The Enthusiast's Guide: Def Leppard
- Rock Metal Machine
- 3 hours ago
- 14 min read
Pete Arnett gives us his take on the studio albums of this wild animal!
Nursing and Def Leppard; not the likeliest of bedfellows I grant you, but on another monotonous coach journey to our university base, I slipped a second-hand copy of ‘Pyromania’ into my portable CD player – yes, I’m that old – and a love affair began that has nearly stretched into its fourth decade!
It was a strange twist of fate which led me to buy the album that would form the start of this tale, but in a small, yet filled to the rafters with second-hand CDs and videos (DVDs were still a few years away – told you I was old!) shop in North Yorkshire, I had whittled my purchase choice down to two martial arts videos when out of the corner of my eye, a CD cover was seductively drawing me towards it and using its power of persuasion, it became mine. I had known about the band before but, for some reason, had never really paid the Sheffield-based rockers that much attention, but something about the cover grabbed my fancy, and I became hooked!
The eagle-eyed amongst you will have already spotted that I was a tad late to the Leps party, as ‘Pyromania’ was released in January 1983, reaching #18 in the UK Album Charts, and achieved four million sales within the first ten months of its life before plateauing at around twelve million, but as the old saying goes… “Better late than never!” However, to this teenager’s ears, it was the best thing I had ever heard, no matter its age, and quite simply, I wanted more!
Before I continue, I find myself at a crossroads with this piece! I can go down two routes here and either lecture you about the history of the group, which in all honesty, you probably know, or I can spout on about how they changed my life, knowing that you couldn’t give a crap about that, so as the title is ‘The Enthusiast’s Guide’ indulge me as I try to hybrid the two and maybe some bits will resonate with you and your journey (maybe with Leppard, or another group!). Also, due to space constraints, I will shine the spotlight on studio albums of original material only.
Being a poor student trying to survive on a limited bursary, I was unable to afford many new CDs (violins at the ready!), so it was a trip back to my favourite second-hand shop to see what they had, leaving with their first two albums ‘On Through The Night’ and ‘High 'n' Dry’. In hindsight, I’m glad I did it this way rather than moving straight onto ‘Hysteria’ as it gave me more appreciation of the band’s history and the progress made between the three albums I now owned. There’s a very slim margin in terms of enjoyment between the debut and sophomore album (and before the Leppard purists shout at me – yes, I am aware that they released an EP in 1979, but I would only get to listen to this many years later), but ‘High 'n' Dry’ shades it due to the stronger songs, such as the phenomenal ‘Bringin’ On The Heartbreak’, the energetic ‘Let It Go’, and ‘Another Hit And Run’, and a bit more zest in the production due to the talents of Robert John “Mutt” Lange who had taken over the producer’s seat from Tom Allom.
That’s not to say that ‘On Through The Night’, with songs like ‘Wasted’, ‘Rock Brigade’, and ‘When The Walls Came Tumbling Down’, which is one of my favourites, isn’t a great album, it is, but as one would hope, the relationship between the band members seemed, to me at least, tighter on the sophomore album, and I could hear more dynamism between guitarists Pete Willis and Steve Clark. However, their professional relationship would soon be over following Willis’ dismissal from the band during the ‘High 'n' Dry’ tour and the recording of ‘Pyromania’ due to his excessive drinking. Enter Phil Collen!
As I got more involved in the Def Leppard world, I was surprised at the apathy that appeared to greet ‘High 'n' Dry’. With just over a million sales of ‘On Through The Night’ following its release in 1980, its predecessor managed to double that a year later, which wasn’t too shabby for a band at their early stage. However, despite a healthy section of the music press trying to champion them, it seemed that another was equally scathing, and only recently, it seems the music press have united in their praise for the band. Welcome to the party!
By the time I caught up with the Lep’s timeline, they had suffered several accidents and tragedies, resulting in drummer Rick Allen losing an arm following a car crash in December 1984 and the death of guitar wizard Steve Clark in January 1991 after alcohol and prescription drugs combined to the worst possible effect. However, despite these terrible events, the band, collectively and individually, showed inspiring resilience to overcome fate’s dealings. Allen realised that he could still play the beats to the songs using his feet, so, alongside some very clever people, he designed and built a custom-made pedal set that allowed, following some extensive practice, him to make a triumphant return to playing live at the Monsters of Rock festival at Castle Donnington, just shy of two years after the accident had happened.
Clark’s death hit the band extremely hard, and for a little while, it looked touch and go if they would continue. However, they chose to honour him by finishing the ‘Adrenalize’ album they were working on as a four-piece ensemble (Clark had already helped to write and demo on six songs) and wrote the track ‘White Lightning’ as a tribute to their fallen friend.
Everyone who is into Def Leppard, or at least knows the band’s basic history, can point to ‘Hysteria’ being the album that catapulted them into the “mega-stardom” category. However, the seeds were already growing with the success of ‘Pyromania’ and songs such as the catchy ‘Photograph’ and foot stompers ‘Rock! Rock! (Till You Drop)’, ‘Foolin’’ and ‘Rock Of Ages’, although more on the other side of the pond (it had achieved a #2 place on the US Billboard Chart) where America began to embrace Sheffield’s finest as their new sound of multi-layered Pop-infused Rock, with Lange in the producer’s chair once again, caught the attention thanks to coinciding with the rise of the behemoth that was MTV.
The album that changed everything dropped on the 3rd August 1987, and it’s fair to say that a lot of people went hysterical for ‘Hysteria’ as it surged up the charts both at home and away, nestling at the top of the UK and USA album charts, selling over twenty million copies in the process. Well, nearly everyone! There was still a 14-year-old boy in North Yorkshire who was unaware of the impact that the band would have on him about six years later (note to self: build a time machine, travel back and slap me round the back of the head and tell me to wake up!). In my defence, I do remember the videos for ‘Rocket’ and ‘Animal’ and liking them, just not enough to get my nose out of ‘The Flash’ comics I was obsessed with at the time!
With this new Leppard sound (Lange was again the producer) ringing loud from
speakers and headphones all over the globe, it was clear that the guitar chemistry between Clark and Collen was in full battle mode, backed up by the ferocity of Rick Savage’s bass. Allen was once again bossing the drums like nothing had ever happened, and Joe Elliot’s unique voice was a perfect outlet for the songs. They released hit single after hit single, with six in total peppering charts all over the planet, including the two mentioned in the previous paragraph, ‘Women’ and one of my personal favourites ‘Gods Of War’, but it was the arrival of ‘Pour Some Sugar On Me’ that really caught the public’s ear, eventually selling just under half a million copies and further elevating the album’s success, and becoming what many consider to be the band’s signature song.
As with ‘Pyromania’, the “sell-out” cries were becoming louder from certain quarters, mainly the UK press, accusing the band of ditching their original Hard Rock roots for a more “Hollywood” Pop/Rock mesh sound. In hindsight, and with increased maturity, I can understand why this might have been the case, but for me as a fan, it seemed like a natural progression from a young band finding its musical feet to one that understood what they were great at. When you find a formula that works, you stick to it! As the saying goes, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!” For Leppard, it was working as it propelled them into the big leagues, but the trick would now be to stay there!
With the extensive touring to promote ‘Hysteria’ finally ending, the band looked towards beginning work on their next album, ‘Adrenalize’, but already the questions were starting to circulate about whether they could top what had gone before. Things got off to a bad start as Lange couldn’t sit in the producer’s chair for this one due to working with Bryan Adams, but he would remain as Executive Producer, with the highly experienced Mike Shipley behind the desk working his magic. Clark’s alcohol issues also came to a head with the band giving him a six-month leave of absence in 1990 to tackle his demons, something that tragically never happened, and the music world was poorer for it. The group re-entered the studio soon after Clark’s passing but found it too hard, so another delay of a few months occurred before they felt comfortable enough to try again, with Collen taking on the duties of playing both guitar parts.
As for me, I finally got my hands on ‘Hysteria’ towards the end of 1991, four years after its release, and its power, the songs, and overall production just blew me away again! It’s strange how you can remember where you were when certain things happened. For me, listening to the album for the first time was on another coach ride home from university. But this time, with a new copy (paid for by my part-time job at Blockbusters) in my CD player, I didn’t want that forty-five-minute journey to end as the album was sixty-two minutes long and I was in love with it, and it remains one of my favourite albums of all time.
The first single, ‘Let’s Get Rocked’, from ‘Adrenalize’ was released on the 16th March 1992 and sold just under a million copies worldwide, climbing to #2 in the UK charts and one step better in the USA Mainstream Rock charts, all of which boded well for the album which was to be released two weeks later. The now familiar sound was still there, but watching them in the video minus a member was hard, especially for someone who was learning to deal with death professionally – but life goes on, as strange as it is to understand and comprehend sometimes.
With the release of ‘Adrenalize’ on the 31st March 1992, I finally caught up with the Def Leppard timeline as I had a copy of it in my hands on the day it came out, and as with ‘Hysteria’, I loved it, especially the songs ‘Let’s Get Rocked’, ‘Heaven Is’, ‘Personal Property’, ‘Have You Ever Needed Someone So Bad’, and the band’s tribute to their former friend and band member, ‘White Lightening’, which still raises a tear in me even after all these years! It seemed that the public did as well initially as it debuted at #1 in both the UK and US album charts. However, the difference between ‘Hysteria’ and ‘Adenalize’ was staying power. Quite frankly, it didn’t have as much and soon began dropping down the positions, racking up just over six million sales overall. Critics pointed to several issues for this, including a lack of quality in the material, which I still disagree with, and the emergence of Grunge, which I do agree with, which had turned Leppard and other bands of their ilk into musical dinosaurs it seemed (although who has had the last laugh!).
With 1992 speeding onwards, Leppard became a five-piece outfit again when Ex-Dio and Whitesnake axe-man Vivian Campbell joined the ranks. It would take four years for a new studio album in the form of ‘Slang’ to materialise. In the meantime, we had a collection of B-sides and rarities to entertain us as the band released ‘Retro-Active’ in 1993, on the strength of the song ‘Two Steps Behind’ being in the Arnold Schwarzenegger film ‘The Last Action Hero’. We also had the first “Greatest Hits” album as ‘Vault: Def Leppard Greatest Hits (1980–1995)’ smacked us in the face in October 1995.
In May 1996, ‘Slang’ arrived and was panned by many pretty much straight away, which was harsh. Yes, it was experimental, but the band wanted to change from how they had sounded before. Also, the musical landscape had changed enormously, and they had tried to compete by bringing new ideas and a rawer tint to their songs, something I applauded. Songs such as the title track and ‘All I Want Is Everything’ still contain parts of the recognisable Leppard sound and stand up well. However, it didn’t quite work, selling just over a million copies, although it was certified Platinum in Canada and Gold in the UK and US.
Following the disappointment of ‘Slang’, Leppard returned to their trademark sound for their seventh studio album, ‘Euphoria’, released in the UK on the 14th June 1999. Generally, the reviews were positive, compared to ‘Slang’, but Leppard’s star had faded as sales fell just short of their previous release. Musically, the likes of ‘Demolition Man’ (featuring a solo by F1 legend Damon Hill), ‘Back In Your Face’, ‘Promises’ and ‘Paper Sun’ proved that they could still write foot-stomping, rousing songs and ballads as before, but several other compositions on the album I’m sorry to say were not up to the same quality. As a result of poor sales, for the first time in sixteen years, a Def Leppard studio album failed to break the Top 10 of the UK Album Charts!
Thankfully, the Leps were made of sterner stuff, and despite being cast aside by many, they refused to go quietly into the musical abyss and announced their eighth studio album three years later. ‘X’ (pronounced “Ten”) was another experimental affair featuring a more Pop-based backbone and didn’t do much for me, although ‘Now’, ‘You’re So Beautiful’ and ‘Long Way To Go’ are still impressive songs. It was the first album featuring tracks written for the group instead of by them, which, in my mind at least, was half the problem. It became their second album in a row that failed to break the Top 10, selling just over six hundred thousand copies, making it their first full-length album to sell less than a million units since they had begun.
Touring extensively between 2002 and 2008, certain sections of the global “so-called” musical know-all brigade still tried to convince us that it was over for the band, labelling them as a nostalgia act now. However, for us die-hard fans, thankfully, the lads decided to stick around and announced another studio album in 2008. Now, a small interjection here; I know that they released ‘Yeah’ in May 2006, but as it consists entirely of covers – “Why?”, you ask, probably because they could – a bit of self-indulgence, after all, they had earned it after racking up forty years in the business. But even so, I've not counted it as an original studio album of new material.
Most artists will tell you that music should take you on a journey, be it just an album or the entire span of a band’s career. From first picking up ‘Pyromania’ all those years back, I have been on a massive pilgrimage with them. I’ve celebrated marriages and a divorce (no, you haven’t read that wrong!), children’s births, career highs and lows, all with Leppard as a soundtrack throughout, and the boys were there when I needed them the most! In 2008, I suffered a tragedy that no parent should go through, and a few weeks later, ‘Songs From The Sparkle Lounge’ landed. Again, it was mostly “meh-ed” by the critics, but for me, it was what I needed to bury myself in as I tried to process what had happened. The songs ‘Nine Lives’ with Tim McGraw, ‘Go’, ‘C’mon, C’mon’, ‘Love’, and the aptly named ‘Only The Good Die Young’ comforted me when I needed it the most (thank you guys). In the real world, this album did slightly better than ‘Yeah’, selling three hundred and sixty thousand copies worldwide and giving them another Top 10 UK Album Chart placement and a #5 spot on the US Billboard Chart.
Despite falling record sales, Leppard was now widely regarded as a band worth seeing live (something I had been saying since seeing them at Don Valley Stadium, Sheffield, in 1993 – bang went that month’s bursary, but I wasn’t missing my chance to see them), mainly thanks to a punishing touring schedule and their choice of support/joint acts. As a result of this renewed interest, much of their back catalogue received a boost in sales, and respect for them was gained by a new wave of fans. Even the musical press was starting to wax lyrical about their achievements.
Stepping away from their touring activities, the new album, ‘Def Leppard’, was released on 30th October 2015. In my view it is one of their best since ‘Adrenalize’. The rousing opener, ‘Let’s Go’ was Leppard bombastically back in the driving seat, while ‘Dangerous’, and ‘We Belong’, which featured all five members on lead vocals, showed that they could still produce an emotional ballad complete with tight harmonies galore. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not perfect, but there is musical freedom like the band had said, “Sod it, let’s just do it our way” about this album that was missing from its predecessors, and it’s all the better for it. The sales also reflected that as it gave them another Top 10 US Billboard Album Chart position, though it fell just short on home soil, reaching #11 in the UK Album Charts (although it did reach #1 in the UK Rock And Metal Albums as well as the US Top Hard Rock Albums, US Top Rock Albums and Independent Albums charts).
In 2018, a long-running dispute about their back catalogue and its use on streaming services ended. For the first time, as a collective, it became available for people to enjoy, and as a result, digital sales increased. The band continued to go from strength to strength in the touring world, breaking into the top ten earners of touring acts in 2022.
Their first studio album in seven years, ‘Diamond Star Halos’, was released on 27th May 2022, and their first single, ‘Kick’, showed that they may be older, but they still had a mischievous twinkle in their eyes and had not lost their knack for throwing out catchy Rock anthems. The same was true for ‘Fire It Up’, ‘SOS Emergency’, and ‘Unbreakable’. There is a beautiful duet with Alison Krauss on ‘Lifeless’, and some delightful slower songs such as ‘Goodbye For Good This Time’, ‘Angels (Can’t Help You Now)’, and ‘Liquid Dust’, which has a “‘Slang’-esque” feel to it. The saying that absence makes the heart grow fonder is true, as the album was well-received by critics and the general public. As a result, it reached the fifth spot in the UK Album Charts (and #1 in the UK Rock & Metal Charts) and the tenth spot over the pond in the US Billboard Album Charts. Some were even as bold as to say it was their best since ‘Adrenalize’! Do I agree… yeah, I think I do!
I know I’m not ready for this journey to end, and the band feel the same. In a recent interview (Fireworks issue #109), I spoke with Phil Collen, and he said: “I don’t think we’ve achieved what we set out to do yet; I still think there’s a lot more in us to come. And the fact that we’re still doing it at this level – I’ll be 67 in December – better than we did when we were in our 30s; that’s everything. We’ve got a lot more distance to go!”
All I can say is “Thank the musical Gods for that!”
Def Leppard's albums rated (click to expand the picture)
‘Rock Brigade’
‘Hello America’
‘Wasted’
‘When The Walls Came Tumbling Down’
(from ‘On Through The Night’)
‘Let It Go’
‘Another Hit And Run’
‘'Bringin’ On The Heartbreak’
(from ‘High ‘n’ Dry’)
‘Rock! Rock! (Till You Drop)'
‘Photograph’
‘Too Late For Love'
‘Rock Of Ages’
‘Billy's Got A Gun’
(from ‘Pyromania’)
‘Animal’
‘Pour Some Sugar On Me’
‘Rocket’
‘Love Bites’
‘Gods Of War’
‘Hysteria’
(From ‘Hysteria’)
‘Let’s Get Rocked’
‘Make Love Like A Man’
‘Heaven Is’
‘White Lightning’
‘Personal Property’
(From ‘Adrenalize’)
‘Slang’
‘All I Want Is Everything’
(From ‘Slang’)
‘Demolition Man’
‘Back In Your Face’
‘Promises’
‘Paper Sun’
(From ‘Euphoria’)
‘Now’
'You’re So Beautiful'
(From ‘X’)
‘Go’
‘Nine Lives’
‘C’mon, C’mon’
(From ‘Songs From The Sparkle Lounge’)
‘Let’s Go’
‘Dangerous’
‘Man Enough’
(From ‘Def Leppard’)
‘Kick’
‘Fire It Up’
‘Lifeless’
‘Unbreakable’
‘Liquid Dust’
(From ‘Diamond Star Halos’)
Listen to it on Spotify
This article appeared in Fireworks Rock & Metal Magazine Issue #110.
The physical edition is still available to purchase.
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