl y, it wa s a ver y clear signa l th at the ba nd saw th eir futureacross the Atlantic rather th an at home and th at th ey wo uld doanythin g, no matter how dem eaning, to be successful th ere. Giventhat virt ua lly anything that succeeded in America was a lmostinstantl y dismissed as trash and bereft of an y meri t over here, such amove wa s not going to win th em many frie nd s. At the sta rt ofFebruar y 1980, such sent ime nts were ba rely kept und er co ntro l bythe commitm ent the band put into thei r stage shows whic h, alongwith their gen eral good humour, ten ded to win over th e doubters.

On 2 1 Februa ry, th e roof fell in . In a mo ve w hich bet rayed anamazing lack of judgement, th ey release d 'Hello America' as a singlein a blaze of publicity. The song was pleasant eno ugh, if no t reallyindicat ive o f th e ma terial on O n through the night, but it was thelyrical subject matter th at mad e waves. The song was discu ssed in thepreviou s chapter, a travelogue through th e most redo lent pla ce namesin America. N ormally it would mean littl e to anyone, but at a timewhen the gossipmongers were suggesting tha t Leppard were about tojump ship an d run off to America, it was a sta rtlingly insens itivechoice. Since 'Hello America ' wa s also removed from typ ical hardrock sounds, it was used as evidence th at Def Leppard were wi mpingout in order to win American FM radio acceptance. To the mu sicpress, wh o try to set themselves up as th e jirniny Cricket of th erecordin g ind ustry, the co nsc ience th at guides bands away fro m the

45

Def Leppard

dangers represented by the major labels, accepting decisions foistedupon you is a heinous crime, evidence of a complete lack of principles.

Clearly Mick Middles in Sounds thought that to be the case. In areview that changed the course of Leppard's career in Britain, hewrote 'if Def Leppard hadn't been thrown into the wack y whirlpool :of showbiz heavy metal they would still be making naive but hard­edged youthful rock songs. They once had the power to penetrate butunfortunately their complete trust in the business has rend ered themuseless'. Erstwhile supporter Geoff Barton followed the same tack thefollowing week when the band had their first Sounds front cover tocelebrate scooping the reader's poll, suggesting that the Def Leppardhe had known and loved were no more. Since Sounds was the bibleof NWOBHM followers, such devastating critiques inflicted mortalblows on the group's standing in the UK.

If the management had not seen the potential damage that mightaccrue, Elliott had, but all too late. Responding to accusations thatDef Leppard were mere puppets in the hands of the record company,he was forthcoming, if unconvincing.

'We wanted "Rock Brigade" to be the single and when it turnedout to be "Hello America", we were a little annoyed but wethought "well, okay, maybe Phonogram know best, maybe it'san equally commercial song". What really did get us uptightwere the adverts in the music press. They didn't state that the B­side, "Good Morning Freedom", isn't going to be on the albumand, worst of all, they didn't make it clear that it's are-recordedversion of " Hello America", that it's not the same as the songNick Tauber produced for the flip of "Wasted" . But we don 'treally want to fall out with the record company. Right now, ourpriority is to be as successful as everybody else on Vertigo likeDire Straits, Thin Lizzy and Status Quo and if we starr gett ingawkward . . .'

That of course merely compounded the felony in most eyes. The bandhadn't agreed with the decision, but they let it go without a fussbecause they didn't want to upset anybody. The constant get-ourclause in Def Leppard interviews was this determination not to

46

With a Little Help From Our Friends

offend in case it pr evented them shifting units. Perha ps pr ess, publicand bands alike are all a little more relaxed abo ut th e situation now,but sixteen years ago yo u were sup posed to fight with your label, notsnuggle up to them. This total lack of revo lutionary zeal andrebelliou s intent further disenchanted sections of the audience whosaw rock' ri' roll as a lifestyle aside from compromise. Jo e Elliott wasmerely speaking the truth of cou rse, poi nt ing out to the fan s that allbands need a good relation sh ip with their reco rd label, for ult imatelyit is in the company's hand s as to whether or no t a band can breakthrough . If th ey choose no t to push an album, no t to market oradvertise it appropriat ely, if th ey choose simply to sit on a record, itwill not sell. Offending th ose who hold yo ur livelihood in th eir handsis not sensible business practice an d Leppard we re already soundbusinessmen.

The real problem lay in the fact th at Def Leppard d id notunderstand the distinction between remaining 'normal blokes' andthe impact of giving in to the compan y, a poi nt Elliott inadvertentlymade obvious in speaking to Sounds. 'We're no different now we'vegot a contract. We're not on great ego tr ips and six buckets of heroina day. We have people backstage to meet us - we were an hour anda half late going home last night becau se of th e kid s in th e dressingroom. We're still fans ourselves.' Laudable att itude though that was,it did not tackle the central problem . When Def Leppard were abunch of lads rehearsing in Sheffield and playing the working men'sclubs to subsidize their mu sical habit, th ey were free to do as theychose, an appealing image for rock fans . Now th ey were at th e veryheart of the machine, sacrificing th at freedom, giving in to recordcompany demands, all in the sea rch for fame an d fortune. Joe and theband honestly didn't see what all th e fuss was about, th ey weremerely systematically appro aching th eir goals, making th e compro­mises that they knew would have to be made. Their erro r, if erro r itwas, was to own up to those compromises and become sullied bycommerce in the process. Even if it 's plainly untrue, fans like bandsto opera te within their own littl e world where such everydayconsiderations cannot impinge on their dr eams. It' s ironic thatLeppard should have failed to grasp the need to build th is esca pistimage when their songs were based wholly on mindless escap ism.

47

Def Leppard

The 'H ello America' debacle effec tively finished Def Leppard inBritain until 'Hysteria' provided a welcome opportunity forreassessment and, complain as they might, there wa s little the bandco uld do to change things. Joe tried to point o ut th at ' people inEngland used to like " Hello America". We on ly had a negativereaction after they read th e reviews, which is a shame. People sho uldmake their own mind s up , not be told what to th ink'. Good advice,but to no avail. When On Through the Night was un veiled a fewweeks lat er, th e tid e had turned against th em, th ou gh of coursematters weren 't helped when people actuall y heard just how poor arecord it was co mpa red with th e advance press tha t had promised atour de force.

People were now confused by Def Leppard, uns ure what to thinkof them, a confus ion that ext ended to th e press. Geoff Barton'sreview of th e a lbum dwelt largely on the negative side of things: 'Atin y tr awler beneath a tidal wave, so swamped by th e " business" .. ,Producer "Colone l" Tom Allom ha s given th e ba nd such a smooth,sanitised so un d.' It a ll seemed to spell doom for the band , yet Bartonstill gave the album four out of five, and rounde d off by say ing'neve rt heless, a pretty good album. Their bigges t ta lent is th eirso ngwriting - ca tchy tunes abound.' Small wo nder that theNWOBHM fans didn 't kn ow what to make of Leppa rd either.Probabl y the fina l nail in th e co ffin ca me just a co uple of weeks laterwh en Iro n Maiden's epo nymous debut album was released to hugeacclaim. Maiden prod uced th e kind of record tha t meta l fans hadbeen starved of for yea rs - co ncise, aggressive, tight, no frills roc k atear-splitting volume. In co ntrast, O n Through the Night lookedflabby, overblown and totally lacking in impact. Th e cha rt plac ingstold th e story. On Through the N ight reach ed nu mber fi fteen , IronMaiden num ber four. Def Leppard were no longer at the top of theNWOBHM heap and the inevi ta ble backlash was lon g, protractedand pain ful.

T hey had booked an ex tens ive UK tour to coi ncide with OnTh rough the N ight, playing city halls (including Sheffield) andOdeon -sized venues all ove r th e co untry , suppo rted by th e up-arid­coming Magnum. Ian Raven sdale caught them for Sounds inN ewcastle an d his review was particularly percep tive: ' Even heavy

48

With a Little H elp Fro m Our Friends

metal fans mu st ha ve inhibition s abo ut lett ing it all rip when th e kidplaying the guita r looks as though he co uld still get half fare on thebus ... th ey lack real identity and it could have been too mu ch toosoon.' Elliott wa s predictably up set by th is blatant age ism, ranting'young? I'm twenty-two for Chrissakes and what do es it matteranyway? All thi s stuff about age is ridicu lous. I suppose it wassurprising wh en we sta rte d but time will take care of that' .

Nevertheless, it was becomi ng impossible to take Def Leppa rdseriously, th ey we re sta rting to look like so me sort of ma nufacturedteenybopper band aimed directl y at a hea vy metal aud ience. Sincesuch fan s co ns ider th em selves to be o uts ide the mu sica l ma instreamand beyond th e manipulati ve clutches of th e musi c business, any hintof art ifice is rarely tolerated. Things simply began to get worse andworse for th em , with aud iences po lite ra ther than warm in th eirresponse to th e band's effor ts, th e hard rock lyrics so und ingespecially crass when coming fro m such an innocent- looking band.

Of course, Def Leppard had been co urte d so strenuo usly by PeterMensch because he saw the internation al appeal of their mu sic - for'internati on al ' , read 'Amer ica n'. As th e Def Leppard controversyraged on in th e letters pages of Sounds, Mensch did wha t he reall ywanted to do with th e band. Getting th em ou t of th e UK and off to

the States, he used his contacts to organize support slots with TedNugent , th e Scorpion s and AC/DC. Eac h of these tours, often inenormous arenas, was tremendously successfu l, enabling th e band toplay to huge audie nces in a short space of time, creating impressiveword of mouth recommendati on s for them . They were eq ua llypopular on radi o, wh ere 'Hello Ame rica ' was, uns ur prising ly, ingreat demand. On th e back of all thi s activity, On Thro ugh the Nightreached a very respectable number 51 on th e Billboard cha rts,confirming th at they had mad e sizea ble and lucrative inroads into th emarket that mattered most.

Their assa ult on th e Stat es was almost unp recede nted. No Britishmetal ba nd had ever had such a single-minded approach toestablishing itse lf in America before it had done so at home. Per hapsin their co llective mind, th ey we re merely dista nci ng th em selves fromBritain while the storm blew itself out, hoping it would be a nin e-daywonder and th at they could return in triumph later in th e year.

49

Def Leppard

Perhaps that's so, but it's more reasonable to suggest that they hadalways planned this American sojourn for the summer, a time whengigs are few and far between in Britain anyway.

Some have suggested that Def Leppard took to America becausethey had nowhere else to turn when things were going so badly wrongat home, going on to argue that their virtual migration to the Stateswas simply the fortunate result of circumstances beyond theircontrol. Such comments are foolish. They had already hooked upwith Mensch in the winter of 1979 and there can be little doubt thathe and the band had long discussions as to how they would work thedebut album, getting a foothold in certain markets around the globe.As an American, Mensch's views would not have been clouded bysentimental visions of success in the UK, a spot on Top of the Popsand a mention in the Daily Mirror. To Mensch, the UK was merelyanother marketplace, and a pretty insignificant one at that. For aband to earn the longevity that he was looking for, they had to be bigin America, for that was the only way they could earn enough cash tokeep on going. A recording, touring band is an expensive operationto maintain and it's dollars that keep the wheels turning. It may be anunpleasant fact, but fact it is. If Def Leppard wanted to see in the1990s, they had to make it big in America. Though it would havebeen nice to have gone down well in the UK, ultimately it didn't reallycount for much, an attitude that the band took on board very quickly.

That's not to say that they always admitted to it. Joe Elliott wasoften extremely angry when interviewers accused him of deserting hishome for America and a fat pay cheque. 'Selling out to America? Thatpisses me off because it' s so ridiculous. We're not the first Englishrock band that went to the States and we won't be the last ...America 's a big market and it would be senseless to ignore it. We'reout to make Def Leppard a successful band and that mean s going tothe States. We did pretty well there too, I think we won quite a fewpeople over. But God, we were only there a couple of months. It's notas if we went to live there.'

Just how badly Def Leppard's perceived defection had gone downwas brought hom e to them at the Reading Festival on August BankHoliday weekend, 1980. Leppard played on the final day, just beforeheadliners Whitesnake were due to go on. Their absence had not

50

W ith a Little He lp From Our Friend s

made the crowd 's heart grow any fonder and they were met with afusillade of cans an d plast ic bottles filled wi th recycled wastematerial. Joe 's memory of the show wa s, not sur prisingly, a vividone.'There was just too much hard rock that weekend, there wa s nosort of con trast. We were on e of the last bands on the bill and Ireckon anyone, even the mo st devoted fan of that kind of musicwould get a bit fed up of it after three da ys. Probabl y the worst thingof all for us was having to follow Slade. They were great. They puton an amazing show and went down a sto rm, played th e hit s. It wasa classic case of "follow that". We did our best but it didn't seem togo too well . . . I got a half tin of Tartan lager in my bo llocks.'Unfortunately, wha tever rationale the band tried to hide behind, thefacts were stark. The paunchy Elliot and his co mrades were nowpublic enemy number one among the metal fraternity, treated aswimped out, so ld out fakes. They were no longer welcome on Brit ishterritory.

So they did wha t anyo ne sensi ble would do in the circumsta nces .They went off in search of an audience th at did want them. It wasn' thard to find becau se they alrea dy knew where to look.

51

6

WAITING FOR THE MAN

The American debate is one that still rages wh en th e co nversationtu rn s to Def Leppard . Was it mere chance th at to ok th em to Americaor was it th eir goal right from the off? Would they have inev ita blyappealed to an American audience in the fulln ess of tim e or was itPeter Mensch's knowledge of th e market th at helped stee r th eir musicin th e right direct ion? Essentially, a re Def Leppa rd a bo na fide bandof mu sicians or are they merel y a gro up of cha ncers out to make thebest and mos t success ful career mo ves that th ey co uld?

The definitive answe r lies in-between all th ose sta tements . Moreth an any other N WOBH M band, perhaps more th an virtua lly anyother band in the history of Briti sh rock mu sic, Def Leppard had aburning des ire to ma ke it big in the States . Fro m th eir point of view,th at was mere pragmatism, for th ey knew they had to mak e a livingou t of the music in order to surv ive. Yet Mensch's part in all of thisis especially important. Altho ugh th e songs on On through the nightwere removed from th ose of th e likes of Saxon or Iron Maid en , therewas very little that was star-spa ngled about th e album. Leppard werestill clearly dabbling in an age -o ld British hard rock tr adition, in afairl y uninspired ma nner at th at. Beneath the surface, it wa s clear thatthere were popular songwriting inst incts at wo rk, but th at was a longway beneath.

By the t ime the heavy metal lynch mob got th eir hands on them atRead ing, Def Leppa rd were alrea dy mutating int o a very differentsort of rock group, hence th eir poor reception. Go ne were so man y of

52

Waiting for the Man

the rough edges that Tom Allom had left on their album, to bereplaced by a smooth confidence, a cleaner, brighter sound thatlacked the grit and the grime that characterized Briti sh metal. InAugust 1980, Def Leppa rd were alrea dy sta rting to peddle aprototype brand of what became deri sively kno wn as 'metal lite' .Once again, musical cultures successfully blur red geographicboundaries and it was a band from Sheffield th at was the instigatorof one of America's most successful mu sic for ms, a sty le thatdominated the late 1980s.

Commercially savvy, Lepp ard remained naive an d were co mpletelyunaware of the storm the y would cau se just by ap peari ng at Reading.Perhaps the y were too close to th e mu sic to take an objective look atthings, but it was clear to all and sundry that they were going througha rapid evolution, heading towards an end produ ct that British fanswere unwilling to accept. To argue th at it was Mensch and Burn steinwho guided them in this direction is putting it to o stro ngly. What isnot in que stion is the fact that it was they who wanted to exposeLeppard to America for months at a time, drummed into them thevalue of that marketplace and required them to tour extensivelythere. Exposed to American culture on such a scale, the band couldn'thelp but soak it up. Joe wa s especially taken with FM radio, a forcethat was utterly reviled in the UK as the home for sanitized tosh suchas Saga, Journey and Boston. Joe disagreed . 'FM radio is rock radio!It's fucking brilliant!' To hear such gushing praise about theperceived enemy could only driv e further nails into Leppard 's coffinat home. Within a year, the y had gone from being the grea t whitehope to utt er pa riahs.

From here, it was Leppard 's extre me reserves of willpower anddetermination , co upled with some no rthern bloody-mindedness, thatkept them going. Instead of tr ying to win back lost favour in the UK,they simply decided to ignore the media and con tinue on their chosenpath. In truth , this was the turning point in their career for it meantthey no longer had to pander to an y stereo types or prejudices athome, but cou ld simply focu s totally on the job in hand, crackingAmerica.

At this stage, the Leppard organization began to shift its sta nce .Press comments had always been along the lines of ' heavy metal is

53

Def Leppard

what we love the most, we want to follow in the footsteps of DeepPurple and Led Zeppelin'. Now, although the term heavy metal wasnot exactly prohibited, it wa s a phrase to be used only with thegreatest caution. H aving ridden to fame on the coa t-tails of theNWOBHM, for which Lepp ard had been very grateful at the time,Jo e was now loo king to put plenty of distance between his band andthe rest. ' I always laugh when people accuse us of deserting thecause. Of wh at? What flag? Bollocks! We're nothing to do with anyof you. We're nowr to do with the NWOBHM. We were alwaysmore imp ressed with the Roll ing Ston es than we were with JudasPriest .'

Thi s is tota l fabrica tio n, a reinvention to reposition them in thecommercial mai nstrea m, crucial as far as an American audience wasconcerned, for Mensch was planning to invest very heavily in theband 's second reco rd. If the y were comparatively unimpressed withPriest, why did they choose Tom Allom to produce On through thenight, his selection the result of an intimate knowledge of JudasPriest 's Unleashed in the east album? The truth of the matter is thatDef Lepp ard were defiantly heavy metal but were now changing theirtune as their ow n tunes changed.

Th e crux of the matter is wh y did the tunes change? It's impossibleto tell now whether, if Leppa rd had not been subjected to the reversesthey suffered in England, th ey might have continued in a moretrad ition al heavy metal vein or whether their musical approac hwo uld have cha nged as it did . Given th e ambitiou s nature of theband , it 's likely that Read ing merely accelera ted their drift in anAmerican direct ion rather than origina ted it; MSB were no t reallyreplaced because they cou ldn 't hack it in Englan d. It was beca use theylacked the co ntac ts to open up wo rld markets. With their newma nagement, new horizons had ope ned up and th at was what theyhad always wanted.

Def Leppard have taken a great deal of flak for thi s ove r the years,but they reall y deserve a lot of credit for cha nging the way Britishgro ups look ed at the wo rld. O rdina rily, a ban d wo uld never wa nt to

venture across the Atlantic until they were hugely successful at homefor fear that they wo uld be swa llowed up by that vast co ntinent andhave to retu rn home with their tails between their legs. Leppard had

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no such inferiority complex and felt that if you believed in what youcould do and had confidence in yourselves and in your mu sic, youcould succeed anywhere. M ensch had a viable business plan usingFM radio to infiltrate the market while he was also keen on theburgeoning field of the promo video. If video took off - thi s wasseveral years before MTV arrived on th e scene - you co uld appear allover the world without leaving hom e. T hey all felt that it wouldbecome incredibly important in promoting an y band, knew that itwould enable you to break int o markets mu ch mor e eas ily, andplanned accordingly.

Without the right music though , roc k ba nds cannot survive forlong. Elliott's suggestion that the band were closer to the Stones thanJudas Priest was substantially true. In effect, Leppa rd had lived theircareer in reverse, for if any part of th eir wo rk had been based oncompromise or could be construed as a sell out, it was the monthsleading up to getting their deal with Phonogram. They liked DeepPurple and Led Zeppelin it's true, but there was an equa l, probablystronger love for Marc Bolan, Queen, Da vid Bowie, M ott the Hoopleand the late, lamented Mick Ronson - in Melody Maker's 'RebelliousJukebox', a kind of Desert Island Discs, Joe picked 'All the youngdudes', 'G et it on,' Hunter's 'Once bitten twi ce shy', 'Roc k' n' ro ll parttwo', Ronson's 'Angel number nin e' , 'John I'm on ly dan cing ', 'Won'tget fooled again ' and 'Sympathy for the devil' amo ng his twel vechoices, the onl y 'obvious' selection being Zeppelin's 'Kas hmir', fartoo complex and atmospheric a song to be so lightl y dismissed asmere meta l. Def Leppard as a unit loved classic pop/rock songs, butback in 1978, it was not wise to proclaim th at too loudly, Joeremarking that ' it seems to me that melod y has beco me a foul wordin England' . Songwriting was their strength and th at had beencompromised in the drive to earn heav y metal credentials. There wasnothing necessarily wrong in that for the Police pretended to be punksto gain recognition and Elvis Costello had done the same with regardto the new wave. When you're tr ying to get a break , there are no rules,no principles. Once Def Leppard got the publicity they needed, theycould get the deal they deserved and start to make the music theywanted to make. Def Leppard's career reall y began in Septemb er1980 once the doors of the UK had closed tightly shut behind them;

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the harsh facts of British life were starkly illustrated in December1980 when they tried to playa few club dates prior to recording torehearse new material. So badly did the tickets sell, that even some ofthese gigs, where they'd hoped to play to a couple of hundred fans,had to be cancelled. Goodbye Britain, hello America .. .

Def Leppard being Def Leppard, things did not go smoothly eventhen. It was no w clear that America would become their adoptedmusi cal home for some tim e, but they had to accept that thingswould wo rk differentl y there, th at the mu sic pr ess carried far lessweight th an it did in the UK. Getting on to FM radio was the obviousgoa l for that was the best way to spread the word about the bandfrom the east coast to the west. Where live performanc e hadpreviously been of the greatest importance to them, they realizedthat they would have to tak e greater care in the studio. This causeda degree of estra ngement between Pete Willi s and the rest for as hepointed out in Sounds, ' I like the whole thing about roc k bands ,genera lly having a goo d laugh '. Spending months in a dingyrecording env ironment is not the best wa y to getcha roc ks off andit' s fair to say th at Willis pro ba bly viewed th e pr ospect with lessenthusias m th an the rest.

According to the rest of the group, his per sonality had been themost affected by thei r limited success. Oddly, though Elliott was theaccepted fro ntman, the man wh o had to strike up a rapport with theaudience, do the interviews and generally represent the group, it wasPete who was under the most pressure. A more reserved cha rac ter bynature, early gigs had rep utedly seen him playing guita r fro m theback of the stage, or even from the wings. T he onset of fame and theadulation of the fan s meant that he had to co me to term s with beinga pu blic figure very quickly. Of the five in the band, he wa s the leastconcerned with achieving worldw ide fame and so the less agreeableaspects of the job inevitably wo re him dow n more th an they did theothers; the gregariou s Elliott, for exa mple, was in his elementmeetin g, an d charming, new people all the time.

Pete had an additional problem with which to deal. Sho rt insta ture, especially alongside Jo e at the fro nt of the stage, his elfinfeatures did make him loo k much younger than even Rick Allen,hence the comment from Ian Ravensdale in his Sounds review quoted

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in the previous chapter. It was tough for hard bitten English crowdsto warm to Willis when he looked little more than a schoolboy. Giventhat guitar players are often the central focus of a rock band, it washard enough for Pete to deal with the attention, never mind theaccompanying derisory comments. The fact that Steve Clark wasclearly enjo ying his role in it all scarcely made things any easier forhim. Once on the road with a limitless supply of booze on hand, therest of the group noticed that Pete was leaning more and more on thebottle, Elliott putting the change down to one specific incident. 'Hechanged on a ten hour flight. The first time we went to the States, wegot on the plane at Heathrow and ten hours later Pete was carried off,bollocksed dru nk. He was never the same again.'

Willis was not the only one who regularly had a few too many, forJoe later remembered seeing Clark 'puking blood back in 1978' as aresult of his drinking. With another record to make though, such over­indulgence was dism issed as something that could be handled. Therewas no desire to throw anyone out of the band and disrupt the creativetensions that existed at such a vital stage in their career. The biggestquestion for now was where would they record and with whom.

Thankfully, they realized that they had made mistakes and that anyblame for their British problems lay with them as much as it did thepress. Elliott magnanimously accepted that 'we fell into all the traps.At the time I thought we were doing all the right things. God couldn'thave told me I was wrong. Now I realize that the first album was aload of shit. It was very representative of the band for about sixweeks but afterwards we weren't anything like that any more'. Thistime, they needed a record that they'd be able to live with indefinitely,one of which they could be proud.

Once again, Peter Mensch stepped into the breach. Even beforethey'd gone in to record On through the night, they'd had oneparticular producer in mind. Joe admits that 'we wanted Mutt Langefor the first one, having heard his work with City Boy, the Motorsand Graham Parker. Tom Allom was the next on the list and he wasgreat, really funny, but we didn't want to get stuck in a rut, wewanted something different, we wanted a definite improvement.'Mutt, more formally known as Robert Lange, had also producedAC/DC, rescuing their final record with Bon Scott, 1979's superb

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'Highway to hell' , and running the potentially difficult sessions forthe follow-up, 'Back in black' . Since Mensch had worked so closelywith AC/DC, he knew Lange and wa s instrumental in setting up thecollaboration. A few more unkind critics have suggested that Langehad never previou sly been in the frame for the job and that it was allMensch 's doing, but Elliott's comments on bands such as the Motorsring true. Lange had co mpiled a diverse , idio syncratic CY and themix of styles which he had mastered was hugely appeal ing to

Leppard. Free of the need to produce a met allic record, they wantedsomeone who co uld help them achieve the best possible synthesisbetween their pop sensi bility and their avowed intention to maintaina typically British aggressive dim ension to their music.

Lange wa s an exce llent choice. With a great track record behindhim, he was sup remely confident in the studio and was alreadyinterested in Def Leppard. Like so many other industry insiders, hecould hear the potential within the band and wanted the oppo rtunityto help them unleash it. Sufficiently successful not to have to worryabout the dictates of the record company, his very presence wasenough to reassure exec utives that with Leppard, they were indeed onto a winner. In turn, that helped relax the band whose confidence hadbeen dented by their British experiences. With Mutt on board, the ycould afford to be optimistic once again.

It 's rare for Def Leppard to give birth to a record painlessly, forthey ap pear to end ure an elephantine gesta tion per iod. Prepar ati onsfor their second album, a real crossroads for them, were goi ng well.T heir songwriting had improved while past studio exper ience hadgiven them a better idea of what wo rke d well on record and wha t didnot. Th e bod y of work they had at their co mma nd thi s time was acon siderable improvement on their first efforts and they werechamping at the bit, having finished touring in September.Unfortunat ely, Lange was already co mmitted elsewhere, recordingForeigner 's 4, session s which were interminable. It wa s not Lange'squest for per fection that held th ings up, but the band's ownuncertaint y about the mater ial they were working on . Ha vingplanned to finish with Foreigner in Octob er, Lange wa s not finallyfree of his commitments until M ay 1981. This had left Def Leppardkicking their heels for eight months.

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The perceived wisdom has it th at a new rock band sho uld make arecord, tour incessantly and still mak e its second album within a yearof the first , whereupon the cycle begins anew. If the gro up issuccessful, it has to capitalize on thi s, strike whil e the iron is hot andkeep the name in the forefront of peopl e's minds. To leave the bestpart of two years between the first and second release is tantamountto commercial suicide. With Leppard reviled at home and virtualnobodies everywhere else, thi s eno rmo us delay should really havesounded the death knell. There were man y sage adv isers wh o, byChristmas 1980, were co unselling th at Def Leppard needed to get analbum togeth er , and quick.

The band held their nerve, either from their own convict ions orbecause of Mensch's glowing description of wh at M utt could do fortheir career. Such certainty of purpose in the face of all the normalrules was proof of great collective strength of character and oncemore, they would be proved right. They used the down time wisely,working on their songs, adding new ones to the cano n, ensur ing thatonce they co uld begin work, there would be a wea lth of stro ngmaterial from which to choose. Revelling in the freedom they nowhad to explore the more melodic side of their natures, tunes aplentycameflowing from them. It's fair to say that thi s second record wouldbea far more honest representation of what Def Leppard were aboutand what they wanted to become.

The da y of reckoning finally came in M ay 198 1 when the bandwent into London's Battery Studios - Iron Maiden 's custo ma ry home- to start work. Unlik e the two weeks that had been lavished on Onthrough the night , two full months were given to High'n'dry , aconsiderable investment of time and money and one which put therelease date back still further, the album not seeing the light of dayuntil July 1981 when it was rush-released to coi ncide with apreviously booked to uring schedule. Such indecent haste did not sitwell with Lange's legendar ily meticulous studio habits, but forLeppard it was a tremendous introduction to the world ofprofessional recording. H ustled through the debut, tw o monthsseemed an eternity to them and perhaps any longer would have beentoo much of a cu lture shock. As it was, they were able to maintaintheir enthusiasm th roughout and their obvious enjoyment of the

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process shone through on an alb um that was a 100 per centimp rovement on its predecessor.

High 'n'dry was no mas terpiece, it's a long way from being theirbest work, nor will it go down in history as a turning point forpopular music but for Def Leppard, it stands out as pr ob abl y themos t important record they've ever made. It had to show a dr amaticimp rovement but, crucially, it needed to demon strat e a st rong senseof direction, offer evidence th at they had a firm hand on the tiller andthat they were heading towards a definite dest inati on. With Onthrough the night widely viewed as a disappointing first blast fromthem, they desperately needed to silence the doubters. Amid the criesof 'sell-out', Leppard really just returned to their roots and produceda selection of driving pop rockers. T he album was flawed, lacke d anyreal dynamic range and the lyrics remained sha llow and uninterestingbut the sheer urgency in the playing, the absolute conviction in thedelivery overshadowed these deficiencies.

It was, inevitably, Joe Elliott who put his finger on Lange'senormous contribution to Leppard's renaissance. 'Mutt works youhard . I'm a real wimp in the studio because you've got no naturaladrenaline, no audience. He makes me wo rk until it's right.' O ne ofthe most striking things abo ut High'n'dry was the improvement inJoe's own voice. Even though he was still a long way from riva llingthe likes of David Coverdale, he cou ld now make the most of his stilllimited ability while the songs seemed to fit his range far better thanpreviously. Joe was candid in his assessment of his own voice: 'Theyput up with me not being able to sing for two and a half years. Mysinging was ab solutely useless.' No false modesty thi s, for anydispassionate ob server would have to agree that his performance onOn through the night was awful. True to his character though, Joewasn't about to let a little thing like a lack of na tural ta lent comebetween him and success, admitting later in Q that 'I'm like KevinKeegan who wasn 't as good a footba ller as Glenn Hoddle, To nyCurrie or Stan Bowles, but who knew that if he wo rked his bo llocksoff, he could achieve something, whereas the others were lazy ... I'mnot the most gifted - when God handed out throats, I got locked outof the room. But I was determined to do it, I would do anything . . .Mutt's reall y patient, he just tries to bring out in my voice what I'm

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capable of but what I wo uldn't do myself because I'd get fed uptrying. I'd pac k in after six attem pts but Mutt'll keep me going fortwelve'. Singing on the road night after night helped him withphrasing and with pacing himself and his voice, so by the time theyentered Battery Studios, Joe was something of a seasonedcampaigner. Familiarity with the material helped too, but the realdifference was the way in which Lange made him jump throughhoops in order to get the sound right. If he failed to get it right firsttime, Mutt got him to recor d it again. And again . And again until itwas exactl y the way it should be. In fact , it rarely was exactly the wayit should be for Joe still had much to learn about his art but Langewas exper ienced enough to realize when he had wrung the last ounceout of Elliott and wise enough to know when to call it a day. By theend of recording, Joe was a tired man, but a proud one too for he hadproved himself a capable singer at last.

If there was a rea l crit icism that could be levelled at him - indeedat everyone invo lved in the entire project - it was that they seemeddetermined to become the new ACIDC. Naturally Lange'sinvolvement in Back in Black and Higb'n 'dry meant here wo uld besimilarities in the sound, but at times, Leppard sailed a little close tothe wind, with Elliott look ing too keen to step into Bon Scott's shoes .With Back in Black such a huge hit commercially and critically, itwasn't a bad reference point and at least it proved they were headingin the right direc tion, for AC/DC were not a dumb metal act, but anintelligent rock ban d.

From the outset, it was obvious that Def Leppard demandedreassessment for the music was tighter, more dynamically structured,punchier, an altoge ther more arresting sound. 'Let it go' set the tone,a long way removed from the adolescent fare of 'Rock brigade'. If itwas pretty sta ndard roc k'n'roll, it was done well, only diminished bythe 'get ready for the back seat' sexism implicit in the lyric. Elliottapologized eight years later, saying ' I look back and think " thankGod I was on ly twenty" . I mean, the lyrics, some of them are fuckin 'useless, aw ful "get down on your knees" stuff. Nowadays, I try to doit a bit more tactfully.'

The record carried its fair share of uncomplicated rock songs,~High'n 'dry ' and 'No no no' being cases in point, the latter a classic

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example of heads do wn, see you at the end rifferama, featuring lotso f senseless screaming from both Joe and the twin, inevitablyd uelling , guitars. 'Lady stra nge' also provided a flimsy excuse to cutto the guitar cha se at th e bridge, though th e central guita r riff waswort h hearing, remini scent of Rainbow's 'Since yo u been gone'.Fortunately, th ese songs were to prove th e exception rather th an therul e as th e group's poppier instincts tended to hold sway . 'M irror,mirror (look int o my eyes)' was a perfect example of thi s curate's eggof an album. H ard edge d pop displaying an improvement in theso ngwrit ing, th e clu msy arrangeme nt and dubious execution meantth e so ng so unded cluttered with little room for th e instrumentationto breathe, yet it was sa lvaged by the layers of backing vocals whichwere an immensely pr omising departure. That careful structure waseq ua lly well employed on ' Yo u got me runnin", wh ere the backingserved to bolster Joe's vo ice which was clearl y st retched by themat erial.

'O n th rough the nig ht ' , a hangover from th e first a lbum perhaps,let things down , for tho ugh it was obviously anthe rnic, deliberately,desper ately so, the lyrical idea was wholly ludicrous. The co nce pt ofrock 'n 'roll , one of th e grea t corpo ra te entertainment ind ust r ies,having 'no safety net' is p lain ly abs urd while th e image of Leppardas a hard living rock 'ri 'rol l ba nd sti ll didn 't was h, especia lly as itlooked liked they st ill didn 't need to shave . It was a sha me that thelyrics wer e so relentlessly crass, for musica lly the song was muchclo ser to the d irect ion Leppard were as piring to , poppy with somever y nice guitar interpl ay that left it roo ted in th e rock genre. Lyricsremai ned a bugbea r for th em, though Joe suggested tha t th ey hadtri ed to work harder on th em thi s time around. 'On thi s a lbum, wetri ed to wri te abou t a ll so rts o f sto ries. Stev e once hijack ed a taxi inParis and t ried to wr ite a song abo ut it, but it just so unded like apiece of shit, so we scra pped it, rewrote th e lyrics and it sounde d alot better. '

T he other th ree t rack s on High 'n'dry we re espec ially imp ortant,eac h in th eir own distinctive fashion . Steve Clark's 'Switch 625' madeit clea r th at here was a guita rist and writer o f real dist inction.Altho ugh it didn 't rea lly fit into th e ove ra ll co nce pt of th e album, itdemanded inclusion. Th e lead guitar line wa s excellent and th e tr ack

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could have been ta ken from the soundtrack to a European thriller. Itwas clear th at Leppar d's horizons really were broadening and'Another hit and run ' was perhaps the best example of their improvedattention to detai l withi n their songwriting. Where so much of theirmaterial was designed to rock hard, this allowed for a nice change ofpace, illustrating an intuitive understanding of dynamics that wouldgo on to serve them well in the future.

Point ing the way ahead was 'Bringing on the heartbreak' with itslovely guitar work and Gary Moore-ish introduction. 'Heartbreak'was straight out of the classic rock power ballad mould, but it tookthe form to a new level. It was the first really huge vocal harmony tha tthey'd used to date, the wash of colour that would become theirtrademark over the years and provide the blueprint for countlessimitators. Q uite simply, those backing vocal s were so lush, sopainstak ingly recorded, so awesomely bright and full of life that thesheer scope of the pro duction was simply overwhelming, proving tobe ultimately irresisti ble to a generation of record buyers .

With the album completed an d concert dates looming, the bandhad little time to reflect on what they'd achieved. They could restassured that this time around, the critics would be migh tilyimpressed . Geoff Barto n helped himself to a very large plate ofhumble pie in Sounds: 'I realize now that 1 wrote Def Leppard offprematu rely, crue lly and unnecessarily. High'n 'dry is a titaniumtoecapped kick in the teeth for Def Leppard's British critics.' Thealbum collected the maximum five stars, but it wa s too little too latefor the band in Britain. Minds had been made up about Def Leppardlong since an d th ough both 'Let it go ' and 'Bringing on theheart break' were released as singles, neither charted, with th e albumonly mak ing num ber twenty-six. Elliott was philosophical about itall, accepting th at ' it's irrelevant how I see things. It's how theaudience sees them th at decides how many records we sell. We lostour market because th e music press slagged us to pieces'.

Nevertheless, th e crit ical reappraisa l was welcome, not leastbecause Willis and th e rest were becoming increasingly estranged,Willis allegedly less keen on the new direction the music was taking.Indeed th ere were plenty of uns ubstantia ted rumours in the musicpress th at he was considering leaving the band in order to form a

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more traditional metal outfit. Any personal differences were buriedfor the course of the tour however, the band enjoying all the road hadto offer. Gigs in West Germany offered some of the stranger sights asJoe recalled. 'We went to the Star Club in Ham burg in 1981 to seewhere the Beatles had pla yed but it's not there any mo re andeventually we ended up in an underground car park which had allthe se women chained to the pillars and littl e rooms off the main area.So you' d walk around thi s mea t market and at twenty-one it was areal eye opener. I'd never seen an ything like it in Sheffield! '

With a renewed spirit of optimism spreading through the cam p,even the British dates went tolerably well, although an accompanyingpromotional gimmick - if you took your ticke t stub to the HMVchain of stores, you got SOp off the price of High 'n 'dry - tarnishedthings a little . Gigs just prior to Christmas 1981 proved that theirrehabi litation was all but complete in the eyes of the pres s, though thefans still stayed away in droves. Philip Bell wrote in Sounds that theLeppard show was based upon 'Absolute professionalism . . . a to talreassessment. It wo rks', though Melody Maker's Steve Gett was alittle more circumspect in his praise, admitting that the new musicwas ' ideal for the US market but I have my doubts regarding thestrength of their Brit ish popularity' , reservations that were foundedin the facts.

Altho ugh Def Leppard had had a rough time at the hands of thepress in 1980, the members of the Fourth Estate co uld not be heldsolely to acco unt for the band 's failure at home. Th ere were morefund am ental, deep-seat ed reasons for this malaise than a simple sheafof bad reviews. They were just the wrong band for the time. Britishrock music in the early 1980s was going through a co nspicuouslydour per iod with the 'indie' bands such as Jo y Division , Echo and theBunn ymen and, later on the Smiths holding the more committed rockfans in thrall. If you were serio us about your music, now was not thetime for celebration with ever- lengthening dole qu eues andwor senin g economic situatio n allied to the omnipresent threat ofgloba l war as intern at ion al relation s reached a low point between thewest and the pre-glasnost Soviet Union. What wa s there to celebrate?

On the other hand , on a more commercial level, it was the synt heticdoodlings and fashion conscious performances of the New

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Romant ics that were swamping the cha rts . Their ethic wa s thatthings were so bad in the outside world, the on ly sensible responsewas to create your own world filled with bright and shiny youngthings. To gain entrance to th is world of twenty-fou r-hour partypeople, you had to dre ss prop erly, drink the right coc kta ils and knowthe right people. Life could be a consta nt whirl if you approached itproperly.

Def Leppard fell outside those two camps, too frivolou s andlyrically inept for th e ' indi e' scene, too down to ea rth and'ordinary' for th e New Rom antics. British music was a ll ab outimage and Leppard's just did not fit in. Their on ly refuge wo uldhave been with th e metal crowd th at had init ia lly brought th em toprominence but they were set on taking revenge for Leppard'sapparent betrayal of th e NWOBHM and their Americanpreoccupations. Th e band were even begin ning to sport ex pensivehairdos, th e Jon Bon Jovi poodle cut as it wo uld becom e kn ownlater. Littl e wonder that Joe complained 'wha t we rea lly need is anaudience that'll accept a band that look s like Duran Duran butsound s like Saxon. That' s the next step'. As it was, in 1981 , DefLeppard were complete outcasts.

In America, th ings looked a lot more posi tive for them. With thewholesale compartmentalization of rad io in the States, Leppardslotted in nicely to the FM format, all the more so now that the y wereworkin g with Lange. Lange himself was the hottest name inAmerican AOR at the time with Forei gner 's 4 on its way to sales ofsix million units, topping the Billboard charts in the States for tenweeks. That gave Def Leppard added kudos, provided them with away in to those radio stations which the y exploited to the full. PeterMensch had put his reputation on the line with Higb 'n'dry and wa sdetermined to turn it into a major seller. In fact, it wa s onl y a min orimprovement on On through the night in sa les term s, charting atnumber thirty-eight, but crucially it made the breakthrough in termsof acceptance, paving the wa y for future triumphs.

Support ing Blackfoot, the y spent much of 1981 on the road inAmerica, playing a mix of good and bad shows, Elliott accepting that'other bands have time to evolve and grow up in the small clubs.We're making all our mistakes in front of thousands of people' .

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Mistakes or not, they were beginning to make waves in America andwere able to live the life of bona fide rock stars as Elliott remembers.'We had little girls chasi ng us all over the place, everywhere we wentit was summer, we'd be round the pool all da y and-doing a co uple ofinte rviews. Pete was living the lifestyle and putting less and less intothe per formance. The rest of us were pretty rampant in th ose da ysand we' d all indulge in a drink or birds if they were around, but it wasalways "eno ugh's eno ugh, we've go t a gig tomorro w". Pete go t hiscomeuppa nce th ough - we used to gaffa tape his boot s to the roof ofthe van and when he wa s asleep we'd put shav ing foa m on the backof his hand and tickle his nose with a feather .'

Such ga mes helped relieve the tension in the rest of the camp butdid littl e for Will is's peace of mind. It wa s beginning to becomeobvious th at he might yet go the way of MSB. Ironically, they werestill giving the band pa use for thought more than a year after theirdemise. Elliott was especia lly angry with the wa y things had workedout. ' It cos t us a fortu ne to get rid of them. They're gett ing points offHigh 'n 'dry for as long as it sells. If say, 10,000 cop ies sell in ten years'time, they'll get money off it. They had nothing to do with th is album.Th ey were with us when we did the first so ma ybe they'r e entitled toa little bit of that , beca use th ey did get us a deal with Phon ogram butth ey'r e entitled to nothing off thi s second one as far as I'mconcerned.'

Such businesslike preoccupa tion with th e pen nies might haveserved the band well in their co mmerc ial dealings, but it did little forthe pu blic's perception of them, notabl y in England . Elliott's atti tudeseemed chu rlish to say th e least given th at Lepp ard were sta rt ing tolook like a real act for the fut ure. Like it or not , MSB had ar rangedth eir deal with Phonogram and if they hadn't don e so, wh o's to sayth at Leppa rd might not have sti ll been languishin g in obscur ity ? Itwas the very fact that they had a deal that enabled them to go on tomake a second record and it does n' t seem especially un fair that MSBsho uld be entitled to some of the financial rewards for the hard workthey put in. It 's one th ing ma nagi ng a band th at 's alrea dy go t a dealand a reputation, it's quite another to take one from the clubs andwin them a record contract .

These outbursts could only ad d to the impress ion th at Leppard

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were a bu nch of money grabbing thugs and it detracted from thegreat strides they'd made on record. Rightly or wro ngly, moneyseemed to be central to every mov e that th e group made and with askilled negotiato r like M ensch behind them, th ey generally got thebest deals. Def Leppard could not co mplain if people thought theywere tailor ing their sound to earn the maximum amount of money,for money seemed to be th eir greatest preoccupation.

Their bluff, blunt Yorkshire mann er got them into trou ble onmany occa sion s for bands are not rea lly supposed to speak the truthwhen it comes to hard cas h. When you then attack the press'sfavourite band at th e sa me tim e, you ' re just ask ing for tr ouble, sothat 's wh at Joe did . 'The Cla sh , they' re middle cla ss. They're makingmoney bu t they're embarrassed by it.' Leppa rd were neverembarrassed by their ability to mak e money. It was that th at hadallowed th em to escape lives in th e factori es of Sheffield and had freedthem to see th e world. As one of the great wor kin g class escape routes- footb all's the other one in Britain - one of th e biggest reason s forjoining a rock band wa s to get rich. Why be emba rrassed abo ut it?The answer wa s that in Britain, flaunting it was not the done th ing,screaming 'Ioadsamoney' in 1981 wa s not as acce pta ble as it becamein the late eighties. It wa s chic to be poor, or at least to pretend to bepoor.

America suffers from no such inhibitions. The America n Dreamitself is based on success, the nation prides itself on its ega lita rian wa yof life. If you have the talent and th e drive to get ahea d, then you can,or so the story goe s. If you do mak e it big, you sho uld be proud ofyour hard work, pleased that you finall y mad e it and revel in yourself-created wealth . If money's not there to be enjoyed, wh at is it for?Nor were the nation's doors closed to those fro m ab ro ad who mightadd som eth ing to the culture as Def Leppard clearl y did , even th oughsome might sneeringly suggest that that says mor e abo ut the paucityof American culture than the quality of Leppard 's mu sic. Nevermind, Ame rica wa s happy to lavish its dollars on Def Leppard andthe band were happy to reciprocate by giving th em what they wanted- a damn fine evening out and a record that they could enjoy over andover again. For those who liked their rock mu sic clean and simple,Leppard were the perfect soundtrack to th e perpetual party that

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accompanied the Reagan years as a nation fell in love with itself allover again. If the band stood out like a sore thumb in Britain,America provided ample recompense, taking Leppard to its heart. Itwas a love affair that had only just begun.

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One th ing abo ut success: it keeps you busy. Touring consta ntlythrough to December , the band wa nted to take a brief sabbatical atthe start of 198 2 in order to prepare material for thei r new reco rd.They took heart from the warm reception they 'd received in the Sta tesand the gradually increasing media pr ofile they'd ea rned forthemselves there, while their European following had been enhancedby a tour support ing Judas Priest. Having ma de an artisticbreakthrou gh with High 'n 'dry, th ey were determined to use theplatform they'd built for themselves, taking their music on to the nextlevel. With two albums under their belt , they had a pretty goo d ideahow the studio worked and were start ing to rea lize that perh ap s theavailable technology wa s not being fully util ized by a range of artistswhose mind s were still rooted in 1970s methodo logy. With newinvent ion s and innovat ion s consta ntly coming on stream, it was timethat somebody turned recording on its head, dispensed with th econvention s and approached making a record in a sp irit oficonoclastic fervour. One member of the band remarked that 'wewanted to mak e "Star Wars" for the ears' ,

The author of th at remark wa s Phil Collen. He'd been brought intothe group during the recording of their thi rd album, Pyromania, toreplace Pete Willi s. By the time they convened at Battle's Park Ga testudios to work on the basic tracks for the album, it was becomingincreasingly obvious that Willis wa s out of step with the other four.Musically things were still reasonably okay, with Pete co-writing four

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songs from the alb um. The pro blems were on a personal level, forwhi le Steve Clark was still dr inking heavily, it had made littledifference to his personality, nor his ab ility to work. For Pete Willis,drink had, according to the others, changed a lot of things. JoeElliott's version of events was sta rk. 'He was fired because he wa s anarsehole when he was drunk. He suffered from the classic Little Mansyndrome; five feet two, has a pint and all of a sudden he's eight footnine . He was a nasty guy to be around when he was drunk.' Not onlydid Willis give Leppard trouble, he began to argue with Lange aboutthe actual recording methods used on Pyromania. Since Lange was atthe pinnacle of his profession, this was not the most inte lligent ofmoves. As the sessions wo re on, Pete 's presence became increasinglydisruptive, to the point where the band ordered Peter Mensch to getrid of him.

To his credit, Mensch told them where to get off. While cowardlybands habitually hide behind managers, forcing them to do their dirtywork because they're ultimately just paid emp loyees, Mensch wasn'tgoing to let them dodge their obligations so easily . He did not believeit was his place to sack Pete, especially since the decision was basedon musical grounds, given Pete 's poor studio attitude. Moreimportantly, he felt it was right that Willis should hear it from themen wh o wanted shot of him, felt that afte r all his efforts, he deservedmore than just receiving his cards in the post. Summoning up thecourage to do the deed, Willis was officially made an ex-Leppard atthe start of Jul y 1982.

Paradoxically, Pyromania contained some of Willis's bestmom ents, for he did contribute distinctive guitar work to all thebacking tracks before his departure. As a writer t oo , he could feeljustifiabl y happy wit h songs like 'Comin' under fire', 'Billy's got agun ' and, in particular , the excellent 'Photograph' . Whi le he wa s ableto produce work of that calibre, it's amazing that Def Leppard couldnot find some way to acco mmoda te him within the line-up. After all,they'd tolerated Joe Elliott's inadequ at e voice for a couple of years,so wh y not keep Pete at arm's length , but still involved as a writer andstudio perfor mer?

Much of the answe r lies in that nebul ous quality 'chemistry' . Whe nDef Lepp ard were five likely lad s back in Sheffield, fuelled by the

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musketorial principle of 'all for one and one for all', the band hadthat indefinable something, a common goa l that drove them on.Somewhere along the way, Pete had mislaid that origina l intensityand wa s cha nnelling his energies in diffe rent directions. As the bandhad no pat ience with slackers, he was already on decidedly dodgyground. Breaking point came whe n he and the band fell out with oneanother and ceased to be on friend ly terms. Rock bands are a verypeculiar social grouping, unlike any ot her work gro up th at you couldencounter. In the office, factory or sports field, managers co mpile ateam made up of the mos t ta lented people they can att ract given theirlocation , their wage structure and so on. A rock group is much morelike a soc ial club where th e level of your abi lity is often far lessimportant than whether or not you're on good terms with your bandmates.

There are good operatio na l reasons for this, since to uring gro upstend to live in and out of one another's pockets for mont hs at astretch and, if there's any an imosity between the ind ividu als, agruelling itinerary can quickly degenerat e into an abso lute nightmare.More than that though, a rock gro up is often ru led by the gangmentality that carries kids throu gh their school years . It becomes aself-sufficient pack that scorns the outside wo rld, has its ow n jok es,its ow n way of wo rking, its own way of life. Everyone knows whatmakes the others tick, there are precious few secrets from one anotherand intruders are definitely not welcome. More than anything else,life in a band has to be fun becau se otherwise it's just ano ther job , thevery routine that peopl e run away to the rock'n'roll circ us to avo id inthe first place.

It's only na tura l that musicians cultivate different friendships awayfrom their own band, people they can spend time with when they'renot wo rking or other musos who they've encountered on the roa dand who und erstand the peculiar demands placed on them. O ne suchmusician , a guita rist, who'd entered Def Leppard's circle was PhilCollen, from Walthamstow. Born in December 1957, he'd receivedhis first gu itar as a birthday present in 1973. By the end of the decade,he was a leading light with glam-rockers Girl, a group that hadalways threatened to become big, yet had never quite managed to

make the breakthrough. Viewed as too gimmic ky by some because of

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their androgynous behaviour, their similarity to the New York Dollsand their garish make-up, they were trying to keep alive a form thathad already slipped into the twilight world of nostalgia - if peoplewanted to hear an y glam rock, Gary Glitter, Slade and the Sweet werestill knocking around the cabaret circuit, so a new band in the samevein wa s virtually redunda nt.

In the earl y months of 1982, Girl had finally been forced to acceptthe inevitable and had disbanded, leaving Collen without a job. Newsof his unemployment soon reached Leppard's ears and while PeteWilli s wa s being ushered out of the front door, Collen nipped inthrough the back to take his place. No-one could que stion his abilityas a guitarist, for technically he was quite superb with an added depthto his playing that Willi s, and for that matter, Clark sometimeslacked. How strange then that such a gifted player should come on tothe market at the exact moment when Def Leppard needed a newguitarist. Synchronicity is indeed a wonderful thing.

Where some see lucky co incidence, others sense darker forces atwork. As a band committe d to their career, Def Leppard were notmen who were keen on taking needless risks. Willi s had becomesom ething of a liab ility and, if Leppard were to make the final pushtowards superstardo m, they had to be able to rely on every piece ofthe machine doing its job at all times. If Higb'n 'dry hadn't broughtquite the return that Me nsch's investment warranted, he was notdisma yed, remaining confident that their time would come. Searchinghis own conscience in order to decide whether he had don e all hecould, he decided that the overa ll outlay on Pyromania sho uld bedoubled to make ab solutely sure that there was not a singleprospective record buyer that did not know all there was to knowab out thi s record. If you' re pushing the boat out that far, you have to

make really sure there are no holes in the bottom. Willi s looked likea potential leak , so his dismissal must have been on M ensch 's mind,the more so since stories ema na ting from the Leppard campsuggested that his drinking was slow ing things down so badl y it wascosting them up to £10,000 a week in lost tim e at a point where thegroup was already ha lf a million in debt.

As a con scientious and tho roughly profession al manager th ough,he acce pted that it was not his place to change the group's personnel

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and so he kept his own counsel. However, he wa s also known to bea keen admirer of Phil Collen's and one is left to wonder whether hisname might have occasionally cropped up in con versati on , the moreso as Girl were disintegrating.

The pr incipal players would st renuo usly deny it, bu t one can' t helpbut feel that had Girl been going from strength to st rength and hadPhil not suddenly become ava ilable, Pete Will is would havecompleted work on Pyromania and join ed th e band for their globaltrek. For a band that likes to eliminate risks and play th e percentages,sacking a founder member midway through ma king th e album theyhoped would make their fortun es would hav e been unthinkable; the ymight have been unable to find a suitable repl acement, th e chemistrywith som e unknown new boy might not ha ve wo rked, th e wholebalance of the band might have been fatall y disrupted. That's just nottheir style.

The official version of events says that Willi s's co nduct was beyondredemption, yet accounts from the group say that th e problems withhim were at their worst on the road. If that was th e case, the time tosack him would have been at the end of the 19 81 to ur or, if the ywanted to give him time to sort himself out, right at th e beginning ofthe Pyromania sessions if he hadn't shaped up . If he really had beenas incapable of working as the y suggest, how was he able to co-writefour songs? Certainly, if Willis had become so problematical, wh ywould they have even allowed him to start wo rking on th e album, forthe traumas clearly pre-dated the recording of Pyromania? He didsurvive four months ' worth of work on it after all, not a course ofevents that implies total dissatisfaction with his contribution, orcomplete ineptitude on his part. The fact s suggest th at the bandwanted Pete out, that he was drinking too hea vily, but that the ydidn't want to take the risk of sacking him witho ut having areplacement in min d. Girl's dissolution solved all th eir problems.

Lange wa s especially pleased with this development, for he wasimpressed by Collen's ability and with his willingness to work hardin the studio . For Phil, the opportunity in Leppard was too good to

let slip for as he admitted 'Girl had finally split, I was alm ostpenniless. I got a call out of the blue from Jo e asking me to take overfrom Pete Willis and I was so content just to be back in a band aga in' .

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Co llen's invo lvement with Pyromania began in July as the gro upmoved from Park Gate to the more familiar env ironment of BatteryStudios in London to begin overdubbing. With all the basic tracksdown, it was here that Lange's expertise was especially important, forit was here that the new Def Leppard sound was rea lly constructed.For a further five months, every note, every line was considered,reconsidered, reworked and refined. The vast swathes of sound thathad so distin guished songs like 'Bringing on the heartbreak' onHigh 'n 'dry were deployed once again, but this time with yet greaterstyle and con vict ion. The culmination of thi s huge phy sical andmental effort wa s a record the like of which, from a son ic sta ndpointat least, had not been hea rd before.

Never on es to hide their light under a bushel, Leppard wereforgivably bulli sh about their new product. Joe's objective opinionbeing that 'I seriously th ink Pyromania is one of the best recordedLPs I've ever heard. Like Queen had done ten years earlier, werewrote the rule book on how to make rock music in 1983 withPyromania. We knew there had to be a better way'. Joe in particularhad reason to applaud the results, for his voice continued to improveat an alarming rate. Lange's quest for perfection had clearly broughtth ings ou t that he didn't believe he had in him, but it wa s notwithout a pri ce. For several weeks, Elliott's voice simply packed upunder the stra in and it wasn't until after he'd flown to see a specalistin New York that he was able to complete work on the album. Theeffort had to be wo rth it though, for now the last impediment toLeppard 's success had been removed. If Joe's rasping vocal s had putoff likely buyers in the past, those punters could find no such reasonsto leave Pyromania on th e rack s. Buttressed by those trademarkbacking vocals, Joe Elliott now possessed a fine rock'n'roll lar ynxwith an impressive range to boot.

With the mu sical ob stacles removed, it was left to Mensch to takecare of business and make sure that all the promotional tools were inplace. Wh ile the band had been recording for nine months, he andBurnstein had not been idle, putting in an equally awe some numberof hours on the commercial side of things. Record pluggers werebriefed, Phonogram alerted to the qua lity and ground-breakingnature of the album, video directors approached with a view to

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getting clips on the imminent MTV cable cha nnel, local radi o stationsacross the States plied with promotion al items leading up to th erelease of th e album. Everything was in hand, plan ned with the sa meattent ion to detail th at Lan ge app lied to his production duties. Theyhad not recouped th e sizea ble sum they had pumped into High'n'dryand were determined to mak e sure that the same did not happenagam.

With such powerful persona lities as Mensch and Lange on theteam, there were sugges tio ns that Leppard were little more thanpuppets, dancing to their tune, fronting an enormous organization. Itwas an accusation tha t rankled, with Steve Clark especiallyvociferous in his attempts to put the record straight.

'Pyromania is a great record. We had a fair idea that the materialwe had prepared was stro ng enough to bea t High'n 'dry but to behonest it ca me as a rea l shock to find us top three in America allthrou gh th e summer. We spent nine months on and off doi ng thealbu m and getti ng everything exactly right, incl uding thebusiness side of things, so we did ha ve everyth ing geared up forits release. It was in th e top ten in America before we'd evenpromoted it! We did go for th is one correctly right from theword go bu t no matter how lon g we spent getting the productionright, you ca n't deny th e fact th at they are, in one way oranother, a ll grea t tunes. It wasn' t a clear-cu t attempt at turni ngus into th e biggest thing since sliced bread .'

The songs were undeniably st ro ng, certainly the best body of workthey'd yet prod uced, but the plain truth was that it was the level ofproduct ion th at propelled Pyrom ania into th e histo ry books. Wha t isoverlooked is the fact th at Def Leppard were very much part of tha tproduction; they had wr itten th e ba sic songs, th ey co ntr ibuted ideasin the stu dio, idea s which Lan ge's kno w-how turn ed into rea lity . Thewhole process wa s a team effort as mos t of the great albums are.

Oddly th ou gh , probabl y th e most asto unding thing aboutPyromania was th at in many ways, it didn't sound like a record thathad taken th e best part of a yea r to crea te. When an art ist is in th estudio for such a prolonged peri od , th e results are often horribly

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laboured, lacking in excitement or a spark of life, removed totallyfro m the real world. Pyromania did not smack of self-indulgence, forth e highly original, if rather bombastic, sound aside, it wa s a modelof econo my in man y ways. As far as the basics went, everything hadbeen pared right back to the minimum, removing the over-playingth at had so cluttered the previou s albums. Th e extensive preparationtime the y'd allowed themselves was not wa sted either, for the earlymonths of 1982 had seen th em honing every song, cutting away theexcesses, leaving just the kernel of the original idea. In turn, thatopened up the spaces for embellishment with those dripping, over thetop harmonies to take centre stage, not unlike the cod-operaticstruc tures used on Meat Loaf 's Bat out of hell. A greater complimentyet and one wh ich the band would settle for, wa s that Pyromania hadthe stamp of classic Queen about it, the epic dynamics of 'A night atth e opera', the joyo us exu berance of 'A da y at the races'. Love it orloathe it, driving rock music, played well and played confidently cancarryall before it, sweeping up die-hard opponents in its wake. Thiswas the goal th at Leppard wanted to attain.

Part of the allure was that, again like Queen in their heyda y,Leppard weren't afraid to inject a little humour into their songs , evenif it was in the for m of dumb studio in-jokes such as 'Rock of ages'.It succeeded in lightening the ton e as Joe explained: 'We wanted tobring a little bit of fun back into it, put our tongues in our cheeksslightly. I just got the feeling th at th ings were becoming too po-faced,too serio us - you can't enter tai n peopl e unle ss you' re enjoying whatyou' re doing yourself. I do n' t wa nt to prowl ar ound the stage all sternand grim-faced. ' Small wonder th at he was moved to add 'I'd say IronM aiden, Saxon and ourselves are the Sweet of tod ay! There aredefinite comparisons'. 'Rock of ages' was cra mmed full of rock' n' rollcliches, it read like a Gary Glitter tr ibute, a mindless stomp that wasgoo d fun, but very much apart from the rest of the music which wasdeterm ined to make its mark.

Fro m the very first chords on the album, it was apparent thatsomething had changed, drastically and for the better. Theatmosphere and the scale th at leapt out of the grooves gave earlywarn ing th at Def Leppard had taken a quantum leap into theunknown and had bene fited from the experience. Almost a decade

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and a half later the chiming guitars, the shining vocals, the cra shingdrums all sound a little old hat for they've been so regularly and soslavishly copied, but in February 1983 such clarity of sound washighly unu sual. Pyromania wa s light years ahe ad of On through thenight and it was hard to credit th at the same band had made bothrecordings. Even Joe was surprised by the distance they'd travelled inso short a space of time. 'If you listen to our first album and then ourthird and you can't tell th e difference, then you sho uldn' t be listeningto hard rock music anyway. We're performing the songs better.We're writing better songs. Th e production 's better. We've got moreexperience . . . we have never tailored our music for the radi o, thingsjust change, they move on.'

Even so, radio was attracted to the new Def Leppard simplybecause the new Def Leppard wa s more attract ive. With allextraneous material chopped away, the melodies were clearer, thetunes easier to follow, the choruses more memorable. 'Comin' underfire' was a case in point for it centred around the very simplest ofguitar riffs wh ich ushered the song into a massive cho rus , Joe addingprobably his best vocal performance to date to crow n a track that noother member of the NWOBHM could ever have performed. Theschool of 1979 wa s now but a fading mem ory, th ough a few tracesremained, notably amid the atrocious qual ity of the lyrics. 'Rock!rock! (till you drop )' wa s a case in point where the crystal clearproduction had to do battle with the sort of sex ist ru bbish that wa scontinuin g to give rock a bad name. The idea th at wo men were thereto entertain the likes of Mr Elliott wa s Neanderthal in the extreme,though the lyrical thrust was, fortunately, larg ely lost beneath thehuge wall of sound. Bon Scott could get away with these lyrics, butthey sho uld have died with him in 1980. Joe suggested th at ' I don'thonestly believe an ybody takes them seriously or takes any realnotice of them. They're either completely ab ysmal or absolutelybrilliant' . No prizes for guessing which.

'Stagefright' would not win an y pri zes for intellectualenlightenment either, Joe informing the world that ' it's about womenwho come backstage after shows. They show you their wares andthen when you take them as far as they want to go, the y don't wannaknow any more. It happens all the time'. If thi s was a plea for

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sympathy with the star's plight, it fell on deaf ears, overshadowedagain by the musical accompaniment which defied criticism. Thosebacking vocals stole the show once more, laying down the plans thatBon Jovi would later expand upon, notably on 'Slippery when wet'.The rhythm section was tight and powerful, providing the basis for asuperb guitar solo, much the best that Leppard had so far recorded.

Where Leppard really had learned their craft was in the pacing ofthe set. To make a record stand out from the crowd of releases, itneeds to be something of an event, it needs something that is originalor idiosyncratic. With songs like 'Die hard the hunter', they providedit, the whirling sound effects offering something different from thecompetition, the bluesy introduction adding another element to thesound mix, the middle section all the more aggressive and potent incontrast. 'Billy's got a gun' was obviously in the same mould,building slowly into an epic from a brooding, 'Kashmir' opening.Clearly, songs like this were Leppard's stab at achieving thelegendary status they coveted, tackling bigger lyrical subject matter,handling more complex atmospheres. Sensibly, they chose not toinsist on using the wide screen on every song and were happy toloosen things up on 'Foolin", its delicacy of touch and intimateintroduction offering brief respite from the emotional clout of 'Diehard the hunter' . In the same fashion, the run off groove at the end ofside two was filled with industrial noise, akin to something that U2might have put on Zooropa a decade later.

Though Def Leppard may have dreamed of replacing Led Zeppelinvia such songs as 'Billy's got a gun', it was clearly elsewhere that theirreal talents lay. As a band they were at their best when deliveringclassic hard edged pop as Mott the Hoople or Slade had done beforethem. 'Action, not words' was a lovely example of the genre, verylight, very poppy, very enjoyable, memorably coloured by the mostattractive guitar figure. If that was good, 'Photograph' was peerless,commercial mainstream pop at its sublime best, lyrically intriguing,based on an obsessive fascination with Marilyn Monroe. Hugedrums, chugging rhythm, a sumptuous, warm guitar line crowning agorgeous chorus, it was an obvious hit with 'Top Ten ' written all overit. It said much for the way that Leppard were treated in the UK thatit only reached number 66 when, the following year, Van Halen

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cloned 'Photograp h' and the resu lting 'Jump' single spent weeks onthe survey, pea king at num ber seven.

That was the grea t probl em that Leppard still had to overcome, forwhile they were producing the very best of straightforward classicAmerican rock, their home audience on ly wanted to hear that kind ofsong from rea l Americans. No amount of persuasion could, at thisstage, persuade them otherwise. To be fair, the press realized just howgood Leppard now were. In his rave four star review in Sounds (oddlythe same rati ng as On through the night, one less than High 'n'dryi,Geoff Barton made it clear that this was their finest moment: '[I'm]astonished by the Def ones new found maturity, reeling from thesoaring grandeur of the song arrangements, awe- struck by the sheerbrooding atmospherics of Mutt Lange's masterful production ... I'mwith Def Leppard every stra tospheric centimetre of their rio to usrock'n'r oll re-entry.'

Melody Maker's Nick Kemp, not a renowned supporter ofLeppard in the pas t, ventured to the Marquee to catch their first da te,fitted in to the itinerary to give Phil Collen a chance to debut live outof the full glare of the spotlight. Kemp's analysis was apposite, notingthat it ' proved Collen's wo rth to the band. He 's given them thematurit y they've always lacked . .. "Photograph" is a pop-rockerthat ough t to take the charts by storm.' His view of Collen wasunerringly accura te. An unashamed fan of glarn, his bright yeteconomic guitar style did add a new dimension to the sound, but itwas his perspective on the group as an outsider that was so veryvaluable. For four years, the Def Leppard line-up had remainedintact, all five musicians having been together from a time way beforetheir first ever gig. It's an old tru ism, but they were simply too closeto the band to be properly objective about what the y were doing.While outside influences like Lange and Mensch were helpful, eventhey coul d never be pa rt of the inner sanctum, the Leppard think­tank. Only those five knew what it was like to be on stage toge ther,to write and perform together as a unit . Bringing in Co llen was abreath of fresh air, a cata lyst that made them question every aspect ofthe band, re-eval ua te all tha t they were doing, all the habits they'dfallen into. Collen injected new impetus into things, able also to offerwise counsel about the way promising groups could fail to fulfil their

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potential. Helping steer them away from the traps was as much a partof Collen's input as his unquestionable skill as writer and player.

UK gigs followed hard on the heels of the release of Pyromania.Th is could be seen as loyalty to th e old home, giving them the firstchance to see the show, but it was more likely another piece ofshrewd business planning. Sensing that Pyromania would fare littlebetter than High 'n'dry, it wa s good commercial sense to use the UKas a warm-up for the real tests that were to come on the arena stagesin America. At the same time, delaying their arrival in America wouldgive the promotion al machine the time to build the album into themonster success everybody wanted and expected. Leppard could thenjet into the States like conquering heroes. It wa s a strategy thatworked to per fection , Pyromania reaching the Top Ten on theBillboard survey before the band had played a gig in suppo rt of it.

Not that the UK gigs were treated lightl y, for as Joe made clear,'deep down, we'd love to be big in Britain. I'd for sake being able towalk do wn Oxford Street for succcess in England an y day'. Itremained a sizeab le priority for them but it still proved an impossiblenut to crac k, Pyrom ania edging up to number eighteen in the albumchart. As a conseq uence, they were only able to play eleven UK datesthrough February and March with Rock Goddess in support . Theywere still stuck on the Odeon circuit, with venues ranging between150 0 and 3000 seats in size. Despite their global success, things stillhadn't changed when they returned for a few Christmas shows.Simo n Scott reviewed the Birm ingham Odeon gig, damning themwith faint praise: 'O n stage, Def Leppard bring ano ther dimensionth at their recorded work merely hints at.'

Joe candidly admitted that financially at least, they were on to aloser. 'People haven 't go t the dou gh to see bands like us out ofinte rest like they used to in the old days. They save their mon ey forth e big tours like AC/D C or Queen. The reality is that America'spaying for us not to be big in Britain at the moment . .. we're losinga hecku va lot of money here. We' re going to lose £5 0,000 just byplaying eleven gigs. It 's ridiculou s. If we were onl y in it for the moneylike some peopl e think, then faced with that kind of finan cial disaster,we'd say "No way! " We wouldn' t pla y one gig here and we' d be£5 0,000 better off, that's £10,000 eac h . . . atthis moment, we' re still

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in debt, though obviously that situation's changing rapidly.' Th oughElliottwas merel y trying to inform their UK fans, tr ying to help themunderstand their situation, explaining that they were not rolling in it,suchcomments had the opposite effect, making him appear more andmorelike an accountant, a singer wh o went on stage with a calculatorand a till roll so that during the instrumental break s he could tot uptheevening's receipts.

Such an attitude wa s a total irrelevance in the States where only thequality of the music was an issue, for it was a given tha t you wo uldwant to make money out of your talents. With the added impetusgiven to Pyromania by their extensive touring schedu le, it spent mostof the summer in the top three, including tw o weeks at number twobehind Michael Jackson's Thriller. Success doesn 't come muchbigger. In a recession hit market - AOR heavyweights Asia had beenforced to cancel shows because of the econ om ic downturn and th econsequentl y depressed market - Leppard proved to be fireproof,'recession-proof' as Elliott termed it.

They were the hottest ticket wherever the y went, playing to pack edauditoriums of 10,000, 15,000, 20 ,000 or more. Ultimately,Pyromania clocked up ninety-two straight weeks on the Billboardchart and six million album sales in the US alone, 9.4 millionworldwide, firmly establishing it as one of the landmark rockrecordings. Collen put his finger on the key to Leppard 's success ­they offered people something they couldn't get elsewhere: 'Therewas a huge great gap between REO Speed wagon and Van Halen andwe just happened to fit that area perfectly.' Nothing machi avellian inthat, it wa s simply th at many saw the hard rock bands as too loud ortoo simpli stic or their audience as too threatening to get involvedwith whil e at the other end of the spectrum, American soft roc k wa ssimply too soporific for rock'n 'roll fan s to bear.

Girls made up much of the first group, their boyfriend s the secondcategory. What Def Leppard provided wa s a band that they couldenjoy unconditionally, giving couples a shared interest whil e singles,male or female , had a band they could enjoy with their friends. Inmarketing, it 's down to a knowledge of demographics and forLeppard, those demographics stacked up just perfectly. It 's aremarkable thing, but hard rock had long since prided itself in being

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an all-male preserve, excluding girls except in the role of groupies.Leppard's lyrics were little better than that while some of Joe'scomments on the fairer sex were hardly couched in the most seductiveof language: 'Rule One - don't lose your hardcore fans. You can endup with a ninety-five per cent female audience who you know aren'tgoing to be there next year unless you put out another hit single.'

Nevertheless, to the industry's movers and shakers such asMensch, getting girls to the gigs and to buy the records was a sensiblemove. Why restrict yourself to fifty per cent of the possible audiencewhen you can appeal to everyone? A few rock groups such as Queenand Thin Lizzy, trading on Phil Lynott's roguish charm, hadmanaged to bring a greater proportion of girls to the concert hall, butwith most rock bands, concert-going was still a prospect that couldfill the strongest stomach with foreboding. Leppard turned gigs intocelebratory occasions, welcoming everyone in for a huge party.Suddenly girls started to buy their records in real quantities too whichhad an enormous impact on their sales.

For the boys, there are times when you want something a littleeasier on the ears than Led Zeppelin, something that is simple versechorus, verse chorus, something you can sing along to enjoy withouthaving your ears bleed from the effort. Def Leppard's metal lite wasthe perfect wa y to wind down and relax, or prepare yourself for anevening with Ted Nugent. There was no stigma attached to listeningto Pyromania as there was if you admitted to a penchant for Saga orToto. Leppard were still a band with an edge.

These were developments that plainly perplexed Elliott as hefrankly confessed in the late eighties. 'We've managed to get awaywith murder on the cross-over factor. We're got just ugly enoughfaces not to worry the lads and in America, we still get kids inMetallica T-shirts at our gigs. Bon Jovi don't get that. We getVietnam vets who stand unembarrassed next to a sixteen year-old girlthat's wetting her knickers.' Inelegantly and unchivalrously put, buttrue nonetheless. Def Leppard blazed a trail that had seemingly neveroccurred to anyone else and changed the face of rock marketing in theprocess. This may not have been as important to the fans or critics asa musical breakthrough such as Revolver or The Velvet Underground& Nico, but for the industry as a whole, it opened up new vistas that

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helped tr ansform rock'n'roll into the avowedly co rpo rate institutionit is today.

Not that the band were shy of the corporate implication s of theirwork. They were willing to co-operate with th eir record company toan unprecedented extent. That earned plenty of cynical criticism,with Leppard portrayed as a band th at would roll ove r at the sight ofa dollar sign, but in reality, it was simple common sense of the sortthey'd employed right from the off. If you wa nt the co mpany to workfor you , you have to work for the compan y as Joe ex plained. 'It is amachin e and I see it first hand . We're one of the few th at actua lly putup with anything they want us to do beca use we feel we need to. Inthe States, you get up and you do some phone interviews, tr avel bybus or plane to the venue and then ma ybe tw o or three of us will goto the radio stations. About eight, we have the " meet and greet"where you put on your smiley face, do ph otos and autographs for awhile. Then it's off to the venue and I can have maybe thirty or forty­five minutes to myself before we go on stage. Som etimes we mighthave to do the "meet and greet" after the show or do a lat e nightradio interview to o.'

The most bizarre manifestation of Def Leppard's incredible loveaffair with the American people came in th eir stage wear. Rejected byBritain, they took solace, or revenge, in spo rt ing Unio n Jack T-shirtsand shorts . Within weeks, thi s spawned cop ycat dressing amongsttheir ardent fan s and then a new line in merchandise. When thetouring finall y came to a halt late in the year, the massed ranks ofAmerican youth were awash with the Union flag tha t th eir forebearshad fought so hard to have rem oved from th eir so il 200 yearspreviously! By the end of 1983 with a solid yea r of touring behindthem, the American Music Awards, voted for by the public,underli ned Leppard's pre -eminence and the valu e of such a strongwork ethic. W hen the votes were counted, they won awards as TopGrou p, Top Live Act, Top LP, Top LP Sleeve, Best Male Singer, TopMa le Sex Object (Elliott), second best tour. Where do you go fromthere? According to Steve Clark 'there's still room for lot s ofimprovement. We're not going to repeat th e formula. Phil 'scontr ibut ing much more in the writing department and we've go tsome great ideas. Some will be quite adventurous and some will be in

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the typical Leppard tradition. We're more concerned with developingour potential than cloning our past.' Though they were on top of theworld as 1983 came to a close, it would be close to four years beforethat next recording would be released. By then, the pressures offollowing up a hit would seem irrelevant. Real life would comecrashing down on the kings of good time rock'n'roll.

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ANIMAL MAGIC

Standard music business lore ha s it that once you've made anexceptionally successful album, you should flog it to death on theroad, check straight into a studio and repeat the whole process withintwelve months. Otherwise, the audience with its legend ar y minuteattention span will have moved on to something else. Fortuna tely,many artists have a rather higher opinion of their fans th an theexecutives do, Def Leppard being on e such band. Sensibly, they feltthat if nine million people had bought Pyromania an d loved it, they'dbe happy to buy the next one, whenever it was out, providing itmeasured up to the same standards. There again , leaving it four yearswas pushing the public's patience to extremes ...

It should have all been so straightforward reall y. The progressionfrom High'n 'dry to Pyromania showed that they were on the top oftheir form and the partnership with Mutt Lange seemed to haveplenty left in it. During a well deserved break after taking Pyromaniato the world, the band settled down to pre-production in Dublin.They had taken a house there once the tour had ended in February1984, another controversial move that merely enhanced theirreputation for looking after the pennies as Joe explained: 'Thegovernment got more money - a lot more money - than we did forPyromania and we just didn't agree with that.' Hence the y opted fortax exile in a country that is famed for its relaxed attitude towardsartists of every kind. By now, none of the band were resident inEngland, though how they reconciled that position with Rick

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Savage's views on home was not recorded: 'We have a responsibilityto English people - to everybody who likes you - but especially to theEnglish first and foremost because we are English.' Not aresponsibility that extended to swelling the coffers of the Exchequerthat paid out the dole money to some of their fans though.

Naivete aside, Dublin provided an excellent base from which towo rk, the recording and rehear sal faciliti es expanding rapidly thereas a new musica l infras tructure grew up aro und the success of U2.Having written material both separately and togeth er, the plan wasto get together in Augu st with Mutt, listen to all the tapes and selectthe best material for further work at the studio they'd booked inHilversum , Holland. Very quickly, those crucia l early daysdegenerated into disaster as it became apparent to one and all thatMutt Lange was in no fit state to continue working with them.H aving followed Foreigner' s 4 with High 'n 'dry and then Pyromania,he had become embro iled in another mammoth project, producingHeartbreak city for the Ca rs.

H is alm ost insa ne dr ive for perfection meant that all the time hewas wo rking, Lange was und er the most intense pressure, alwayslooking for the tiniest detail that might be letting down a song. Suchan obsessive quest had to take a toll on his nerves and by the time hereached Dublin, he was alread y in a state of virtua l collapse. As Joerecalled, 'Mutt dropped the bombshell that he couldn't do the album.The Cars' album rea lly took a lot out of him and he said he wasn'tready to spend another year in the studio'. Bombshell was the rightword for having to embark on such an important album projectwitho ut their men tor at the reco rding conso le was a dauntingprospect. Clearly Def Leppard were not Lange's pet studio project,for if they had not been goo d songwriters and stro ng per for mers, hewo uld have had no raw material with which to work . Nevertheless,the band had to conce de that Mutt had been an essential ingredientin their meteoric rise over the previous three years. Rick Savage wasqui ck to accep t th at , saying 'Mutt is one of the main reasons that DefLeppard are successful, he's a great producer and I do n' t thinkanybody in their right mind sho uld turn him down. He is aperfectionist and that 's why his records sound so good.'

How had Lange come to be such an important member of the

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team? In the recording process, one should never under-estimate thevalue of ano ther - highly skilled - pair of ears from outside the gro up,particularly if a band is still in its rela tive infancy and is consequentlyunfamiliar with the recording process. If you've wri tten a song, thenatural inclination is to treat it like your ow n chi ld, to believe that itis the greatest four minutes' worth of mus ic ever heard and that it willspend months atop the cha rts and years in people's hearts. Obviouslythe truth is often very diffe rent - the track may be too long, the bridgemay be too derivat ive, the melody migh t lack a little punch, the guitarsolo could be too indulgent. One of Lange's greatest gifts was to

break each and every song into its smallest constituent pa rts, exa minethem and then piece it back together. Such a task requi res aphenomenal memory as well as an absolute understanding of eachsong, so it' s littl e wo nder th at Lange's work was so exhausting. Joecompar ed it with the product ion of a feature film, each piece puttogether in isola t ion to the rest so that it's not until the who le thing'sfinished that you can see how it will work . If, like Lange, you alwaysknow where you' re ult imatel y going, th is is a fascinating meth od ofworking, almost like stripping down a car engine and rep lacing anydubious components with the best you can get unti l you've turned aFord Co rt ina into a Ferrari - it's sti ll a car, but an eno rmo usimprovement. O f course, Lange has his cr itics, those who believe thatby disrupting the ori ginal spark, he is doing precisely the oppos ite.There are many who prefer their rock'n'roll to have a ro ugh edge, toinclude mistake s, to breathe spontaneity. Certainly Def Leppard dostand accused of having too much polish when a little spit might haveserved them better , or at least been more interesting. On the otherhand , nine mill ion sa les of Pyromania suggest that plenty of peoplewould back the band and th e producer in their ques t for perfection.

With Lange now so clearl y out of the equation, Def Leppard wereleft in a corner, the more so since studio time was alrea dy booked.Casting aro und for possible alternatives to Lange, ma ny names weresuggested, including Phil Co llins. With a solo album - No JacketRequired - nearing completio n, he was avai lab le but , as he had aworld tour of his ow n to start in February 1985, Leppard felt theywould be compromised by having to comp lete an album in such arelatively short space of time. That was a shame in many ways, for

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Collins' instinctive grasp of radio friendly pop would have worked,well alongside Leppard's songs, while his belief in not losing the :initial spirit of a song would have been a striking contrast toPyromania and all the more interesting for that. The completeopposite of Lange, Collins has such an attachment to the originalwriting sessions that he often uses his home demos as the basicbacking track for a song, adding further instrumentation, properdrums and vocals, later in a full-scale recording facility. Working thatway might have been a refreshing change for Leppard.

However, they remained committed to the large-scale production,arguing that the intimacy of Collins' method would be out of place inthe arenas that they were playing and in the songs that they werewriting. The search was still on for a suitable producer. It's beennoted already that while in many respects, Pyromania updatedQueen's work, taking it on into the 1980s, the most obviousreference point was Meat Loaf. Similarly over the top, featuring layerupon layer of studio trickery, vocals and effects, Meat Loaf's Bat outof Hell had been every bit as all-encompassing and sonicallyoverwhelming as Pyromania. Much of the credit for that sound hadto go to writer and producer Jim Steinman who, in the aftermath ofthat success, produced his own solo record, Bad for Good.

With its melodramatic flavour and epic operatic construction, thatalbum had indicated that Steinman was very definitely the powerbehind the ample throne, his work with the likes of Bonnie Tyler on'Total eclipse of the heart' merely underscoring the fact. As Joepointed out, 'Jim Steinman was genuinely interested and seemed tohave the credentials at the time, someone who was musical andtechnical.' He seemed the obvious candidate and so the band movedinto Wisseloord Studios, Hilversum to begin work with him.

The sessions were shambolic, Steinman imposing his method ofworking on the band, while simultaneously attempting to impose hisvision on them too. If Mutt Lange had had very clear and definedideas as to what Leppard should sound like, they were empathic withthe band's own goals. Steinman's tastes and those of the group didnot dovetail so happily and the result was regular conflict betweenthe two parties. There was no meeting of minds. Steinman lateraccused the band of lacking intelligence and of being incapable of

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playing songs together in the studio, feeling that they should record'live', allowing him to overdub later. For their part, Leppard foundSteinman dictatorial and completely at sea when working on materialthat he had not had a hand in writing and were alarmed by his refusalto allow them to follow the step-by-step recording practices they'devolved with Lange. In a nutshell , 'after a couple of months, werealized we were just making a substanda rd version of Pyromania'according to Elliott. 'It wa s a Meat Loaf album, tot ally reliant on thesound through masses and masses of overdubs in the orc hestral senserather than in the tight sense which we were used to doing. Welistened to wh at we'd done , didn 't like any of it and scrapped the lot. '

By Novemb er, Steinman wa s sacked and all the work done so farconsigned to the bin at huge cost. That reflects well on Def Leppard'sdrive to mak e an album the y could sta nd behind, for if they weresolely motivated by money, they could have rushed the Steinmanproduct out for February 1985 and still sold in the regio n of five orsix million off the back of Pyromania. However, it does call intoquestion their attitude to the studio, for though Steinma n obviouslywas not the right man for the job, their intransigence betrayed bothinflexibility and a lack of confidence. Mutt Lange himself had tried toinstil the belief into the band that they did not need him around anylonger, th at indeed, with a good engineer on board, they sho uld havelearned enough to produce themselves. They had spent a full year inthe studio with Lange after all, plenty of time to pick up the tricks ofthe trade. It was clear that the band did not share th ose views, hencethe engagement of Steinman. Yet once the y had him, they appa rentlyexpected him to work in precisely the same way that Lange had , animpossibility, for no two producers - certainly no two such successfuland highly individualistic producers - have the same methodology. Ifyou call in a new producer, it should be becau se you wa nt to stretchout, experiment and look for a differ ent approach as had been thecase when they changed from Allom to Lange for High'n'Dry ,Leppard's whole approach to the Steinman sessions betrayed a lackof adventurousness that belied their avowed desire to break newground again.

Stuck in Holland, the band went back to Mutt' s advice and,bringing in Nigel Green, Lange's engineer, chose to produce the

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album themselves. In the few weeks that remained before the.~

Christmas break, they set to work with a vengeance, Savage taking]on the mantle of responsibility, overseeing the production and !cracking the whip accordingly. Freed of what they felt had beenSteinman's disruptive presence, the atmosphere improved almost atonce and Joe felt that 'once we brought in Nigel and got down to it,we heard a massive improvement right away'. Although they'd notreally got going as yet, merely laying the ground rules and rehearsingsome material, they split up for Christmas with renewed optimism,looking forward to resuming work in earnest on 3 January 1985.

It's an old tradition to look forward to a new year, as though amere change in the calendar will somehow magically usher in a brandnew world where all your problems can be put behind you. DefLeppard's new year saw their problems only just beginning, for theywere hit by tragedy. Driving to his parents' home in Sheffield alongwith Dutch girlfriend Miriam Barendsen in his distinctive and verypowerful Corvette Stingray, Rick Allen and the driver of an AlfaRomeo became involved in a fairly juvenile argument, the otherdriver surging past and then holding Allen up. In a moment ofmadness, Allen tried to overtake, not seeing a left hand bend in theroad since the Stingray was a left-hand drive vehicle. The Corvetteclipped a wall on the bend, flew out of control and rolled over. Theimpact was shattering, with Rick hurled through the windscreen withsuch force that his left arm was sheared off by the restraining seatbelt,Miriam was, fortunately, less seriously injured, receiving some heavybruising.

Miraculously, the first person on the scene was a local nurse, thesecond, another nurse who was driving by. They were able to calmthe still-conscious Allen and, packing the severed arm in ice, theyarranged for him to be rushed to the Royal Hallamshire Hospital inSheffield where microsurgeons operated almost immediately. In aprotracted operation, the arm was reattached. By now, news ofRick's accident was starting to reach the rest of the group and eachspent a traumatic and dismal New Year's Eve lost in their ownthoughts, hoping that Rick would pull through, for though his armwas clearly the main source of concern, he was on the critical list . Allworries about making records went out of the window as they feared

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for their friend's life. Joe mad e it clear where their pr ior ities lay,pointing out th at 'when so mething like th at happens, music becom esas important as Kleenex toilet rolls. It 's nothing, a job, an industr y,like maki ng nuts and bolts. When yo u put it in perspecti ve, it 's fuckall. Here was a guy wh o might die. It wa s awful, he was on th atcritical list fo r 48 hours'.

Th ough the arm had been successfully sewn bac k and wasthank fully free fro m any furt her in jury, ove r the co urse of the nex tcouple of days, it became clear th at the operatio n had not succeeded.The dam age inflicted on the tissue had been far too extensive for thearm to function agai n. An infecti on set in and the medical staff wereleft with no alternat ive but to amputa te. Allen was kept und ersedation and later revealed 'I wa s never awa re that they tri ed to putthe arm back on and I'm glad I didn't find out until later on.' Whenhis medicati on wa s redu ced and he regained normal consc iousness, hewas devastated by his 'disabled' sta te, understandabl y ga ining littleconsolat ion fro m the news that his life was no lon ger in dan ger andthat he wo uld mak e a full recovery. What kind of a recovery wo uld itbe, wh at kind of life would it be if he had to quit th e band, th e bandthat had been his life for seven years ? ' I had my usual pile of tapes withme and I'd hear the drums and think " I used to do th at " .'

It' s sca rce ly credible, for even Hollywood would have to thinktwice befor e daring to produce a script so co rny, but it was DefLeppard th at pull ed Allen through . As he told Sounds 'i f I hadn 't beenin Def Leppard th en I would have been out on a limb , 'scuse th e pun!The rest of th e boys were my lifeline. If I'd been doing any othe r kindof job . .. th is is th e only th ing I' ve ever been able to do. I'm not to obright, I ca n' t reall y co unt ... playing the drums since I was ten yearsold has pretty much been my life'. Even so , in the days imm ediatel yfollowin g th e cras h, playing drums agai n was an aspira t ion ratherthan merely a matter of time. The chances of actua lly being able toplay in a profession al rock band such as Def Leppard, a band th atprided itself on th e precision of its so und, seemed littl e mor e th an apipe dream. Bands with one-a rmed drummers were few and farbetween - th e ab solute minimum requirement for a dr ummer isusually a full complement of arms and legs, so the future was indee dbleak.

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Over the years, Allen has been lauded as a beacon of heroism in a-1

dark and cowardly world. His courage and determination are not iri'ldoubt and will be dealt with later, but at the same time, let's getthings into perspective. Although it looked very much as though hislivelihood had gone, materially, he remained in an enviable position.He was one-fifth of a group with more than ten million album salesto its name, after all. If it came to the point where he could not workagain, although that would be a grievous blow to his self-esteem andwould rob him of his greatest passion, it would not leave himdestitute. Month after month, we read in the papers of someone whohas suffered similarly horrendous injuries and is then consigned to alife at the margins of society, eking out an existence on meagreinvalidity benefits, while confined to their homes. On the same point,Rick and the Leppard organization had the financial wherewithal toenable him to rehabilitate properly after the crash. He would be ableto have the use of the best medical and psychological care that moneycould buy, the opportunity to retrain and learn other skills and thecertainty of a place within Leppard's operations should he want it. Inthat sense, the fearful blow was somewhat cushioned.

All his advantages were of little consolation to Rick at a time whenhe could only think that his career had come to a close. His friends inthe band were equally distraught, Elliott remembering that he weptuntil his eyes were drained, Savage recalling an evening spent instunned silence, Clark and Collen wrapping themselves around abottle or two in their Parisian apartments. Savage and Elliott visitedAllen and were amazed to find him in relativel y good heart,surrounded by letters and gifts from well-wishers . Rick ultimatelyreceived around half a million letters from all over the globe and thesehelped his spirits when he was left in the hospital while the bandreturned to Holland, though of course they all continued to pay flyingvisits to him.

Sessions in Hilversum were, inevitably, sombre. Fortunately, Allenhad completed most of the backing tracks before Christmas, so therewas plenty to get on with but, though they tried to throw themselvesinto their work as a means of taking their mind off his plight, thingsmoved slowly . As January wore on, better news began to filterthrough. Accompanied by his pile of cassettes, Rick had begun

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banging his feet against the bottom of his bed, tapping out therhythms of these favourite songs. He started to wonder whether ornot this might offer him a way of coping with his loss - could his feetdo what his left arm had been accustomed to doing? It all seemed alittle far fetched until he received a visit from Mutt Lange and beganto talk to him about the possibilities. Lange was immediatelyenthusiastic and started to list all the available technology that mighthelp Allen to play again. Once Lange had finished, Rick had a realgoal to aim for - if the master of the studio environment saw noproblems, why should he worry?

The rest of the band were delighted to hear that Rick was no longerin the doldrums and was beginning to battle his way back to fitness.Later on, they were all clear that the decision to continue or not hadalways been left to Allen, that they would wait until he was ready, butthey would not have been human if they hadn't begun to think aboutreplacements. Joe later posed the question 'would you kick yourbrother out if he lost his arm?', though that did beg the question'would you kick your brother out if he had a drink problem' as Pete

.Willis had had. Nevertheless, their commitment to Rick was highlylaudable and once he made the decision to work his way back intothe band, they were completely behind him. Joe explained 'there wasno mass depression, no "I can't do it man". We gave himencouragement, we took the piss out of him. Phil and Steve went tosee him in hospital and they were calling him an inconsideratebastard. And it worked! He knew we were rooting for him'.

Behind the playful jibes was real concern of course, for theseextensive delays were further harming the band's future. It doesspeak volumes that the other members of the band, the managementand the company stayed behind Allen - though had they chosen to dootherwise they would have been crucified in the media - but it cannothave been an easy decision as the months were slipping away and newPyromania inspired imitators were taking to the airwaves.

It's ludicrous to call Allen 'lucky' when such terrible injuries hadbeen inflicted upon him but, if it was going to happen, it happened atthe least inopportune time. He was fortunate perhaps that theSteinman sessions had been aborted and that the album was beingstarted again from scratch. Had it been on the brink of completion

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with a world tour ready to go, would they have been able to wait fat,him? Booking venues is an expensive business and failing to play!:costs a lot of money. If the new album had been ready to hit the racks,':Allen's position might have looked a little more tenuous - at the veryleast, they would almost certainly have had to tour with areplacement, leaving Rick with a couple of years in which to kick hisheels. And if the session drummer fitted in well, who knows what thefuture might have held.

In the same way, developments in recorded sound meant thatreturning to the band would be far easier than a handful of yearsbefore. With the increasing prevalence of electronic drums - ideal forthe sounds Leppard wanted - and the introduction of sophisticatedsampling keyboards such as the Fairlight, it would now be perfectlypossible for Rick to program a vast range of drum sounds and playthem through a computer. Once more, Leppard's financial securityensured that whatever instrument was needed, Rick could have it, aluxury not extended to bands lower down the scale. Had onlyacoustic drums been available, it would have been much harder forhim to become sufficiently proficient in the space of time he had. Rickaccepted that, saying 'I never thought about still using an acousticdrum kit for a second. We worked out a combination of electronicpads which I play with my right hand and foot pedals which playpretty much what I did with the left.'

Acoustic drums were all that was available as the band wereforming and making their earliest recordings. If Allen had lost his armback in 1980, the technology would not have been there for him. Notonly that, but since Leppard were far from being an established act,the luxury of time would not have been there either. Even now, theyneeded to get on with making the record as quickly as possible but,with the success of Pyromania behind them, such delays wereinconvenient rather than career threatening. Once more, it's hard tosee how Allen could have retained his seat at the drums if the accidenthad happened during the recording of On through the night. Perhapsthe band would have been strong enough to wait for him but therecord company would not. For all their protestations that Allen islike a brother, Leppard are hard-headed enough when it comes tobusiness not to take any prisoners. Maybe Willis' problems were

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more self-inflicted, perhaps it was harder to feel sympathy for anobnoxious drinker than a mate lying in a hospital bed with horrificinjuries, but if Allen's injuries had threatened to sabotage their career,surely he would have been eased out, at least temporarily.

But let none of that obscure the fact that the band werecompassionate in the extreme in allowing Rick the chance to returnto the fold when he was, nor the importance of their encouragementin helping him overcome the enormous obstacles that were in hisway. Above all, do not dismiss the enormous reserves of courage,dedication and determination that Allen possesses, upon which hedrew so extensively and which allowed him to regain his place in thevanguard of rock drummers. Not only did he overcome a physicaldisability which would have beaten many, he had the mental strengthalongside the natural talent to learn a whole new way of playing hisinstrument, a monumental task given that he'd been playing drumsfor a decade or more. Now he had to forget all he knew, all that wasinstinctive and start all over again. Rick was a shining example to the

.rest of the band who were getting themselves bogged down with thenew record, giving it neither the concentration nor the enthusiasm itrequired. Allen's efforts spurred them on, forcing them to keep up thepace so that they wouldn't be letting him down. It was a task thatproved largely beyond them, for Joe was forced to confess that 'wetried to put a brave face on it but we just fell apart. Nothing got done,literally, until Rick came back'.

The band were unstinting in their praise for Rick and for the parthe played in keeping their spirits up in the darkest hours. Joeadmitted that 'he's the most strong minded person I know. In hospitalhe was banging his feet and once he'd decided he could transfer whathe did with his left arm to his left leg, he had a guy design a kit forhim and disappeared. He got himself locked away in a room 'cos hedidn't want anybody to hear him re-learning and then one day, fourmonths later he came back and he was playing again. He said "comeand hear this" and he played "When the levee breaks" and it soundedbrilliant, tear-jerking time.'

Rick's return was unquestionably the high point of the whole long,drawn out recording process. Now that he was back, the band couldhave been forgiven for thinking that after losing two producers and

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almost losing a friend, no more traumas could possibly beset them.Wrong. Rick coming back to play with the band was a fillip, but hefound a record that was in a state of disarray. Though things hadgone better with Nigel Green, they were still far from the perfectionfor which they strived. Mutt Lange had kept a watching brief throughit all, listening to recordings, offering advice, tinkering here andthere. By April when the five piece were reunited, it was obvious thatanother kind of major surgery would be necessary - on the album.They worked on it further, and in July Lange was given all they'ddone to date.

He was frank in his assessment, informing them that they weremaking the same record they'd made the last time, that the songstructures needed a lot of work, that some of the material had to berewritten and some of the songs were beyond redemption. With thisdamning verdict ringing in their ears, a verdict with which theybroadly concurred, the band decided that once again, they'd wait forMutt to help them put things right. Having spent very nearly a yearon the album, everything they had was consigned to the dustbin - twoand a half years on from Pyromania, a new record was not on thehorizon.

Their reliance on Lange enabled dissident voices to claim thatLeppard were little more than a manufactured band, a band that wereall at sea without Lange's guiding influence, a band of no nativeability. These barbed comments were harsh, but forgivable given theshocking state they were in. Eighteen months since their previoustour had finished and they still hadn't recorded a note of new music.It didn't bode well for the future, nor did it improve their reputation.But that was to ignore the traumatic times they'd gone through.Steinman had been a mistake, plain and simple and surely everybodyis allowed a mistake. They'd recognized their error and acted quicklyto correct it. That was bold and showed great strength of purpose,but it must have dented their confidence when a successful producerlike Steinman used his time in the studio to berate them.

Even then, things could have been salvaged. Working with Greenand producing themselves was another enterprising strategy whichmight well have worked. Just as things were starting to move, theband were turned upside down by Allen's accident. Steve Clark's own

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drink problem was also cause for concern , and ultimately hiscontribution to the album was a comparatively small one. Hit for six,it was hardly a surprise to find that they were not fully focused whilein the studio . Since their wo rk was built around a compulsiveattention to detail , a lack of concent ra tion was a fatal flaw, hence theproblems with the material th at Lange identified.

Though these are reasons rather than excuses, they cannot fullycover Leppard's sudden decline from kings of the studio to shamblingnovices. A lot of the blame must be put on the pressure they wereunder. Following up a multi-million seller is a demanding business,for suddenly you' re put in a very new and different position. Puttingtogeth er Pyromania, Def Leppard were just another band on thePhonogram roster hoping to piece together a good record andlooking to make the breakthrough. With nothing to lose, they wereable to play with greater freedom. Now, as one of the top handful ofacts in the world, everything had changed. The eyes of the world wereon them, wondering if they could do it again. They themselves hadthe pressure of producing ' a record that was bett er than thepredecessor; no easy task. Financial pressures were immense too, notnecessaril y on a personal level but because so many people nowdepended upon them as a source of income - the people in themanagement office, at Phonogram, promoters, road crew and man yothers were reliant upon Def Leppard coming up with the goodsagain, for Leppard's success paid their wages. As a consequence,Leppard were putting together a carbon cop y of Pyromania, for theydidn't have the nerve to do anything else. That was the nub, a failureof nerve rather than of ability.

Man management in the studio is as much a part of the producer'sjob as any technical expertise - it was one of the reasons forSteinman's failure just as it was a fundamental part of Lange'ssuccess. Lange understood the band and knew how to guide them toget the very best out of them. Once he was back on board, althoughthings were never going to progress quickly - that simpl y wasn't hisstyle - they did progress effectivel y. According to Joe 'M utt cameback in Jul y 1985 but we had to leave Holland, because our timethere had run out. The two of us went to Pari s to do vocal s for thebacking tracks but after a month we had to get out because there was

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no air co nditio ning and he had to go out every twenty minutesbecause he was collapsing.' Una ble to acclimatize to the Studio DesDames, Leppard booked in to the Windmill Lane facilit y in Dublin,home to U2.

Slow ly but surely, the project bega n to take on its own life as theyfell back into the routines that had served them so well onPyromania. Even so, after a period of almost a year where at least onemember of the band wa s always working in the studio, they bega n to

get itchy feet. They'd already don e some rehear sals in the summer of1985 for a tour that had to be aborted owing to their recordingdifficulti es. With the followi ng summer fast approaching, aninvitat ion was exten ded to them to play the 'Monsters of Rock'festivals across Europe. The cha nce to blow away the cobwebs wasan abso lute Godsend for them, giving a cha nce to escape fro m therigo urs of Lange's working patterns for a few weeks. It wou ld alsoprovide them with an opportun ity to assess Rick's state of hea lth andhis ability to playa live show, a very different disc ipline to that ofplaying in the studio. If he co uld cope with these gigs, the chanceswere tha t he would be ab le to han dle the extensive tour ing that wo uldaccompany the new record's release. If it becam e too much for him,contingenc y plan s would be necessa ry.

To offer a safety net , Status Quo's drummer Jeff Rich wa s recruitedfor these few shows so that Rick wo uld not be so exposed . The firstshow wa s played in Cork's Connolly Hall in August 198 6, Hot Press'Ton y O'Donoghu e writing that 'Rick Allen gave a stunningperformance of courage, passion and skill. A most exceptionalexa mple of resilience and fortitude '. O'Donog hue wa s ironically,confirming one of the group's greatest fears as Joe explained: ' I hopewe don 't get the sympathy vote. T he last thing I'd want is for thealbum to get five stars out of kindness, out of fair play to us forkeeping Rick on . I'd get rea lly annoyed.' Such approbation co uld notbe avoided though, for it even helped the British warm to them atlong last.

The onl y British show would be at Donington, where Leppardwo uld be third on Ozzy Osbourne's bill. Prior to that though, furtherwarm-up s were planned in Ireland. Rich had other commitmentswith Status Qu o in mainl and Europe but had agreed to fly back in

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time for Leppard's show in Ballybunion . He missed his flight inStockholm and then the taxi bringing him on the hour and a halfjourney from Dublin to the gig broke down in the middle of nowhere.Meanwhile, in the mid st of rural Ireland, Rick Allen wa s gettingincreasingly nervous as show tim e approached . Th e die was cast ­Rick had to pla y alone for th e first time. T he fairytale return wascomplete, with Jeff Rich turning up in time to see that he was nowredundant and could return to Sta tus Q uo.

Donington was next on th e agenda and Leppard were lucky tosurvive it for Phonogram had got things horr ibly wrong again. Th eweek of the festival, the music papers carried a full page advert forLeppard saying 'They'r e back. Simply the grea test rock band in th eworld '. Perh ap s it was meant to be iro nic after the prolonged hiatu sbut given Brita in's jaundiced atti tude towards the band, it was notvery clever. Ultimately, though the band were decided ly rusty andlacklustre, the show wa s salvaged by a crowd that were actua llywilling them to succeed, happy to forgiv e pa st misdemean ours out ofrespect and admirat ion for the way they'd fought bac k in the face ofadversity. Rick received an astonishing response that simplyoverwhelmed him and by the end of the show, it was obv ious that iftheir fourth album was an ything like, they had a rea dy-madeaudience that wer e gagging for it.

On e major show wa s left, at the 'M onsters' festiva l in M annheim.The Eur op ean arm of Phonogram turned out in nu mbers to see if theystill had a band worth promoting. In pouring rain, soa ked to the skinand with possibly the worst live sound they'd ever had , Leppardtrudged through their set, indignity heaped upon indignity. To thecompany people, it wa s enough just to see the band back on stage,but for the band it wa s yet another disaster in a th oroughlyexasperating year. Showing a nice line in self-deprecating humour,the band included a photo from the gig in th e booklet that went withthe new album on its eventual release. The caption read ' Life at thetop 84- 87'.

For it would be 1987 before the album saw the light of day.Heading back to Holland to complete work after the shows wereover, Joe immediately contracted a serious bout of mumps which lefthim in quarantine for a couple of weeks and put the band even

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further behind schedule. As Joe returned, Mutt was involved in a carcrash on his way into the studio. He was fortunate to escape with leginjuries that allowed him to be back at work within three weeks, butthese constant traumas were just wearing the band down. If they'dbeen Led Zeppelin, talk would have been of Faustian pacts. Leppard,though, wer e to o normal for that kind of nonsense for as PeterMensch ruefull y pointed out 'Def Leppard will never be famous likeLed Zeppelin in that way because the y're just not cont roversial. It'sall down to the material and the show'. All they could do was bracethemselves for further months in the studio, reconcile themselves to

another missed release date - January 198 7 thi s time - and hope thatby the following Christmas, they might have finally completed workon an album that was turning into a nightmare.

Th e album finally had a name too, Hysteria , as Joe explained. 'Itwas Rick 's idea, after all th e stuff that went on with his acc ident. Itgot pretty close to hysteria two da ys after the acc ident - receptiona rea of the hospital was teeming with newspaper reporters and kidsand because we weren' t all that popular in England at the time , itmade it appea r more massive. Rick was on the front of the Daily Starand it was like he was the Queen or Ian Botham or something. Wehad to be snuck in through the fuckin' laundry chute to go see him.'Th e titl e was a lat e decision for as Joe recalled ' it wa s going to becalled " Animal Instincts" but then we thought that sounded reallystupid. We had the sleeve ready, so that wa s another four grand downthe dr ain. But it just was n' t right.'

Th eir absence from the scene had thrown another potentialproblem into the melting pot. With Pyromania having broken themould, it was inevitable that others wo uld follow their lead. In theirenforced absence, Leppa rd had seen countless other gro ups apingtheir sound, some intelligently, others blatantly copying what theysaw as the formula. In th e light of all that, the band stiffened theirresolve to produce something th at would again leave the competitionstanding, hence the additiona l studio time required . M ost notable ofall was the release in the autu mn of 1986 of Bon jovi's third recordSlippery when we t. Crammed with hit singles, th e album had elevatedBon Jovi to the top of the heap after the y had released tw o poorlyreceived records. Jon had replaced Joe as the number one sex symbol

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in the rock music field and had usurped much of the audience too. Itwas a wo rrying development in some ways, for where Pyromania hadgiven people something th ey cou ldn 't get elsew here, now there wasno sho rtage of similar albums. Elliott shrugged off the probl em. 'Wecouldn't really take what we had with Pyromania any further. Somany people have improved on our sound over the pas t few yearswhen we didn't have the cha nce to that th ere was no po int in doingthe same th ing. It 's fair to say that we did crea te something newwithin a very old-fas hioned form of music with Pyromania . And a lotof people copied it. I take it as a complimen t! Now the re's Bon Jo vi,Poison , W hitesnake, Cindere lla - if th is album can sell four million inthat sort of co mpany, then it' ll have do ne well. But I'd rather have analbum do well in th at market than if there were no other rock albumsabout.'

Having to rethink th eir who le style was easier said than done. AsLange had observed, some of their earlier songs were 'Pyromania bynumb ers' an d it took a fundamental reth ink to come up withsomething new once more . Pioneerin g is never easy and at times Joe'stemper snapped when having to justi fy his existence. 'Look, if we hadnever existed, Bon Jovi would pr ob abl y have never exis ted. Whatthey're doi ng is wh at we were doing three years ago. Good luck tothem - I th ink they'd say we were their favourite ban d. I think they'r ereally good . . . They've just kept our seat warm for the past two yearsand it's t ime for them to move over. Bye bye lads!' Not one of hisbetter predictions, for there was more than eno ugh room for bothgroups to coexist per fectly happily. By August 1987 when the newalbum fina lly emerged, much of Bon Jovi's initia l impetus had sta rtedto run out and the wo rld was read y for Leppard to take over fromthem for a while.

Eventually, at an estimated cost of £1 million and afte r three yearsof solid work, Hysteria was in the sho ps. N ow, no record can justifythat kind of outlay or that amo unt of time and it's stupid to try, sothe ban d and Phon ogram simply decided to let the music do thetalking for them, Joe trying to deflat e thi ngs by merely noting that'after spending so much time on th is, if there's anything wrong withit then we need a jolly good kick up the bottom . If we've got it wrong. . . well, we could have got it wrong in th ree weeks'.

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Hysteria didn't so much talk as bawl at the top of its voice for itwas nothing if not a very good, state of the art, technological rockrecord. While U2 were simplifying down to folk song structures,Leppard were involved in a ' kitchen sink' production , invoking hugewa lls o f so und in th e way th at Phil Spector had tw enty yearspreviou sly. T ho ugh th ere were attempts to sugges t th at thi s albumwas radi cally di fferent to its pr edecessor, such claim s were rubbish.With th e cha rts teeming with th e likes of Bon Jovi, Ratr, Motley Crueand Whitesnak e, it was readily apparent that metal lite st ill held swayin th e public mind. W ith an investment of £ ] milli on to recoup,taking cha nces was neither sens ible no r pr acti cal. In Hyst eria,Leppard pr ovided th e fan s with a record very mu ch rooted inPyromania but showing a degree of progression. Its st rengths wereco nso lidated while its weaknesses - the rambling nature of someso ngs, th e tendency to ove rplay - had been rem edi ed. In esse nce, itwas Leppard reminding all and sundry that there might be plenty ofimitat ors, but the origina ls were still th e best , th ou gh in fairness , BonJovi did have legitimate cla ims to their crown.

Improving o n Pyromania wa s a tough task, but th ey we re up to itdespite th e dist ract ion s. Rick Savage wa s qui ck to point o ut that 'wealways wa nted to keep so ngs concise and not self-ind ulgent . Peoplethink we've changed o ur sty le to get a wider audience but we haven 't.We' ve just improved in th e way we always wa nted to.' Ce rta inly,Lep pa rd were mo re radio friend ly th an th ey'd ever been before, butwhether th at was na tu ra l progression o r me re ly a product o f th e needto sell records has to be a matter of o pinion. O ne co ntributory factorwas the change in Allen's d rumming sty le. Always a sk illed player , hissty le had been rather busy, showi ng th e aud ience how good he was,so met imes to the de trime nt of th e so ng. Now, presumabl y because ofcircumstances, he was less o btr usive and his drumming was a lmostske leta l at tim es. In turn, so ngs tended to be simpler and if th ere's onerecip e for rock rad io success, it 's keep it big and dumb, th e bigger anddumber the better. W ha t better example of th at co uld th ere be than'Pour so me sugar on me', a sing le whi ch reached number two in theSta tes . Almost a te rrace anthem a la 'We are th e cha mpions ', itschoruses, carefully cra fted, were bu ilt round a hook that ledinexora bly to a huge black hole th at simply sucked in the unwary

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listener. Kiss without the make-up, Slade without the top hat, Mottby an y other name, it wa s classic glam boasting a guitar riff you couldplay in your sleep.

Joe was largel y responsible for the song which he describ ed as ' justGary Glitter meet s the Sweet but st ill sounding like us. We 've alwaysbeen a rock band, not a heav y metal band'. Its pot ential as a singlewas absolutely crucial to the pr ospects of Hysteria as a who le. Joeunder stood the machinations of the market place pretty well by nowand accepted the need for hit s. Th ey had wo rked har d to producethem and he wa s happy with th e results:

'I seriously believe that we 've got up to five hit singles on thi srecord, even " Rocket" , though it's such an unusual song andsuch a change from something like "Pour some suga r on me",which is an obvious shot at the commercial market. Th e chorusis three chords - 1 wrote it like that 'cos it's all 1 can play, 1always have to think commercially. 1can't write "Gods of war ".Wh en 1 pick up a guitar, 1 tend to pla y "Wild thing" a lot betterthan "All along the watchtower" . Peter Mensch is to tally right.You cannot survive without hit singles these days becau se AORradio in America isn't responsible for breaking bands any more.Slipp ery when wet sold eight million copies through the singles.There wa s a period where people were reall y snobby about hits,that it wasn't credible. That's the most ridiculous thing. 1 likebeing on Top of the Pops, 1 find it funny. Ninety-eight per centof our stuff is tongue-in-cheek anyway. Wh en you've got arh inoceros in one of your videos, you can 't take yourse lves thatseriously.'

Elliott was right that AOR radi o wa s no longer so impo rtant. MTVhad taken over that responsibility now, som ething Lepp ard hadbenefited from already when the clip for 'Ph otograph ' had launchedPyromania. Bearing that in mind, prior to releasing Hysteria, the yseemed to have stopped off for a visit to the stylists - th e carefullydistressed jeans and jackets of 1987 were a marked contrast to therough and ready Union Jack raggedness of four years earli er - so the ywould be made even more welcome on MTV. To make the most of

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this TV exposure, songs had to be further simplified, purely becausethe sound quality on television did not really compare with radio,since stereo broadcasting wa s still in its infancy. All the extraneoussound had to be cut away for a song to cut through. For that reason ,Hysteria was perhaps not so aggressive as Pyroma nia, but morepolished. They'd added a danceable quality to the tunes too whichdid them no harm at all given that on MTV their songs rubbed upalongside th e likes of Madonna and the Jackson clan.

One of the more inventive tracks on the record, one of its best, was'Rocket', which in parts wa s reminiscent of Malcolm McLaren's'Buffalo ga ls' , not a comparison that would have sprung readi ly to

mind in the past! The use of sound effects was beginning to sound alittle jaded now but the rhythmic opening was genuinely enthralling.Sounding like something from the drummers of Burundi, a soundth at artists as diverse as Echo and the Bunn ymen, Peter Gabriel,Adam Ant and Bow Wow Wow had emp loyed to good effect, it hadnever been used in a rock setting before. It wa s a very adventurousmo ve that opened them up to cri ticism from the traditionalists butone which showed that creative atrophy had yet to set in. 'Rocket'wa s clean and pristine, light, poppy and a genuine rush of singalongfun, a virt ua l rap name-checking the band's heroes such as Bowie,Beatles, Elton John, Queen and Thin Lizzy before ending in a wildrhythmic section.

Equa lly inte resting was Steve Clark's 'Go ds of wa r'. Musicall y insimilar territory to 'Switch 625' at times, the brooding introductionand spellbinding guita r figure made it clear that here was a moremature work, dar k and intense. Th e anti-war , 'why are we fighting? 'sta tement was scarcely new, but it's a sentiment th at bea rs repetition.T he song marked Clark's emergence as a maj or writer and offeredsuch promise for the future, promise that would never be fulfilled.

On the other side of the coin, 'Animal' wa s an equa lly assured pieceof work, brilliant pop mu sic which was to be accompani ed by a daftvideo, an unbeatabl e co mbina tion as promos such as Gabriel's'Sledgehammer' or New Order 's 'True faith ' have proved . The crystalclear clarion guitar - that year's sound, Guns N'Roses' 'Sweet childo'mine' working on the same principle - heralded a lovely, simplemelod y, affecting, throaty voca ls and an engaging dru m pattern.

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Obvious crowd-pleasing, hands in the air fare, the final call of'Animal' was blatan t audience participation/manipulation stuff,perfect for singalongs in the company of 15,000 people. There werefew better roc k singles that year.

It was however in what was now termed Bon jovi territory, whichtended to irritate more than somewhat. joe had resigned himself tohis fate. 'I can see it now. "Def Leppard - the new Bon jovi". And it'sjust because we're a rock band. There's been Bon jovi, there's beenEurope and hopefully there'll be Def Leppard. But we can't be justDef Leppard because we' re a rock band and people are prejudicedagainst rock bands.' It was richly ironic that Def Leppard, a bandfrom Sheffield, had paved the way for Bon jovi's success back inAmerica. Repaying the favo ur, it was Bon jovi's single success thatfinally awakened the British pop audience to Leppard's charms. WithNew jersey's finest having tott ed up three top twenty singles in theUK - 'You give love a bad name', 'Livin' on a prayer' and 'Wanteddead or alive' - fans were ready for more in that style. 'Animal'provided it, racing to number six in the charts, comfortably their bestperformance to date at home. Lyrically of course, it remainedundemanding, but joe tried to defend his words, arguing that it madea point about basic instinc ts: 'Men can't help it, it's in our genes. Allthis sexist crap that's thrown at us annoys me because no matter howeducated we get, we're still animals an d sometimes the primal takesover.'

The single buyers rushed out to pick up Hysteria, finding much toenjoy and giving the band their first British number one album intothe bargain. 'Love bites', which gave them a number one in the Statesshowcased a band that was continuing to mature with a deeper lyricruminating on love and betrayal, bui lding gradually to a powerfulcrescendo. Classic epic pop in the 10CC style, it made it obvious thatLeppard were not willing to be pigeonho led as hairy old rockers, buthad other talents on which to build . As songwriters, they certainlyhad improved. Hysteria itself was a case in point, a reflective balladthat was a nice change in pace. H alting and hesitant, it indicated agroup that was still struggling to come to terms with the form, butone that was striving in the right direction, no t con tent to allocatetime to plodding filler rock but willing to stretch themselves further.

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'Run Riot ' was a leftover of sorts, Leppard doing what they'd donebest in the past. AC/D C-influ enced following a beautifully distortedguita r int roduction, th e sheer tempo of the song allowed them toconcoc t a genuinely thrilling ru sh of excitement . Its constituent partsall seemed hopelessly slight yet the final combination wa s compelling,evidence of Lange's inva lua ble handiwork, und erlining his pricelessvalue to the gro up . 'Do n't shoot shotgu n' shared similarcharacter istics, with Allen's imaginati on working overtime as hesearched for inventive new rhythm patterns, his new restraint leavingholes for the vocals to fill, while the seductive backing voca ls wereonce again employed effectively. 'A leaf out of Queen's book I'mafraid' Elliott was force d to admit. ' I don't do them, it 's M utt, Philand Sav so we get a different blend .' Th e backing vocals on the titletrack reputedly featured 200 voices!

Altho ugh the album project had been a har rowing, frus tra ting andexha usting process, there wa s still room for some daftness,high lighting the way in which the profession al band co uld separatethemselves from the priva te traumas when th ey wer e at wo rk.'Women ', the ob ligatory raucou s opener was tight, taut and crass;'Armageddon it ' was packed with th or oughly dumb double ente ndre,th ough agai n, love it or loathe it, it provided a compulsive singa longcho rus ; 'Excita ble' was the 'Ro ck of ages' style jok er in the pack, thehyped up heavy brea thing and clanging guitar proving that it sho uldbe taken with a pinch of sa lt. Like much of Hysteria, it all relied alittle too heavily on sto mping cho ruses that were all too familiar inthe days of the Gary Glitter sho uts, but they were hugely likeable andplayed with a kn owi ng irony tha t deflected any lat ent pomposity.

T he final song, 'Love and affectio n', was pro ba bly the mostatyp ical track on the album, a huge power ba llad, a love song that setthe prot agoni sts aga inst the wo rld. Very corny 'you and me babe 'stuff, as the track played out you could visua lize a huge mirrorballreflecting across the da ncefloor, and yet it still managed to beemotiona lly affecting. T ho ugh it was n' t sta ndard Leppard faremusically, th e atmosphere of the song was very revealing and said agrea t deal about just why it was that Def Lepp ard were so successful.

Def Leppard's music is all about happy endi ngs, no loose ends,abo ut everything working out, about tak ing refuge in the ar ms of

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your partner. Leppa rd are melodram at ic, they'r e corny at times butthey' re also heartwarming in the way that Hollywood 's most popularmovies are. You can participate in a Leppard song and come out theother end feeling bett er about yourse lf. It may be hop elesslysuper ficial, but it is a tempting escape route from a wo rld ofincreasing uncertainty. Def Leppard's Hysteria didn't make anydemands on you and merely trie d to make you feel good to be alive,pro mising to deliver a fun time if that was what you wanted. No-onegets hurt and we all live happily ever after, or at least for the sixty­minute durat ion of the album. If th at sounds harsh, it 's no t meant tobe for all music doesn 't have to be angst-ridden or po liticallymot ivat ed. There's room for PJ Harvey just as there's roo m for TakeThat . You simply choose wha t suits you best and igno re the rest.

It mu st be said how ever that a qui ck run through Leppard's lyricswou ld leave you tot ally una ware of the tumultuous events th at hadwreaked such havoc in the preceding th ree years. In a live review,Melody Mak er's Caro l Clerk wrote that 'unas hamed ly escapist, DefLeppard are the first to admit that "there isn't any major intelligencein our lyrics and we don't put them on the sleeve because they don 'tread very well!'" But how could any serious artis t have failed tochannel such person al tragedies into their wo rk? It is impossible. Th eonly con clusion was that Def Lepp ard migh t be deadly serious abouttheir work but they were not serious artis ts in the Neil Young senseof the phrase. Elliott held up his hands to the charge but wasunconcerned by it. 'So me people seem to forget tha t everything youdo doesn't have to have some kind of social sta tement. I haveopinions, but I don 't sing songs abo ut it ... a kid on the dole doesn'twant to hear a record abo ut being on the do le. I'd ra ther wr ite "Poursome sugar on me", which tot ally makes no sense at all and the kidcan make up his ow n mind abo ut it. I'd sooner stick with the Britishappro ach which is totally ambiguo us, doesn 't say anythi ng, doesn'tmean anything, they just sound alright. You explain what T-Rex'slyrics are about. If you can figure his out, then you can figure mineout. " H ub-cap diam ond star halo" means more to me than "I wentdown to the river " I'm afra id. To me, T- Rex make your imaginationwork harder. If I wrote from experience, I don 't think it wo uld soundvery good, the last five-a-sid e game I had . I used to wri te th at way,

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but it didn't wo rk for us.' Each to his own, but it did seem a terriblewaste of experience - just imagine what Elvis Costello would havemade of all th is emotional and ph ysical carnage.

Whatever reservati on s there might have been, much of the presscomment was favourabl e. In Sounds, Paul Elliott's five sta r reviewcalled it 'a progression of sorts, every bit as fresh and vita l as back in'83 .. . Leppard 's finest hour, [showing a] greater breadth andmaturity .. . it will crac k Britain wide open and make the band ahousehold name in their backyard '. Prescient comment indeed ,reinforced by Ho t Press's Jon De Leon. The paper 's marking systemtermed it ' intoxicating', the review pointing out that ' it sets thestanda rd for other metal-inclined rockers in 1987. It's hard to see itbeing surpassed'. It was left to Q to offer a dissenting voice, EmilyFra ser arguing persuasively that 'a minority of us feel that the bandhave become sanitized by the experience and are now more polishthan passion. T here's little that mak es a statement'.

One sta tement the band were keen to make was on the road wherethey saw themselves as an altogether superior proposit ion , Joeremarking with typical humility that 'even at our wo rst, we're 100times better than anybody else'. They'd spent $100,000 on aconventiona l stage set when Peter Mensch was struck by the idea ofpla ying in the ro und, the stage being set in th e centre of the arena, theseating built around it. It was an audacious move, almos t un ique inrock mu sic although Yes had dabbled with the concept back in 1978,the Police also trying it out in 1983. Mensch was th rilled with theidea, on e which wou ld mark Leppard out as being distinct fro m theBon Jovis of the world . He explained the reasoning behind such anambitious proj ect: 'We ll, A, it had never been do ne before by a hardrock band and B, it wo uld give us mo re seats and every seat would begoo d. I figured that if you can play with a one-armed drummer, youcan play in the ro und. It's like Edmund Hillary and Everes t, you playit because it' s there.' T his wo uld form the basis for the Hysteria tour,th ough inevitably certain venues weren' t able to provide thenecessary facilities and the band was forced to play conventionalshows there, which is how they started promot ing H ysteria in the UK.

Reviews were predicta bly mixed, Me lody Maker's Chri s Robertstelling his readers more about himself th an the band: 'Characterless

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and powerless. The singer is a repellent nouveau-riche navvy. They'renot worth my time - I've been here a whole nine minutes when I seethere 's an exit fifteen yards aw ay'. Paul Elliott was rather moreenthusiastic in his review of the N ottingham gig: 'This wasn't perfect.Will great do?' Britain had finally been conquered as venues thelength an d breadth of the co untry sold out in double quick time. Withthe UK in the bag, it wa s time to resume their rela tio nship with theStates, in the round .

N ever ones to shirk a cha llenge, the group threw themselves intothe unknown with real vigour, crea ting problems for themselves inthe process. Joe admitted th at 'I'd be a liar if I said it was n' texhausting. Th e first night we did it in the ro und, we'd done eightdays' rehearsal but we still ended up tr ying to fill the stage too muchand by the end of the first couple of songs everybody was looking fora bucket to throw up into . After three gigs th ou gh, we were rea llycookin' . We reached a certain fitness peak so that we can deal with itand the set's well paced enough to take care of itself. I enjoyed gettingkind a hot and sweaty anyway.' Giving everyon e in the auditorium agreat sound and a great view, the set-up was idea l - MTV lateradopted the idea , albeit on a small er sca le, for their 'Unplugged' seriesand for live specials by the likes of Bon Jovi. The spectacle wasimpressive and it did prevent fans con centrat ing solely on Rick Allen,something that had worried them. 'In the rou nd' was a biggerinnovati on than a one-armed drummer as Joe agreed. 'There'snothing we can do short of playing upside down next time to top this.The novelty probably is taking a bit of weight off Rick but at thesame time, when it features him , it features him more. He's nothidd en behind the rest of us. I'd like to th ink th at we'd pla y in theround on the next tour too, because playing at one end wo uld be abit of a downer now.'

Th e scale of the ph ysical challenge req uired a who le new,professional attitude from the group. Phil Co llen had already givenup drinking aft er he'd bought a £6000 watch when so plastered hedidn't know what he was doing. At the same time, Joe Elliottaccepted he needed to have a radical rethink of his approach to hiscraft. The wilder days of yore, particularly in the company of thefemale fans , had to become a thing of the past as wo rd of AIDS began

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to circulat e. Alcohol had to come off the menu too for it did little forthe voice. He explained that his overriding concern was the quality ofthe show.

'On the first tour, I went at it like a rat up a drainpipe but that'scha nged now. It gets to be rea lly boring when you kn ow it mightbe you tonigh t, someo ne fro m Ratt last night and somebodyfrom Motley Crue tom orrow. I've got a stea dy girlfriend now.We used to do all that, but it would've been a bit weird if wehadn't. Five lads fro m Sheffield let loose in America? Co me on!On the road, I don't drink or smo ke, th ere's fewer pa rties . N owI can go on stage and perfor m bett er. Th e most importa nt thingto me is th ose two hours a night and if the other twenty-tw o haveto be rea lly boring, then so be it. I'd rather go to a club until fivein the morning 'cos I'm wide awa ke with all the adrena line but Iknow I can't sing the night after if I do and for the sake ofenter tai ning myself, I'm not gonna piss off 15,00 0 kids thefollowing night by singing like Lemm y or somebody. Th atwouldn't suit the songs we do.'

It was an attitude tha t was beginning to permeate the who le businessfor , despite all of the wild stories th at still d id the rounds, the truthwas that most musicians spent th e evening 'in bed with their acco untsand some sandwiches' as Bruce Dickinson once put it. The sta keswere simp ly too high, too much mon ey was hanging on the art ists forthem to have the luxury of gett ing wrecked and playing like idiots.Word soo n gets round if a band plays a few bad gigs and acts with ato ta l disregard for the fans, popularity can quickly take a nosedive.With reco rding and touring cos ts go ing through the roof, no-oneco uld take that risk. If you're co mmitte d to a co uple of years on theroad , nothing must go wrong. Among the mo re seaso ned pros, therewas also a growing disenchantment with the stupidity of life on theroad and the things that entertained them at nineteen bored them attwenty-seven. Joe for example had been mellowed by his time inIreland . 'T he people are very ro ma ntic, a lot more emotiona l than inEngland, it's nice there. If I'd spent eighteen months in Los Angeles,I'd be in a lunatic asy lum. I can' t handle the falseness, all that " hey

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man! Wanna party? I've got a bag of coke!" Fuck it! I'm notinterested. I'd rather have a pint and talk abo ut foo tball.'

It 's sma ll wonder that bands on th e roa d do go off the rails for it'sa ter ribly tediou s way of life, despite the seemingly glamoroustrappings. During the first American leg of the Hysteria tour, Elliottaccep ted that ' the best part of being in a band is playing live. That'swhy we got togeth er in the first place. We've alwa ys been a band whowanted to get it right on record, it 's the only opportun ity you have totry to crea te perfect ion . Live, you've got to enterta in peo ple. I don 'treally sta nd still and you can on ly really sing properly when you' restoo d still, but if I did , it'd look rea lly silly. Half my job isn' t singing,it' s getting an audience going. We set such a sta ndard on the recordsand wh at we do there, five peopl e can' t physica lly do, but we don'twant to take out an orchestra, we want it to be us. T ha t's where thefun comes in. But you have to do it in mod eration to enjoy it. Wewere on the bus for six hours yesterday and you wo uldn' t believe howtirin g that is da y after da y. Being on the road can wea ken you, we'veall gone down with something at some stage, you keep catchingsomeo ne else's co ld, it keeps doing the rounds. T he food can be aproblem. Phil and Rick ar e vegetarians, and when they ask for avegeta rian meal on the plane, they get fish . Th ey live on peanuts mostof the time! Hotels are really important to us. A good one has amentholat ed steam room which is grea t for the voice, a gym and agood roo m service menu that 's twenty-four hours a day. Fro m there,backstage is our hom e. We've even set up studios wherever we can sothat we can try to write on the roa d' .

Everything wa s focu sed on the gigs and rightly so. Th e concerts ­a little gimmicky for some ta stes, but undeniabl y strong both visuallyand musically - help ed keep Hysteria in th e publ ic eye for more thana yea r. Finall y, in Jul y 1988, Hysteria becam e America's number onealbum aft er forty-nin e weeks on the chart, spending the next fewmonths fighting with Guns N'Roses' Appetite for destruction for thetop spot. It wa s final compelling proof that everything they'dendured, all the work they'd put in to Hysteria had been worthwh ile.Phil made it clear that 'we want to be successful, everyo ne does if theywere honest enough to say it, but our popularity has come from a lotof hard work. We 've all paid our dues in one way or ano ther.' Joe felt

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it was vindication for their belief in the music before all else. 'Ifmoney meant that much to us, we wouldn't have spent so muchmaking this album because we had to sell two million to get the costsback. Th at 's the arrogant side of us. We thought we could sell five orsix again, or even ten million.' When the returns were in, Hysteriahad sold 14.2 million copies, a million of which came in the UK,Melody Mak er's Carol Clerk opining that 'Def Leppard aresomething vivid and friendly and intimate. They ar e something to getaffectio na te abo ut, happy with, excited by'. Pleased to have mad e thegrade back hom e, Joe still wasn 't sure where his heart lay: 'At themoment I have a very love/hat e relat ion ship with England. I do missmy parents, but I don't miss the fact that you can 't walk aro und atnight without getti ng mugged. All the papers we have from Englandare full of sto ries about hooligans.' Three cheers for the tabl oid pressand their peerless ability to distort the fact s.

With things going so well for them, Joe co uldn' t resist theoppo rtunity to stir things up aga in, showing th at all the youthfulbravado had not pete red out in his late-twenties. 'We're a po p bandin the same way th at T hin Lizzy were, they never lost their credibilitywith rock fans . I like the idea of a rock band cross ing over an d nothaving to to ta lly wim p out. Okay, compared to Napalm Death, we 'resoft. All we've ever wa nted to be is quite simply the biggest rock bandin the wo rld and you don't become that by so unding like Na palmDeath. I'm not interested in gett ing grea t reviews and selling fiverecords. I /ik e playing the NEC and Wembley. I lik e sta nding on stageand seeing people out th ere . I think everybody's ambi tio n is to sell asmany records as you can and to play in fro nt of as man y people asyou can. Even those fuckin ' poxy littl e ba nds who say that's not the irth ing - they'r e lying.' Cont radict ing himself, he went on to add 'Idon't believe it sho uld all be based on sales. It sho uld be judged onthe sound of the blood y thing ... we weren 't afraid of losing whatwe'd gained with Pyro mania becau se we didn 't wa nt to rushsomething out just to cash in on the success.'

Retaining the chip on his sho ulder, sma rting at the snobberyprevalent in the industr y, even a BRIT Awa rd nominati on co uldn' tmollify him. ' It 's nice to be nominated but we' re never going to winanything. We're stuck in the mud heavy metal band - long hair and

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jeans. We can ' t vote for them can we? I like the fact that we'reunfashionable - the black sheep in the charts, the black sheep on Topof the Pops, the black sheep in Smash Hits just because we're a rockband with two guita rists wh ere everyone else has got capped teethand happy haircuts. We have no thing in common with the Pet ShopBoys like we have nothing in common with Des O'Connor.'

Despite these irritations, they returned to Britain in spring 1988,able to play Wembl ey and the N EC, in the ro und, giving British fansthe chance to see the full American production, a courtesy that not allgroups extended to their supporters. Sounds reviewe d the show,noting that 'they'r e boisterous and agile and openly thrilled to behome, hyper-ventilating with confidence. Britain has every reason tobe proud of them'. Basking in such unusual hyperbole, Leppard werea tir ed, but delighted band, but one which took noth ing for granted.Joe cast his mind back to shows much earlier in their career: 'We oncedid a gig at New Brighton Pavilion near Liverp ool and eleven kidsturned up and one of them was doing his homework . Gigs like thatmake you appreciate playing Wembley! '

Ironically, having repeated the miracle of Pyromania, by the end of1988 as the y settled down to a well-earned rest, Def Leppard foundthemselves back in the same predicament th at the whole Hysteriaphenomenon had begun with. How do you follow that? It wa s aquestion that exercised the collective brain, Joe understanding thedifficulti es only too clearly.

'Where do you go from stadiums? Th at 's why we haveman agers. We have opinions but we don't have our finger on thepulse like the y do. We're too busy, you can 't be a master of alltrades. When does a spectacle become untop pable? Satellitegigs? Hologram gigs? It's the same with the albums. The firstalbum - I know it's a pile of shit - but it only took us three weeksto record and High 'n'Dry only took three months. WithPyromania and Hysteria, we wanted to do something nobodyhad ever done before. On the next album, we don't wanna dothat again. There comes a time when carrying the weigh t ofexperimentation on your shoulders gets a bit heav y. Ma ybe wejust wanna do an album which says bollocks to all that. It might

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not kick any doors down , but who cares? We want to put an LPou t in 1989 ... we've spent three years with Mutt and learned alot , but sooner or lat er, Grasshopper has to leave the temple andma ke his own way in the world. I'm not sure we'll even get tomake that record yet, but if we do , we'll not be using Mutt. Wealso really wa nt to release something that 's not the officialfollow-up to Hysteria. It'll just be an odds and sods, penthou setapes sort of thi ng, a few B-sides, a ton of new stuff and somestuff tha t's been recorded but no t used yet.'

Histo ry proved that a 1989 release was hop elessly, wi ldlesslyoptimist ic, but they did get set to begin work in M arch of that year.Ha ving becom e the first band to sell seven million albums plus, backto back, there was no reaso n to quit, every reason to keep going. Jo epointed out on the release of Hysteria that 'm ost peopl e in bands havegot families and maybe that 's the reaso n we have the success we have;nob od y's married or got kids. Th ere's eno ugh kids witho ut mebringing another one into the wo rld . I don 't wa nt a kid - the band'stoo much of a bloody bab y'. Touring the world had onlystrengthened the bond between the individu als and th eir loyalt y toth e Def Leppard cause. Joe summed it up by asking 'you know whenyou have a baby and it might be as ugly as shit, but you love it all thesame? T his band's our bab y. And we still get on after seven years, fiveof them spent living out of each other's suitcases. We'r e each other'sclosest friend s.' Those friendships wou ld soon be put to the ultimatetest.

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9

THE LAST TIME

Without having dominated the front pages of the popular press ,without carefully preening an image as devil-worshippers, withoutcourting controversy, Def Leppard completed the Hysteria worldtour as perhaps the biggest band in the world, eclipsing thepopularity of the likes of U2 and Guns N'Roses. Instead of wastingenerg y on a public persona, all their time had been channelled intomaking the best possible records. It was a polic y that had clearly paidhandsome dividends. Nevertheless, there was more to Def Leppard'sinexorable rise to prominence than mere songwriting proficiency.

Timing is of vita l importa nce in the career of a band, especia lly ifit wishes to rise above its contemporaries. The 1980s were astrikingly different time from any of the previous rock'n 'roll decades,for the music no longer set the cultural agenda in the wa y that it hadand wa s now seemingly relegated to reflecting society' s mood.Though some shows such as Amnesty International's Conspiracy ofHope indicated that there were young fans willing to becomepol itically engaged, the pr evailing atmosphere was one of good times,parties, money and fun. Life was all about fast cars and great CDsound.

Perhaps the eighties love affair with technology came aboutbecause it wa s relatively benign - computerization was not yetrequiring the massive job cuts that have been a feature of the nineties.The ad vance of technology seemed to be something to welcome,progress that would onl y change things for the better. Take

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Leppard's field, the music ind ustry. Improved studio facilities ena bledproducers and engineers to take a quantum leap forward, producingrecords the sound quality of which far ou tstri pped anything tha t we'dever th ought possible. For a time, producers such as M utt Lange,Bruce Fairbairn and Trevor Horn became as famous as their clients,such wa s the imp act they had on the way we listened to mu sic. Handin hand with the development of the studio came the invention ofdigital recording and th e compact disc, probably the mo st significantinnovati on in the last twenty-five years of musical histor y. Withgroups spending hundreds of th ou sands of pounds on their albums,working on them to get the clearest, crispest sound, the y wanted themto be heard to best ad vantage. Cheap vinyl with its inherent problemsof durability and qual ity was not good enough while cassette s weresimply useless. T he introduction of the CD wa s perfectly tim ed forart ists who used the studio as another instrument.

By the same tok en, once you' d invested in a CD pla yer, you wantedto get hold of some discs that showed your system off to its bestad vantage, something th at sounded like 'Star War s for the ears' , adisc that wo uld ma ke full use of its capacity to amaze. Def Leppard 'sPyromania was one of the first albums that could do th at , Hysteriathe album that took th e concept still fur ther. The CD age was madefor Def Lepp ar d just as they were made for the CD age. In theeighties, fewer peo ple wanted mu sic that made them feel, the y justwa nted tun es they co uld enjoy, th at the y could sing along with ordance to. Def Leppard with their minimal inte rest in the lyricsprovided a goodtime soundtrack for an org y of mindless materiali sm.Subconscio usly too, the und emanding nature of Lepp ard ' s musicsuggested that techn ology wo uld be similarly und emand ing, for thetwo were indiv isible - Leppard were technology, tech nology wasrepresented by Leppard. Lepp ard were easy to listen to , they werebr ight and shiny, they were friendl y, the y were cuddly, so technologymust therefore be the same.

Of course, Leppa rd were simply using the technology to mak e themusic they enjo yed, fairly tradition al rock in a mod ern sett ing. Otherart ists used it in a sta rtlingly different wa y, illustrating the chaos orthe co ldness that change might provoke - New Order for insta nce or ,later on, Mini st ry and Nine Inch Nail s, whil e U2 also sta rted to use

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the cutt ing edge of computerization to show a world torn apart byconfusion. That kind of brutality, also exemplified by the burgeoningsuccess of thrash metal, was not acceptable on a mainstream level inthe 1980s when things seemed a lot more optimistic, especially if youhad money. Joe mad e the point that ' thras h meta l is a load of shit.There's no melody, no musician ship. Th e best guitar solos in theworld are the one s you can sing - like the intro to "All the youngdudes". I can' t deal with stuff where you can 't hear what the guy'ssinging. I can' t hear man y goo d songs coming out of thrash metal. It'snot a music, it's an att itude, a way of life, a fashio n. It's a pair ofplatform boot s. I'd rather be a pa ir of stra ight-legged 501s.'

Ironically in the era of con spicuous consumption, it was a decadeof anti -stars. The figureheads of the age were Bruce Springsteen andBono, not obvious sex symbols nor men who luxuriated in theirsuccess or their wealth but wh o were apparently embar rassed by it.For those on the sidelines who were happily amassi ng a sizeable wad,this att itude was bizarre to say the least. Th ey were only too glad toflaunt their GTls or their Porsches , flash their Rolexes at passers-byand order another round of drinks. Th e cry of ' loadsamo ney'summed up the age when people weren 't really bothered by a socialconsci ence, whatever Live Aid might have suggested, when the rate oftax was all that counted. Def Leppard were manna from heaven, aband who knew how to have a good time , wh o enjoyed being richand mad e the most of their success. While members of Greenpeacetook Michael Stipe as a hero, members of the yuppie culture tookLeppard as theirs. They came to represent a way of life, though notnecessaril y one they would have fully endo rsed.

That was not Leppard's onl y gift of course, for many who despisedyuppi edom saw much to enjo y in the hard rocking tunefulness of'Animal' or 'Photograph' . In essence, they provided a mindless,sugary ant idote to the political polemic of Sting or Peter Gabriel, theywere a guilty indulgence, all the more thrilling for it. At the sametime , the y did share common ground with Gabriel , Jim Kerr, Bruceor Bono , for thi s was also the time of 'good bloke' rock when bandswere not populated with stars but with ordinary down to earth guys.Def Leppard was not filled with egocentric idiots, but a bunch of ladswho you'd be happy to have a pint with at your local. Elliott

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remarked th at ' A lot of people use th e fact th at they 're famous as anexcuse to act like a dickhead, but we don't bother with thatnonsense.' At a time wh en Live Aid had made us all feel guilty abouto ur co mfor ts, someone like j oe Elliott co uld mak e yo u feel th at youco uld do well fo r yours elf and still be a decent guy. The gulf betweenth em and th eir aud ience wa s never huge and th at ena bled th em to winfans among th e mo re serio us rock supporters who had no time for asmarta rse.

For a period of six years, Def Leppa rd had man aged to pull o ff th eco nside ra ble trick of being all th ings to all peopl e, as goo d a wa y ofguarantee ing multi-platinum sales as any. If th ey were sta rt ing to feelth at sa les figures were not th e be-all and end-a ll of life, th ere was stillno real mot ivat ion for changing th eir way of opera t ing. People likedto bu y th eir records, so th ey mu st have been giving th em wha t theywa nted. Th is was no time to d isappoint th em an d so when , in thesumme r of 1989, they aga in go t down to wo rk in ea rnest, th ereseemed no need to tr y, for no t only had Leppard don e well but theirco nt empo ra ries, Bon j ovi, ha d re leased N ew Jersey to eno rmoussuccess .

T he basic idea behind th e new album was to find a happy med iumbet ween the pol ish of Hysteria and th e aggression of Pyromania,there being a co llective feeling th at perhaps th ey'd tak en to o mu chnotice of MTV's va lue to them and had sacrificed some of th eirmu sical mu scle in th e search for hit singles. T hey also wanted to workmo re qui ckly, for so und fina ncial as well as mu sical reasons, even ifj oe's sugges tion th at th ey might be able to release a record in 198 9was never likely to come to fruitio n. Th ings sta rte d out prett y well,writing sessions progressing at break neck pace as j oe recalled: 'Wewro te seven songs for the reco rd in a week, it wa s a lau gh, we wereon a ro ll and it ca me o ut happ y.' T he caveat to th at sta teme nt wasth at it was the las t fun th ey'd have on th e pr o ject .

Steve Clark wa s becoming more a nd more of a problem with everypassing week , his descent into alco ho lism more o r less co mplete whilehis ability, even his desi re, to recover seemed to dimin ish . As the bandworked on th rough 198 9 and int o the new yea r, his very presencewa s ha ving a hop elessly disru pti ve effect on progress. T hings we reawkward eno ugh anyway since M utt Lan ge wa s prod ucing Wak ing

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The Last Time

up the neighbours for Bryan Adams, and Leppard were once againtrying to produce themselves along with engineer Mike Shipley. Insuch unfamiliar conditions, the last thing they needed were problemswith Clark which were every bit as significant as those which had leadthem to fire Pete Willis during the recording of Pyromania in 1982.Joe summed up the situation: 'We couldn't get any work done. Wewere a five-piece operating as a four-piece and we had a moraldilemma about the whole thing. It wa s "we should be a band butinstead it's Us and Him and Him isn't contributing because he's acomplete and severe alcoholic who's killing himself".' An indicationof their plight was the realization that six months of recording hadyielded a mere two pieces of useable music - Phil's guitar solos on'Tear it down' and 'Tonight'. If Leppard were the ultimate careeriststhat they are often painted as, Clark would have been quietly dumpedin 1989 and a replacement sought. Where Willis had been obnoxiousthough, Clark was helpless and the band naturally wanted to helpsave their friend from himself. It was a long, painful process as Joerecalled. 'Since the "Hysteria" tour finished in October '88, Steve'dbeen in and out of rehab six times at least.'

Things seemed to have come to a head in December 1989 whenthey were taking a break from the album. Clark was found inMinnesota, comatose in a gutter and was, as is customary there insuch cases, committed to a psychiatric hospital for observation. Onceagain, the incredible facts of the matter are burned on Elliott'smemory. 'They told us the alcohol level in his blood was 0.59 whenthey found him. That didn't mean anything to us until they explainedthat a level of 0.41 had killed John Bonham.'

The psychiatric hospital only highlighted how desperate things hadbecome. Joe visited his friend there: 'There were people scratching thewalls and standing on one leg reciting the Lord's Prayer backwards.He didn't belong there, but he needed help from somewhere.' Thedoctors felt that Clark was simply ignoring the problem. The bestmedicine would be to confront him with the effects of his drinking,the impact he was having on the lives of his closest friends. He askedElliott, Savage, Lange and Burnstein to write letters to Clark and thenread them to him in a closed session. 'It was the most nerve-wrackingthing I've ever had to do,' admitted Joe. 'It was awful. We'd lost him

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by then. Mutt saw him and sa id he'd got a dead man's skin and hewas right . It was like orange peel, there was nothing in his eyes, helooked like he was dead a lready. '

Rick Savage felt simila rly powerless to help and could only watchin horror as Clark 's mental state deteriorated. 'Steve started to hateall the things th at he'd loved in th e past because he th ou ght theytrapped him. It was him that got us on stage in the first place right atthe start . H e loved th e road but when we sta rted to get ready for thebig Amer ican tour for Hysteria, he actually tr ied to smash his handso th at he wouldn' t be able to co me. It drove us to desperati on - hewas such a nice perso n th at yo u naturally tr y to protect him , lookafter him. It 's only now th at I realize how much tim e and effo rt wespent tr ying to care for him. We we re like co-dependen ts . You hav eno other life apart from th at.'

The only so lution seemed to be work. Accepting th at th ere wouldbe another mighty gap between relea ses, Leppard settled on a morerelaxed sched ule, ass isted by the fact that they 'd settled down to workin Joe's home stud io , a decision th at also had mu ch to do wi th theesca lating cos t of the record. That was one aspect of Hysteria thatthey did not wish to emulate. Joe joked with H ot Press that 'Aye lad,th a ca n tek th e bo y o ut o f Sheffield, but tha can't tek Sheffield out ofth e boy! I put th e studio in because I didn't want to spend two millionqu id makin g a record! Seriously, I am aware of th ings, I st ill look forth e best price . I ca n' t help it, I was bo rn to very proud but ave rageea rn ing parents. I' ve always been co nsc ious of not wast ing mo ney .. .we'd hear that Queen had a party with women swi ngi ng fromchande liers , ser ving champagne ou t of th eir bra s and go " Wow!Grea t !" and th en find it cost £ 120,000 and think , " ha ng o n, that'seig hteen gra nd each. I'd rather take it ho me and have a few pints" .We'd only do th at if so meone else paid - tight -fisted bas tards fro mHell that we are!'

Joe felt tha t his tight cont ro l o f the purse stri ngs ex plained hisrefu sal to get sucked into the d rug culture . 'I'm materialist ic whic h iswhy I never got hooked - I co uld neve r see th e point o f spendingeno ugh to stick coke up my no se th at'd be gone in fiftee n secondswh en I co uld spend the same amount on ten CDs . T he money I'dwaste on drugs, I'd rather use to fly ho me to see Sheffield United, bu y

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a load of CDs or some hi-fi. I don 't wanna waste £3 00 on somethingthat's gone in an hour; it 's a waste of money and it's stupid. I'm notgonna die at thirty-five because of a dumb smack habit and I'm notgonna be skim at fifty either. Everything ends but I'm determined I'llbe alright when it does.' Elliott was also blessed with a personalitythat was fairly equ able, able to take a balanced view of th ings and toenjoy his success without wanting any stereotypica l excess. SteveClar k was not so lucky.

It was important that, with Clark in such a state, sessions were notsubject to the added stress of an over-s tre tched budget. Clark was notthe only one able to take adva ntage of the new regime - Phil tookthree months off at the sta rt of 1990 when his son Rory was bornand, on his return, Joe jetted off for a break in Lanzarote. Phil feltthat the time apart 'helped us be objective about each other's work'.Joe concurred, adding 'we just can' t record quic kly. Working athom e, the environment helped. We had better secur ity over the tapes,there was no pressure over time because studio time is so expensive.Thi s time, if I couldn't sing on a given day, it just meant we finisheda day later. No problem. To keep things moving, we recorded in splitshifts - Phil did guitars eleven ' til six, I'd sing seven 'til midn ight andif I knew I was having a bad time, Phil'd carryon playing.'

Th ose split shifts came in in 1991 , for by then, Phil had twice asmuch wo rk to do. Though Steve had returned to London fromMinnesota, things were not improving. Because Steve wanted to keephis problem from his family , Joe went with him to his AA meetings ,attempting to humiliate him into seeing his addiction in front ofsimilar addicts, but to no avail. Joe recalled:

'He used to go to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings but he neverbelieved he had a problem, that wa s the th ing. He'd have amonth or so in rehab, then he'd check out and go straight to thepub. To me, that's a guy that wants to die. I think he was justdestined to destroy himself. It wasn 't something that happenedin the last few years, he'd been drinking heavily since I'd knownhim, puking blood back in '78. He was the best kept secret inrock'n'roll. Alcoholism is an illness and with all the will in theworld, Steve couldn't stop. The lifestyle didn't help either. He'd

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co me round to th e hou se and we'd hide the booze - he mighthave been off it for a co uple of weeks - and he'd start asking whywe'd hidden it and go all funn y.'

T he wh ole album was spinning further out of cont ro l and inSeptember 1990, Steve was sent on a sa bba t ica l by th e rest o f th egroup. Joe explained th at 'We didn't fire him, we told him to so rthim self o ut over six mo nths - we co uldn 't deal with him beingaround in th at state and we thou ght th e best th ing wa s to give himspace. Yo u're supposed to be an ex pe rt at ha ndling it but you're not .Maybe in hind sight we sho uld have spent more time with him, butyo u ca n't be your brother's keep er .' Not wishing to put an end to hiscareer in the way they had wi th Willi s, feelin g that perh aps DefLeppard wa s Clark 's only lifeline, a ll th at kept him go ing, th eirreactio n wa s a noble one . The sad truth was th at Clark wa s an addictan d far more medically an d psychologicall y q ua lified andex perienced professionals th an four guys from a roc k'n'roll ba nd areco nstantly faced with failure as they tr y to brea k someo ne's habi t.T he ban d ma y st ill har bou r feelings of guilt ove r th e way they trea tedCla rk, may feel there were th ings th ey could and sho uld have don e,but in truth th ey have no reason to reproach th emselves. T hey did th every best th ey could und er th e circumstances and it just was noteno ugh. Maybe not hing ever wo uld have been.

O n the morn ing of 8 Jan ua ry 1991, Steve Clark was found dea d inhis Chelsea flat. T he coroner's report a month lat er stated tha t deathhad occurred beca use of a respirato ry failu re, resu lting fro mexcessive quant ities of alcohol mixed wi th pai nki llers and anti­depressant drugs. Phr ases like 'a sha tte ring blow' tend to be tr ottedout at times like th ese, but no words ca n do justice to such tra uma ticnews, ev en if it wasn't entirely un exp ected as Rick Savage po intedo ut: 'Jo e sa id to me somet ime afte rwa rds that it was almost likehaving an elderly relative th at yo u kn ow is goi ng to die some tim e,but yo u don't think it 's going to be to day.' Joe mad e a sta tement onbeha lf of th e band th at summed up their feelings. 'Steve wa s a reallyquiet, shy, humble, nice, gent le so rt of blok e. On stage, he was thebusiness, ve ry visual and very energet ic, a grea t person to bealongside. Steve was a very creative person, th e master o f riffs, and

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wrote some of the best we've ever done. We'll definit ely miss hiscreative input. It was a pleasur e to kn ow him for thirteen years andI'll miss him like a brother.'

Had Cla rk lived, then Leppard would almos t certa inly have had toget rid of him an ywa y, for he wasn't getti ng any better. Joe admittedas much, say ing 'so oner or lat er we wo uld have got to the stage wherewe would have had to decide "can we risk taking him on tour withus?" and I'd like to say he wo uld have been fine, but I can't. How hestayed al ive as long as he did was a blessing. He th ought he wasinvincible, that he co uld drink forever but it doesn't work like that '.Th e compari son s with Pete Will is were inevitable, but no less painfulfor th at. The qu estion that con stantly recurred was sho uld Clarkhave been sacked years ago; would that have been the shoc k to thesystem that he needed or would it hav e merely esca lated his decline?It was an insoluble qu estion. Joe was und erstandabl y uncertain ,saying 'I'm glad that Willis is alive and we get on okay. Te n yearsafter the event, whenever I see him and he's on the wagon, he's fine.I'd much rather it be that wa y, there be a certai n ani mos ity betweenus but him alive than us love a guy who's dead. It was such a was te.So man y people think that when you turn th irt y, life's over - you dieat thirty and life ain 't even started '.

Phil Collen wa s deeply hurt by the loss of his close friend andplaying partner, but like Joe , he wa s philosophical enough to realizethat, given Steve's personality, it wa s sadly inevitable that thingswould end thi s way: 'He was alright on tour because your whole lifeis set out for you but as soon as he had time to sit down and think,he worried and worried and worried. The only esca pe was to hit thebottle. He was an alcoholic and it was horrible to see becau se it wasmy mate who wa s shaking and going " Fuck, I wa nt to sto p but Ican't". I picked him up, carried him out of places and did all that stuffbut you can only do so much. He kept trying but it went again st him .'

The onl y consolation to be dr awn from Clark's tr ials and event ualdeath was that he gave out a wa rn ing th at was heeded by anothermember of the band who was in similar trouble. Rick Allen had longbeen thought of as fully recovered from his car accident, but beneaththe surface, he was still tr ying to adapt to wh at had happened to himand its implications.

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' I never went through any psychological rehabilitation after theaccident. I just thought I could do it all on my own. I didn'trea lize until lat er on th at I co uld have done with outside help. Inever really gave myself time to get to kn ow myself again. I wasdrinking, I'd go t a gut and it wa s starting to show on my face.Wh en we finally got a break in 1989, I spent some time trying toput all that right which was really important for me. I brok e upwith M iriam, my girlfriend of seven years, met up with an oldgirlfriend from 1980 and got married. I realized th at the lastth ing I wanted to do was what Steve had done. I realized thatevery thing in my life doesn't revolve around Def Leppard! Idon't have anything to prove. But before that, when I tried totalk to Steve, when I tried to get him to see what was happeningto him, he'd just co me back at me with "what abo ut yourproblems?" I couldn' t get through that barrier , couldn' t co nquermy own troubles at th at time.'

Ju st as they'd so ught solace in their work when Rick lay in hishospital bed six years earlier, now they tried to do the same in thewa ke of Steve 's dea th. Returning to Joe's Dublin home, they workedso lidly for two months, but to no avail, Joe admitting th at 'there wasno soul in it'. As with Hysteria, the entire sessions were scrapped andwo rk began afresh. T his t ime, th ey reall y did wa nt to put the recordtogether quickly, not least because it wa s now almos t four years sincethe release of Hysteria. However, Phil described other consideratio nsth at pushed them on: 'We recorded it again rea lly quickly so wewo uldn' t have it hanging over us. We didn't want to dwell on it orget depressed by it. Making tha t reco rd wa s really stra nge, we knewth at we had this sou nd and th at we were ex pected to do certainthings. T he sound go t played out by other peopl e and we were leftwondering what the fuck to do next. We knew we had to wr ite somestronger songs and cha nge dir ection. '

Unfortunat ely, the band were so dr ained by their experiences withClark that they were bereft of any fresh inspirati on. Rick Allenadmi tted th at ' I th ink we were going through the motion s a bit, moreconcerne d with Steve th an anything else. We were on auto- pilot,making a record for the sake of it.' Joe agreed, adding 'we spent two

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years being miserable, but while we were recording it, we neverthought we should change the sound of those original songs.' So, outof the most miserable period of their collective life came a record thatwas relentlessly upbeat, a record that seemed to shun any contactwith the real world or with the real, raw emotions that they 'd livedwith.

They would have been much better ad vised to give free rein to theiranguish. Having a five year gap between albums is not only costly, it'sa high-risk strategy too. Fashion aside, there is no more ephemeralindustry than popular music, nothing that moves with suchbewildering pace. It was testimony to their creation that the soundthey pioneered with Pyromania was still sufficiently popular in 1987to turn Hysteria into an even bigger seller. Sadly, by 1992, the wheelhad turned and misery was in vogue courtesy of Nirvana and thewhole Seattle scene, while U2 had now become satirical industrialnoiseniks courtesy of Achtung Baby. Alternative music had hit themainstream with a vengeance and although Adrenalize sold inLeppard 's customary humungous quantities, the album seemedwoefully out of date and Leppard a band teetering on the brink ofobsolescence. They knew it, though they tried to put a brave face onthings, Joe saying 'it's more in your face, things are hitting you wherethey should. I honestly think that in five year s' time , I'm going tothink that Adrenalize is the best of the first five albums we didregardless of what comes over the next five years. We had morecontrol over it and we got it exactly as we wanted it '.

Without Mutt Lange, the method of recording was appreciablydifferent, though the results were strikingly similar to Hysteria, evenif the sound was generally a little tougher. There were clear signs thatthe band were deliberately moving towards the heavier end of thespectrum, not in noise terms, but in the atmospheric and emotionaltenor of some of the tracks. There was a Zeppelinesque emotionalbottom to songs such as 'White lightning' that were an obviousdeparture for them and this mature work was clearly a pointer for thefuture. Ironically, Mutt Lange had attempted to veto its inclusion asJoe explained. 'We wanted the performances to be raunchier, thebollocks of Pyromania coupled with the songwriting capability of thelast one. Initially we were trying to second guess Mutt but any time

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we got desperately stuck, we phoned him up in his capacity asExecutive Producer and he'd make suggestions. I reckon we spoketh irty or forty times but most of the time we just got on with it. Hewa nted the optimistic stuff to go on th e album, he was freaked out by"White lightn ing" which was mild as fuck .'

'White lightning' was the obvious centrepiece of Adrenalize,perh ap s its saving grace. Joe described it as being 'a bo ut anyo nethat 's gone down th at avenue of self-destruc tion, be it Jim Morrison,Jani s Joplin, Bon Scott, Steve Clark or someo ne on a bench outs ideMc Donald 's in Mi lton Keynes' . The eastern- influenced open ing,similar in some wa ys to 'The cutter ' by Echo and th e Bunnymen, wasa potent introduction to a song ab out addicts and addict ion, theinability to brea k free of the shackles of a habit. Phil Collen wasparticularl y outsta nding on thi s song, whil e the anguished 'coming to

claim you' section wa s incre dibly stro ng. In all, it wa s a piece withreal clo ut, something of which th ey cou ld be proud and which Clarkhimself would have loved to have played on. Ironically it was Stevehimself who had first pushed th e band in th is direct ion with 'Gods ofwar' on Hysteria. Sadly, it took his death to encourage them to gofurther down tha t road.

It was the only rea l evidence that Def Leppard might leave theirow n past behind them. Adrenalize was a rolli cking rock'n 'roll recordwith no pretensions to be anything else. By 1992, th at wasn' t reallyeno ugh and the band tha t had prided itself on lead ing the field hadfinally missed a trick as their great rivals Bon Jovi had already seenwhich wa y the wind wa s blow ing and were recording Keep the faith ,a significant change of pace for them. Phil Co llen spoke of thecompeti tion, pointing out that 'we' re very competitive - Adrenalizeisn' t go ing to get played just agai nst Bon Jovi or Guns N'Roses, butagai nst Janet Jackson '. T ha t wa s perfectly tru e, and in that co mpanyit performed exceptiona lly, topping the UK chart on release andspending five weeks at number one in the States. Artistica lly though,Leppard's standards had slipped for they were pedd ling music thathad really had its fina l fling. Joe admi tte d as much, say ing that ' itshould have been out in 1990 - when it came out it should haveso unded more like Retro Active or Slang but we spent half our timewith Steve and our heart wasn' t in it. It wa s a fucking horribl e time',

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As has been pointed out, in spite of the ordeal , the music soundedas hap py as an y they'd produced. 'Let 's get rocked ' was as daft a songas you co uld find, in th e same vein as 'Roc ket', its use of effects bothclever and amusing. Ironically tho ugh, after years of being too youngto be a lecher , j oe's impl oring 'S' pose a rock's ou t of the question? 'was a do uble ente ndre th at neede d a younger man, th ough itremained endea ringly silly. 'Heaven is' followed it up strongly, a nicetune, lashi ngs of backing vocals and some of Brian May's stylizedguitar explosions from Co llen. It 's sunny sound was infectious and itwas difficult not to smile your way through it.

Th e Q ueen motif continued into 'Tonight', though it inevita blylacked Freddie M ercury's charisma tic de livery and Qu een 'scha rac ter. Nevertheless, it was not so overwrought as their earlierballads and a real emotiona l qu ality was starting to emerge. Th e samewas true of 'Have you ever needed someo ne so bad?', which was j oe'sown tour de force, proof of just how far his voice had improved since1979. An expert at playing the unrequited , lovelorn so ul, thi s wasclass ic ' lighters in the air ' material, perfect for the concert hall.Stra ngely, it was Leppard's preoccupati on with love songs of allshades tha t had been their grea test virtue on a commercial level.Savage accepting that 'we do look for the commercia l aspect whilekeep ing the power - it's a fine line' . Lyrica lly unimporta nt, it wasn' tso much wha t they said, but the way that they said it, rockers andballad s alike building stea dily to a crescendo before the final momentof release in a glor iou s cho rus.

'Make love like a man' wa s a case in point , a rougher track butwith a sturdy cho rus and a memorable melody. 'Sta nd up (kick loveinto action)' was the band at their seductive best, a lush opening,decorou s guitar and throaty vocal s combining supre mely well. Theother three tracks, 'Personal property', ' I wanna to uch you' and 'Tearit down' were sta nda rd rock 'n'roll, songs th at co uld have been onHysteria but pla yed with greater intent.

Adrenalize wa s a solid eno ugh record, but ultim ately rathercharacterless, the production thi s time not having the sheer scale topaper over the cracks. Lyrically, it wa s clear that the band had to

move on , but it was a challenge that seemingly bewild ered them. joeargued that 'we like varying the sounds with in songs, it 's less tiring

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on the listeners' ears, sub consciously it makes it more appealing topeopl e. We're really into metering and phrasing which is moreimpo rta nt in roc k'n 'roll than actual lyrical content.' Speaking to Q,Joe took the pri ze for the mo st stupid attempt ever to justify theirinane lyrics: 'T he Brazilian rainforests and ozone layer are fine forsome people but we'd rather help save them by giving them money sowe can just mak e roc k mu sic. It might appear that a Def Leppardalbum isn 't go ing to save the rainforest but it might, at the end of theday, if we cheer one person up enough to go and do somethingenvironmenta lly aware and do it while the y're listenin g to us on theirWalkman.'

In the face of such ban ality, it's no surprise that man y dismissedDef Leppard as a wild an achronism, now thoroughly past their sell­by date. Yet Jo e st ill complained that 'nobody take s what we doseriously. Peop le wh o get credit for being innovati ve like theT hompson Twins, Jesus Jones, Blur and EMF don 't sell jackshitcompared to us. We're touching more people so it has to be better asfar as I'm con cern ed . . . th e onl y people wh o not ice are recordbuyers. T hey're the most impo rta nt people, but it does mak e youwonder.' Desp ite Joe's reservati ons, the album received some of thebest reviews of their career. Rolling Stone called Lepp ard 'one of theca tchiest bands in roc k' n'roll, intensely tuneful , unrepentantl yfrivolous'. Pau l Elliot t gave them nine out of ten in Vox , and notedthat Adrenalize was 'sure to be a definit ive multi-million seller ... forCo llen in particular, it' s a tr iumph. Less of Lange's studio trickery,more of a straig htfo rward hard rock record . "Sta nd up " is the perfectpop metal single . T here 's little wo nder that Jimm y Page an d DavidCove rda le's Legends album has been shelved until Oc to ber . . .Adrenalize will be the rock album of the summer ' . Fiona Looney inHot Press marked them equa lly well, ten out of twelve, and endorsedthe gro up's attitude in gushing term s: 'A terrace-friendl y record ofexcitement, energy, optimism, elation and adrenaline . . . the Lepsrely almost excl usively on goo d old-fashioned foot -stomping, air­punching, roaring rock'n' ro ll . . . easy mind-numbing fare thatappea ls to the heart and the feet witho ut taxin g the head , but surelythat 's what roc k' n' ro ll sho uld be and what it was before it washijacked by whingers like Bob Dylan .' Only Phil Sutcli ffe in Q

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wo ndered how they had come through their personal tragedies sounscathed: 'For better or worse, they seem to have come through thelong process of emotional turmoil and relentlessly professional self­criticism with exa ctly the album everyone was expecting . . .Adrenalize adds up to efficiency ... if it sounds safe, it also soundslike ano ther commercial monster.'

The problem was that at th is stage of their career, was safe but surereally good eno ugh? Sho uldn' t Leppard be extending themselvesfurther, moving in circles where they weren't so convinced of theirability? In sho rt, was n' t it time to take a chance or two? After all, theysca rcely needed the money any longer. There was evidence that thiswas exercising their minds rather more, but it was a problem that hadto be shelved. The latest tour was loom ing, bringing with it a hugeproblem. How did they replace Steve Clark?

Phil Co llen didn't even want to try: 'Steve was my best friend andthe thought of replacing him was cra p - you don't go ou t and get anew brother. It took me a year to come to terms with the fact that weneeded ano ther guitarist.' Eventually though, Phil accepted that itwould be impossible for Leppard to take to the stage as a four-pieceband and recreate their album performances in any thing approachingmeaningful fashion. The die was cast and, after intensive auditions,Vivian Campbell got the job. Born in Northern Ireland and aseaso ned hard rock guita rist, having had spells with Sweet Savage,Dio and Wh itesnake among others, Campbell's style fitted in wellalongside Collen and the two were swift to develop a good wo rkingrelati onship . Unfortunatel y, it didn't develop quickly eno ugh toprevent one of his earliest gigs with the band turning into a disaster.In Apr il 1992, they played Wembley Stadium as part of the FreddieMercury tribute concert, a gig that was being broadcast to the wo rld.The band were dreadful, Rick 's drum kit having got lost beforehanddela ying their appearance and then their sound apparently comingfrom the bottom of a swa mp.

Th e accompanying tour, in the ro und agai n, was eno rmo uslysuccessful, propelling Adrenalize to wards sales that even rivalledthose of Hysteria, though Melody Mak er's John Selzer wasunimpressed by their Earl 's Court performance calling them 'a lifelinefor the comato se - Mills & Boon novels, Austral ian soa p dr ama and

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Def Leppard songs . . . it wa s zombiefied, for disenfranchizedco nsumers of the dr eam'. The whirl of touring activity continued wellinto 1993, the band finall y enjoying the shows once more now thatth e atmos phere in th e band had improved with Campbell's addit ion.Elliott co mmented mem or abl y th at ' it's not a ball an d cha in an ymor e, you don' t wake up on to ur any more wonderi ng if the guy inth e next room is goi ng to be dead .'

T here wa s even time to piece together th e ragb ag of B-sides andrarities th at Joe ha d spoken a bo ut five yea rs previou sly. In Oc to ber1993, Retro active ca me out, indi cating th at Leppa rd were a bandthat were starting to reassess their place in th e scheme of things, Q 'sValerie Potter writing th at th e album wa s a 'pleasantly patternedpatchwork th at is, in many wa ys, preferable to th eir more co nt rived,overtl y co mmerc ial releases'. This new looseness, the product of therela xed sta te of mind th at acco mpanies an y such compilation, wa s aninspiration for the future, the record itself having much to co mmendit. There were epic Ze ppelin influences on 'Desert song', the Queen­sty le cove r of the Sweet's'Action', the newl y minted delicacy of touchon th e mega-ballad 'M iss you in a heartbeat' , the Irish folk- rock ofthe brooding 'Fro m th e inside', th e peerless lovers' roc k of 'T wo stepsbehind ' and th e boi sterous bo uncy pop of ' I wa nna be your hero' . Itwas obvious that th is was a gro up finall y head ing into its fullmat ur ity, read y perhaps to do its best work and with a stea dy graspof a diverse range of mu sic.

Ano ther stopgap album in 1995, the obligatory greatest hit s set,Vault, not on ly offered a breathing space to ena ble th em to co mpleteth eir next record witho ut such an unseeml y ga p between releases, butit provi ded a punctuat ion mark, ad ding further fuel to the rumoursth at Def Leppard were ready to put the first phase of their ca ree r tobed and emerge again wit h something rather d ifferent.

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TIME FOR A CHANGE?

Th ey were luck y to get aw ay with it . Adrenalize succeeded thanks to

a loyal fan base and a huge pro moti on al bud get , much of which wasconsumed by the video for 'Let's get roc ked' which kick-started thealbum across America. Even then, there was no disguising that thi swas yester day's music, a fact th at Leppard were willing to own up to,Savage suggesting th at ' it was obvious to us that we rea lly wa nted abreak fro m the way we'd always recorded, we wa nted a differentsound'.

Wh ether you' re a fan or not , it's impossible no t to concede thatNirvan a and U2 radically reshap ed main stream mu sic at thebeginning of this decade. U2's particular brand of angst had alwaysbeen popular , but it was cou ched in such mu sical terms as to remainupli fting, ult imately optimistic. With Achtung Baby th at was behindthem for th ou gh their lyrical and spiritual preoccupa tions werebroadl y similar, their vocabulary was overha uled, culmina ting in adarker, cla ustrophobic noise. 'T he fly' was not fro m the samewhi stle-friendly sta ble as 'I still haven 't found what I'm looking for ' ,but the public still lapped it up. N o-one wo uld ca ll 'Smells like teenspirit' a candidate for a Michael Bolton record , but its sa les surpasse deven his. The shiny, happy audience of the 1980s, fan s who wereperfect for Leppard's sunny, suga ry pop-rock were mutating into theGenerati on X crowd. Grunge reflected their take on a wo rld that waschanging too fast, a world that offered little, where the promisedfuture for those who worked hard was evapo ra ting before their eyes.

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The benign technology that had given us the CD was now consumingthe anticipated job for life and leaving the rock audience - who asyoungsters were off into the workplace - dazed and confused. PhilCo llen noted that 'in th e eighties, it wa s the social climate thatdemanded our sty le of music. Everything wa s different, everyone hadmoney, that was the impression. But we were looked on as theMcDonald s of rock music. It was partl y because the lyrics were soshallow, partly becau se we sounded so poli shed . In the nineties,misery became coo l an d when we were touring Adrenalize, we justdidn't fit. We had to put things right, make our lyrics strongerespecially.'

A regular cr iticism of Leppard - th ough paradoxically it's also aso urce of their streng th - was their rigidity, their percei ved lack ofada ptability. T he Adrenalize project confirmed that, for altho ughSteve Clark died during its making, that did not deflect them fromtheir chose n path of upbeat , raucous rock'n'roll. Similarly, theirintricate way of working in the studio, their concentration on gettingevery final aspect of a song, its arr angement and its product ion, to

their liking before allowing its release was a guarantee of a certainqu ality, but also milita ted against the songs sounding like anythingbut another Lepp ar d product. Such attention to detail , such a que stfor per fect ion meant that sacrifices had to be made along the wa ywith some songs overworked to the point of exhaustion.

T he buzzwords in the camp now were ' loos er', ' relaxe d', ' heavier' .H ow their meticu lou s preparation would stack up alon gside theseparticular ambitions wo uld decide how successful th e reinvention ofDef Lepp ard wo uld be. Looking back at th eir canon, Collen felt that'our previou s albums were inte lligent on a mu sical level but th is tim earound we wanted to be freer. It was a reacti on to reco rdingsepa rately under the microscope. It was fun , the guitars weregenera lly one take, we didn't spend time gett ing sounds, all our effortwent into the songs, no t the pr oduct ion. We spent eighteen mo nthson it, with a definite target in mind .'

O ne thing th at helped thi s time aro und was the fact th at a blueprintexis ted. Mak ing Pyromania and Hysteria, Leppard had beenattempting to fresh ly mint a sound th at no -one had made in the pastand as Joe pointed out 'we're prepared to go that extra yar d . And

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sometimes you don't know where that extra yard is which is why ittakes such a long time to get there'. Now, they were following in thefoot steps of many other bands, taking inspiration from a wider rangeof music and knowing precisely what they were looking for. Thatimmediately removed the pressure and turned recording into fun.

To maintain that lighter mood, they chose to rent a house inMarbella, where they would record from May 1994 onwards ­apparentl y, the villa was used as the home of villain Ally Fraser in thesecond series of the TV comedy drama Auf Wiedersehen, Pet. Theatmosphere was idyllic, Joe infor ming jealous reporters that 'if youweren 't read y to work, you could just go and look out at the ocean,which was much better, much more inspiring, than the dungeons weusually record in' . Phil compared the who le experience with 'goingon a school holiday, there was a new enthusiasm in Spain. It wasalm ost like being in a new band, and the record reflected that. It'sabout us, not about production.'

The change in emphasis has proved to be a reso unding success, ifnot the radical rebirth that advance publicity might have suggested.There are still elements of quintessential Leppard on show, but thechanges that have taken place are not superficial. Determined toremain valid in a new decade, the reassessment that has taken placeis similar to the way Genesis restructured their sound in 1981 withAbacab. Then, the traditional size of the sound was trimmed back,allowing songwriting rather than musical talent to shine through.Genesis brought in a new producer to help free themselves fromhabits and preconceptions. Leppard did the same, drafting in PeteWo odroffe as co-producer while Lange had little or no involvement ,not even getting involved with the songwriting process. The accent ison stro ng songs and on strong characters; th is is the heart of Slangand consequently the material ranks amo ng the best they've yetproduced.

Though the y worked long and hard on the record - in Marbellafrom May until September 1994, two months more in Dublin, backto Spain until May 1995, then, following the promotional chores forVault, two more months to finish off - there is no sense in which thisis a laboured record. It has a livelier feel than any previous album,even though musically it's quite dark, the product of the obligatory

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harrowing times that accompa nied it; Rick Savage lost his fatherwhi le Phil continues to go through a divorce all the more traumaticbeca use of th e qu esti on of custody of his young son. Where before theba nd simply ignored life, now its vicissitudes ar e grist to theso ngwrit ing mill. Phil's 'Brea the a sigh' is a fine example of that, ayea rn ing ballad tha t reflects on his loss. Musicall y, it 's th e mostatypica l so ng Leppard have ever recorded, lazy sw ingbea t pop th atca lls to mind Take T hat, th ou gh th e idea of Leppard performing asynco pa ted dan ce ro uti ne on th e wo rld's concert stages remains anunlikely one. Collen acce pted that ' if it's th e best o f a sty le, it has tobe an influence, whethe r it 's Nirvana o r Boyz II M en .'

If yo u' re goi ng to stea l, stea l from the best has been a motto thathas kept every decent rock' n' ro ll band in bu siness since timeimm em ori al. If Boyz II M en provided the platform fo r ' Breathe asigh', N irvan a had more than a hand in 'Deliver me' , one of thealbum's sta ndo ut so ngs . Joe's vo ice was gruff, as th ou gh he'd takenon a nast ier a lte r-ego. The lyric wa s harsh in th e ex treme, th e song'sprotagoni st shutt ing so meone out for good, touching also on spiritualmatters and a lack of faith, a subject that was to recur on th e album.

In ton e, th e a lbum was impressionistic , morose, devoid of th eblatant love songs that had cro pped up elsewhere. To rein force th emood of cha nge, even th e sleeve artwork wa s mod ern ized , replacingthe dr ead ful artwork they'd persisted with throu gh th e rest o f th eirca ree r. T his time, the cover betrayed a st ro ng Indi an influence as didso me of th e music. 'T urn to d ust' was a case in poi nt, a so ng thatex ploited Joe's expand ing emotional range and th e co nsta ntlyimp ro ving partn ership between Ca mpbell and Co llen, Allen notingth at 'i t was a gro up thing this time. W hen Viv ca me in, the who leth ing became more of a team' .

In mod ern rock music, use of that eas tern so und inevitabl y leadsyou to think either of th e Beatl es, particularl y George Harri son, orLed Zeppelin, no tably 'Kas hmir' . T here were tr aces of both on 'T urnto du st ' , while Rick added a mod ern d imension with his use of theshuffle beat so preva lent in the ' baggy' movement, personi fied by th eSto ne Roses and Hap py Mondays.

Altho ugh it was Phil Co llen who was the major write r on Slang, itwas Allen who was pivota l in direc ting the so und: 'A fter th e first two

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albums, the electronic kit was more convenient , partl y beca use it waseasier after I lost my ar m, but also beca use of the kind of reco rds wewere ma king. As we changed tack, it seemed right to go back to theacoustic kit to get a more earthy sound. I also missed the physical sideof hitting the drums. The sound just set the tone.' Collen agreed,saying 'we wanted Rick to use the acoustic kit that he still used athome and it sounds so much better on what we 're trying to do now.'Listening to 'Turn to dust' and its predecessor , the albu m ope ner'T ruth?', the startling rea lization was that rather than listening forthe product ion tricks, it wa s the band 's ow n persona lity that wasstriking home. 'Truth?' for example featured heavily industria lizedvocals that were somehow more humanly authentic than j oe'snorma l transatla ntic drawl and it wa s lovely to hear real drumsagain. T here was more int eract ion between the five members of DefLeppard on those two songs than on the previou s two fully-fledgedalbums; they finally sounded as if they were playing together as aband in the studio .

'Slang' itself was the cho ice as lead-off single, and an interestingone at tha t. j oe felt th at ' it's the only thing with a foot in the oldcamp, th ree minutes of pop abo ut phone sex', but tha t was un­characteris tically mod est for tho ugh it wa s pop mus ic, it was a longway from 'Le t's get rocked'. From the same school as the rap-meta lsty le of Terrorvision, Slang had an exuberance that one wo uld haveexpected from a band making their first album, not one in itseighteenth year. A little disappointing tha t it was chose n as the firstsingle when riskier choices existed, th ey can be forgiven for wantingto break in the old fans gently .

T hose more tradition al suppo rters could still find a lot to enjoy onSlang for they were clearly no t to be alienated by it. Viv Campbell's'Work it out' was tremend ou sly catchy, an obvious hit sing le th oughin a different way to something like 'Animal'. The sou nd was tru lythundero us, with j oe's rest rained vocal only adding to the impact.'All I wa nt' used their trademark voca ls, an inescapable,overwhelming sound, top ped off by a fine clos ing guitar refrain fromCo llen.

Even so, they were clearl y in the grip of change. Rick Savage feltthat 'i t wa sn't so much a change as something we'd been wanting to

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do for a few years. It was easier to make Slang than a record thatso unded like what we 'd been doing for the last eight or ten years.'Phil was a little unsure of their ground before recording, worryingabo ut the change in gear, but had to admit 'there's nothing wrongwith it which is a surprise because we were afr aid of it . If you staywith the same sound, you become like Wishbone Ash or somethingwhich is a shame.' Joe was adamant that they had to make this leap:'It was a logical progression. We could have carried on, pretending tobe the champion s of teenage rock but as you get older, it becomesstupid. We'd made our trilogy of big production albums and duringthe Adrenalize tour, it was just so obvious that we wanted to dosomething different - it's not a dance floor production for sure!' Thefinal four songs indicated that they were growing up as a band andtouching on subjects th at would have been taboo just a few yearsbefore.

'Gift of flesh ' employed volume with intent rather than withbluster, another of Phil 's songs that dwelt on the darker side of hispsyche, juxtaposing a loss of faith with an alm ost Ca tho lic dose ofguilt, a recurrent theme on the swing laden 'Where does love go whenit dies?' On 'Blood run s co ld', the music wa s as chilling as the theme,a lyric that looked at th e futility of suicide, perhaps inspired by KurtCo bai n and by the loss of Steve Clark wh ose addictio n wasta ntamount to a death wish. With Savage having lost his fat her, thevalue of life could only have been bro ught home still further to theband, a message that was imp licit in ' Blood runs cold'. 'Pea rl ofeupho ria' was a fitting con clusion to what was becom ing a verycathartic album. Joe felt tha t it 'was quire an inward looking song',the personal nature of it lead ing him to cloud its mean ing in obliquereferences and imp ressio nistic phrases . If it described his ow n srate ofmind , then Planet Elliott was not quite the happy go lucky place itoften appeared, for the image ry wa s bleak , the addictive phrasesremini scent of 'White lightning' and the music dooml aden. A potentend to Def Lepp ard 's finest hou r.

Reviews were mixed, Q suggesting that the changes were radicalwhile Vox felt that nothing had altere d. Probably the besr summaryca me from Metal Hammer, which termed it ' their most diverse workso far. The band are rapping into diffe rent areas but rarely do you get

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the impression that a rock 's out of the question! ' At the time ofwriting, Slang has just hit th e shops, so the public's verd ict is not yetin. It will be interesting to see how many of their ardent supporterstake the necessary leap of faith with the band.

Live date s will inevitably follow, th e gigs showing an evolutionequa l to that on th e album. Rick Allen suggests that ' the emphasiswill be on us, not the set. It was getti ng to be too much', while bornagai n rocker Joe Elliott sees it as 'us, a few lights and lots ofM ar shalls'. Early indications are that if the new album is as wellreceived as they hop e, Def Leppard co uld be touring the wo rld for thenext two years, bringing their own brand of rock'n' ro ll to a venuenear you, wh erever you are. Wh en the du st settles, the process willstar t aga in for with Slang, Leppard have made it clear that theyintend to remain valid for years to come. Just do n' t expect anothernew album th is millennium.

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11

ALL WE WANT IS EVERYTHING

Trying to sum up Def Leppard's career is a peculiarly difficult task.Th ere are few, if any, bands that have been so deliberately anddefiantly ambitiou s, so manic in their need to ove r ac hieve, socalculating in th eir ga me plan. As a bunch of teenagers in Sheffield,the mu sic th ey loved united them as did a fierce compulsion to use itas a passport to a better life. Reviled by the critics for th eir fascinationwith commerce, th ey have gone on to write the rul e book for makingit big in th e mu sic industry.

Never impressed by bands who made great play of a terriblerelation ship with th eir employees, Leppard did th eir utmost toingratiate themselves with Phonogram, working th emselves into thegro und in th e pr ocess. No TV show, no interview , no meet and greetthat might help advance th eir ca use has ever been needlessly refu sedwhile th eir regard for and generos ity towards th e fan s is legendary;Phil Co llen is renowned for spend ing hours talking to th em at gigsand hotels.

Yet Leppard have never been treated with much respect by thepress, Co llen admitting that ' we' re as hip as piles!' Though th ey haveth eir share of tal ented mu sician s, non e of them would necessarily beat th e forefront when it co mes to selecting a band to play in theRo ck 'n 'Roll Fantasy League . T he consensus of o pinion is thatLeppard are mad e up of forthright, hardworking journeymen , anallega tion which th ey do very little to dispel. Talking of thecompetition, Joe feels th at 'Jagger's th e best. The ult imate frontmen

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are those you can caricature in cartoons - Jagger, Steven Tyler, RodStewart, Bowie, Townshend , Meat Loaf, Alice Cooper. You couldn'treally draw me but it do esn't seem to have hind ered our success.'Such humility is one of the lesson s learned early on following ameetin g with one of the legend s of the hard rock game as Joe recalls.'When we first met Brian May, he ca me up and said " He llo, I'm BrianM ay fro m Queen ." As if we did n't know, it's like the Queenintroducing herself. We sa id "what a guy, down to earth, spot on".You make a mental note, you learn from other peo ple.'

At the same time, Lepp ard have been protected fro m the vagariesof life by a breathtaking ar roga nce, an utter co nvict ion th at 'we're thebest. In what we do, nobody can touch us' . Unfairly ove r the years,they've been portrayed as Mutt Lange 's creatio n, casting Lange asFrankenstein to Leppard's monster. It' s a long way from the truth.Before sett ing foot in the studio for Pyromania, Leppard were wellaw are that they wanted to break the mould of ha rd rock recordings.Th ey had a very clear vision of what they wa nted to do havingspo tte d an area that no-one else was catering for and followed thatvision to the hilt. Lange was crucial , but largely as an inte rpreterrather than an instigator. With the colossal dedicati on to the causethat has been at the heart of their armoury, they would not bediverted from their goal. Th e bile of British audiences was treatedwith something approaching contempt; Phon ogram's an xiety overthe gap between High 'n 'dry and Pyromania was dismissed; Allen 'shorrifying accident wa s overcome; Steve Clar k's awful death waspushed aside. Nothing could deflect Def Leppard. Joe is perfectlycorrect in stat ing that 'one of the greatest qu aliti es in this band iswillpower, much more than talent. Some people won't sing a top Cbecause it's hard, but I'll keep going until I get it right. If you practicelong enough, you get there in the end. The word "can' t" isn't in ourvocabulary . We've got this reference point that says if you can havea on e-armed drummer, you can do owt! '

Perhaps it's a reflection of our times that a band who think ofthemselves as honest craftsmen rather than multi-talented art ists canbecome the biggest in the world, amassing album sales well in excessof forty million. In another age, maybe such a utilitarian combinat ionas Def Leppard would not have earned a second glance. That might

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be the case but all th at the band could do, can do , is their very best.In that , they have given an object lesson to any young group comingup behind them. Make the absolute most of your talents, use yourintelligence to look for new angl es, and success may yet be yours.

You can 't think about Def Leppard without reflecting on thecasualtie s. MSB were the first, Pete Willis the next , Rick Allen lived totell the tale, Steve Clark tragically did not. In one wa y or another, allof those, bar Allen, lacked the almost psychotic devoti on to the bandthat the rest demanded, th ough Clark wa s event ually in no fit state tocommit himself to anything. Possibly the rest of the band didn 't dealwith the issues as sensit ively as they could have , perhaps in Cla rk'scase the y were almost too support ive, but they 've always lived by themaxim that the show must go on. That's not to say that they'r e brutal,for the friend ship extended to Rick Allen was striking, but overallnothing is allowed to come between the group and their goal.

Operating within such a taut working environment is not likely tolead to an easy life, and sacrifices have had to be made along th e wa yas Elliott recounts. 'You forsake being able to go to the pub with yourmates, going to a footba ll match if you have to rehearse. You forsakeyour girlfriend , you do n't see your parents very often. But wh at youlose on the one hand you gain on th e other, like the immensecama rader ie on to ur.' The shock of Clark's death has given themca use to rethink their priorities though as Allen points out 'we dotake it all a lot more light-heartedly now. But we still wa nt to belegend ary. We want to get on the cove r of a rock history book. How'sthat for cliche! '

In the end , that's what Def Leppa rd are ab out - sett ing the mostunlikely target and then working toward s it in the most blinkered offashions. But they always seem to get th ere. Savage adm its to theimp ortance of the work ethic, saying 'we spend all our time justtr ying to stay ahead of the game. We don ' t sto p and we don't lookdown.'

The final word goes to the garrulous Elliott, bringing the sto ry fullcircle .

' In the winter of 19 78, me and Pete Willi s were walk ing hom efro m the rehearsal room and we had eno ugh money to buy one

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All We Want Is Everything

pint between us or take the bus home. We had a pint with twostraws, huddled round a fire in a pub near Bramall Lane. Wewa lked hom e past Sheffield City Hall where I found some chalkand wrote "Def Lepp ard will play here in 1980" on the wall. Wesold it out in 1980 and thought we' d made it. Now, years later,there's always room for improvement ; we do n' t want to gobac kwards like Uriah Heep or Wishbone Ash and keep onplaying when nobod y cares. We don't want to be a one-off. Athom e I've got a disc for Pyromania an d Hysteria for the firstseptuple million back-to- back albums in history. We were thefirst to do that. That's one side. The other is that we've done twonights at Wembley Arena and two at the N EC but not fi ve nightsat Wemble y Stadium where Gun s N 'Roses sold 450 ,000 ticketsin one day. There's always more.'

141

UK DISCOGRAPHY

SINGLESGetcha rocks offJanuary 1979See notes

WastedNovember 1979Chart: 61

Hello AmericaFebruary 1980Chart: 45

Let it goAugust 1981See notes

Bringin' on the heartbreakNovember 1981See notes

PhotographJanuary 1983Chart: 66

142

Rock of agesAugust 1983Chart: 41

Too late for loveNovember 1983See notes

AnimalJuly 198 7Chart: 6

Pour some sugar on meSeptember 1987Chart: 18

HysteriaNovember 1987Chart: 26

Armageddon itApril 1988Chart: 20

Love bitesJuly 1988Chart: 11

RocketJanuary 1989See notes

Let's get rockedMarch 1992Chart: 2

Discography

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Def Leppard

Make love like a manJune 1992Chart: 12

Have you ever needed someone so badSeptember 1992Chart: 16

Heaven isJanuary 1993Chart: 13

TonightApril 1993Chart: 34

Two steps behindSeptember 1993Chart: 32

ActionJanuary 1994Chart: 14

When love and hate collide1995Chart: 6

SlangApril 1996Chart: 17

ALBUMSON THROUGH THE NIGHTRock brigade/Hello America/Sorrow is a woman/It could be you/SatellitelWhen the walls came tumbling downlWasted/Rocks off/Itdon't matter/Answer to the master/Overture

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Discography

March 1980Chart: 15

HIGH'N'DRYLet it go/Another hit and run/High'n'dry (Saturday night)/Bringin'on the heartbreak/Switch 625/You got me runnin'/Lady strange/Onthrough the night/Mirror, mirror (Look into my eyes)/No no noJul y 1981Chart: 26

PYROMANIARock! Rock! (Till You Drop)/Photograph/Stagefright/Too late forlove/Die hard the hunter/Foolin'/Rock of ages/Comin' under fire/Action! not words/Billy's got a gunFebruary 1983Chart: 18

HYSTERIAWomen/Rocket/Animal/Love bites/Pour some sugar on melArmageddon it/Gods of war/Don't shoot shotgun/Run riot/Hysteria/Excitable/Love and affectionAugust 1987Chart: 1

ADRENALIZELet's get rockedlHeaven is/Make love like a manITonightlWhitelightning/Stand up (Kick love into motion)/Personal property/Haveyou ever needed someone so badII wanna touch you/Tear it downMarch 1992Chart: 1

RETRO ACTIVEDesert song/Fractured love/Action/Two steps behind (acousticversion)/She's too tough/Miss you in a heartbeat/Only after dark/Ride into the sun/From the inside/Ring of fire/I wanna be your hero/Miss you in a heartbeat (electric version)/Two steps behind (electricversion)

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Def Leppard

October 1993Chart: 6

VAULTPour some sugar on me/Photograph/Love bites/Let's get rocked/Two steps behind/Animal/Heaven is/RocketlWhen love and hatecollide/Action/Make love like a man/Armageddon it/Have you everneeded someone so bad/Rock of ages/Hysteria/Bringin' on theheartbreakOctober 1995Chart: 4

SLANGTruth?/Turn to dust/All I want is everythingIWork it out/Breathe asigh/Deliver me/Gift of flesh/Blood runs coldlWhere does love gowhen it dies/Pearl of euphoriaMay 1996Chart: 5

146

SOURCES

HOT PRESSLive review , Cork Connolly Hall by Tony O'Donoghue, 26 August1986.Hysteria LP review by Jon de Leon, 10 September 1987.'If I'd Spent Eighteen Months In Los Angeles' . . ., 24 September1987.Adrenalize LP review by Fiona Looney, 23 Apri l 1992.'I'm A Rocker' by George Byrne, 23 Apri l 1992

MA KING MUSIC'In Def Th ere Is Life' by Andrea Th orn , May 1992.

ME LODY MAKER'Growing Up In Public' by Brian Harrigan, 10 Jan uar y 1981.Live review, Hammersmith Od eon by Steve Gett , 8 August 1981.Live review, Marquee Club by Nick Kemp , 19 Februa ry 1983.'Pyroman iacs!' by Frank Worrall, 2 Apri l 1983.'T il Deaf Do Us Part' by Derek Oliver, 10 December 1983.Live review, Birmingham Od eon by Simon Scott, 17 December1983.Live review, Hammersmith Odeon by Chris Roberts, 19 September1987.'Travelling Band ' by Carol Clerk, 9 April 1988.Live review , Toulouse Grand Palais Des Sports by Caro l Clerk,

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Def Leppard

8 April 1988.Live review, Earls Court by John Selzer, 11 July 1992.'Rebellious Jukebox' by Joe Elliott, 16 October 1993.

METAL HAMMERSlang LP review by Dave Ling, June 1996.'You Don't Wake Up On Tour .. .' by Jerry Ewing, June 1996.

NEW MUSICAL EXPRESS'Are You Crap? Yeah, We Are' by Deanne Pearson, 29 September1979.'More Brutes & Loonies', 1 March 1980.'We Wanted To Be The Biggest .. .' by Steven Wells, 21 January1989.

QHysteria LP review by Emily Fraser, October 1987.'Loadsamoney' by Mat Snow, May 1988.Adrenalize LP review by Phil Sutcliffe, May 1992.'Life Is Sweet' by John Aizlewood, May 1992.Retro Active LP review by Valerie Potter, December 1993.

RECORD MIRROR'Armageddon Time ' by Ian Dickson, 23 April 1988.'Star Trekkin" by Lisa Tilston, 30 July 1988.'Blast Off' by Roger Morton.

SMASH HITS'What A Bunch Of Weeds' by Silvia Patterson, 12 August 1987.'Most Successful Rock Singer In The World' by Richard Lowe, 22February 1989.

SOUNDS'The New Wave Of British Heavy Metal' by Geoff Barton, 16 June1979.'Hello America' single review by Mick Middles, 23 February 1980.'Def Or Glory?' by Geoff Barton, 1 March 1980.

148

Sources

On through the night LP review by Geoff Barton, 22 March 1980.Live review, Newcastle by Ian Ravensdale, 26 April 1980.'Def For Glor y' by Pete Makowski , 4 July 1981.Higb 'n 'dry LP review by Geoff Barton, 18 July 1981.'The Luxury Of Real Fur ' live review, Hammersmith Odeon byPhilip Bell, 8 August 1981.Pyromania LP review by Geoff Barton , 12 February 1983.'It's Better To Burn Out Than Fade Away' by Geoff Barton, 5March 1983 .'Spot Cash For Metal ' by Garry Bushell, 6 August 1983 .'Will The Rollercoaster Red Carpet Ride Ever Sto p' by RobbiMillar , 25 July 1987.'Cat Scratch Fever ', Hysteria LP review by Paul Elliott, 22 August198 7.'Sugar On The Rocks ', live review, Nottingham Royal Centre byPaul Elliott, 12 September 1987.'Magic Roundabout' by Paul Elliott, 5 December 1987.Live review, Wembley Arena by Mary Anne Hobbs, 23 April 1988.'Once Bitten Twice Shy' by Mary Anne Hobbs, 2 July 1988.'Bringing Up Baby' by Mat Snow, 18 Febru ary 1989.

VOXAdrenalize LP review by Paul Elliott, May 1992

149

Above: All the young dudes - Rick ,Phil , Sav, Steve, and Joe, 1983 .

Left: Leppard co nquer America,1983.

W hite lightening - Ste ve Clark.

A ba nd that lo oks like Saxon and so unds like Duran Duran .

Rick Savage, "Ad rena lize "

Joe Ellio t tea rs it down .

Sav, Viv, Joe, Rick , and Phi l prepare to get roc ked, 1992.

Above: Phil wi th Brian May a t th elercury tribute, Apr il 1992 .

Right:Joe Ellio t and his hyst eri ca lrousers,

Back in black, 1992.

Above: Jon Bon Jovi keeps an eyeon the competition; Viv, Sav,Rick and Joe on the "Vault"promo tour 1995.

Left: Rick Allen and real drums,1995.

Joe Elliott, Spai n, 1995.

( RfWR I ]1 BOK NHlU I ffiAKf R( m~ Ie,",0 Ie lio , 1992

At the Rea ing Festival ilil 1980, Def leppard left he stage to a ai storm of bottles.Today, theiralbum areeagerly awaited bya legion of fans across theglobe and theirrecord sales have 00 tr.ipped those of LJ2, Guns 'Rose , REM, Gene i and Queen.

larger than life entertainers in th elasslc rock tradition, Def leppard have notmerely changed musical attitudes but have fought their ayto super tardom with asteely determination and camarader:ie that has helped them get over potentiallydevastating illness andinjury.

Fo million records sold is just part of their story. Their achievements offer aninspirational example of the ay strength of character can triu ph over a versi .DefLeppard: Two Steps Ahead reveals the full story of the and t at has remainedahead of the game and bas changed the face of hard rock forever.

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PRICE: $17.99OEF LEPPARO: TWOSTEPSAHEAO

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