If there’s one rock band that can truly be described as heroes, it’s Def Leppard. overcame the death of singer to make the biggest-selling rock album of all time: . recovered from the death of bassist to become the most successful and influential metal band of the modern era.
But Def Leppard have suffered two tragedies: the car crash in 1984 in which drummer , and the alcohol-related death of guitarist in 1991. The fact that Def Leppard are still together in 2024, still making great music and playing to stadium audiences of 20,000, is testimony to the extraordinary courage and resolve of this great British rock band. Having formed in Sheffield in 1977, Def Leppard were thinking big from the very start.
Their name was inspired by , and the blueprint for their music was, as singer has stated: “AC/DC meets ”. In 1979 Leppard rose to prominence alongside Iron Maiden in the , although Leppard’s glam-inspired hard rock was radically different from what most NWOBHM bands were about. “We wanted to be a pop-rock band,” Elliott says.
“We wanted to do what Bowie and Bolan did. We had more in common with Duran Duran than with !” Leppard knew instinctively where their biggest audience was; they even wrote a song called . And when they teamed up with AC/DC producer in the early 80s they hit the jackpot.
With Lange’s creative input earning him unofficial status as the band’s sixth member, Leppard conquered America with 1983’s and 1987’s , the first back-to-back albums ever to each sell seven million copies. even made Def Leppard a household name back in Britain – a proud achievement for a band that famously sported Union Jack T-shirts during their US tours. Undoubtedly it’s the phenomenal success of and that has extended Def Leppard’s career over 40 years, through some lean times when their feel-good rock has fallen out of fashion.
But this is one band that never thought about quitting, not even in the darkest times. For Def Leppard a rock is never out of the question. When Def Leppard recorded this, the album that made them superstars, they were still each on wages of £40 a week.
The serious money went into Pyromania’s production. The result was state-of-the-art arena rock with the riff-power of AC/DC and the melodic sophistication of 80s pop. was the key hit single, the epic set-piece (its riff nicked from Cliff Richard’s !), the stomping, -style anthem, complete with joke faux-German intro from Mutt Lange.
“With everything changed for us,” Elliott says. It was conceived as hard rock’s answer to Michael Jackson’s , an album on which every track is a potential hit single. And so it proved.
Six of ’s 12 tracks were Top 20 US hits, with power ballad reaching No.1 and rap-rock hybrid hitting No.2.
With 18 million copies sold worldwide, is the biggest album of Leppard’s career, and also their most experimental. “We wanted to push the envelope of what rock music was,” Elliott says. , with its extended, Burundi-inspired drum breakdown, typified their anything-goes approach.
Leppard’s second album is the connoisseur’s choice, a hard rock tour de force that swept them out of the NWOBHM ghetto. Working with Mutt Lange for the first time, Leppard made a huge leap forward from their debut, . Wisely, Mutt didn’t smooth off all of their rough edges.
Opening with the knockout one-two punch of and , it’s the rowdiest and most balls-out, ass-kicking album the band have ever recorded. The pissed-up title track is Leppard’s ; the duelling guitars of had echoes of classic . “We’ve never been heavy metal,” claims Joe Elliott.
But for all his protestations, Leppard’s debut is a heavy metal album, plain and simple. In their youthful naivety, Leppard attacked their debut album with all the gusto of their NWOBHM peers. No shame in that.
The brutal has the streetwise appeal of early Iron Maiden, and are the very definition of gonzoid, and the seven-minute references 70s-vintage and . The true measure of Leppard’s ambitions was , with its polished vocal harmonies. Grunge didn’t kill hair-metal with a single blow.
In March 1992, two months after Nirvana’s topped the US chart, Def Leppard hit the top spot in America with . The album party vibe of lead single might have suggested it was business as usual for Leppard, but in reality the band were still in mourning for Steve Clark, to whom was dedicated. featured six tracks co-written with Clark, but it was a new song, , that served as the most fitting epitaph: a meditation on Clark’s death, it has a Zeppelin-inspired grandeur he would have loved.
For the most part, is the sound of a band who have rediscovered their sense of purposes after a wobbly 25 years. Hip? Nope. Cheesy? Occasionally.
Fun, memorable, life-affirming? Yes, yes and yes. And that counts as a win, credibility be damned. is wall-to-wall songs of the kind that no one – not even Def Leppard – makes any more.
is a prime slice of -era arena rock that crackles like a drunk tramp pissing on the third rail, mugs a passing gospel choir and forces them to wail over the top of a crunching, low-slung riff, while is quite possibly the most euphoric song you’ll hear all year. 2008 was a banner year for classic rock, with AC/DC, Metallica and even Guns N’ Fuckin’ Roses all back in business. And you can add to that the best Def Leppard album since .
Rejuvenated by a succession of triumphant US enormo-dome tours, Leppard delivered an arena-rock master-class with . is classic Leppard, recalls the glory of 70s glam rock. Most adventurously, the richly textured, left-field power ballad Love is bassist Rick Savage’s homage to Queen.
For an odds ‘n’ sods album, was both astonishingly good and an impressively strong seller, achieving platinum status in the US. Leppard’s first album with guitarist Vivian Campbell, it also includes the last work of his predecessor Steve Clark. Clark’s signature riffing drives the album’s weighty epics and , the former styled on Zeppelin’s .
Elsewhere Leppard acknowledged other key influences with covers of ’s and ’s . The ballads and proved that the band could flourish without Mutt Lange’s studio trickery. After grunge, hair-metal’s superstars had to rethink.
Jon Bon Jovi had a bob and pulled off a smart reinvention. But when went ‘alternative’ and Bret Michaels grew a beard, they weren’t fooling anyone. In these trying times Leppard knew they couldn’t make another .
As Joe Elliott recalls: “We went heavier and darker. And it nearly killed us!” sold a disappointing half-a-million copies in the US. But it’s a bold album, with great songs in and the monolithic .
Joe Elliott calls “our most honest record”. But a return to the classic Leppard sound wasn’t far away. The title spoke volumes: a nod to and , a signal that the old Def Leppard was back after .
Even Mutt Lange was back lending a hand on , not as producer but as co-writer of two songs, including lead single , a super-slick, harmony-laden track reminiscent of 1987’s . Leppard ticked all the right boxes with . is the guiltiest of pleasures, a throwback to Gary Glitter’s pomp.
is a deluxe power ballad. And there’s something of Steve Clark’s swagger in , a song that Brian May says blew him away. “We like Brian,” says Joe Elliott.
“He rocks.” In 2006 Leppard’s covers album suffered a terrible mauling from the press, most notably the one-word review: “No.” deserved better, certainly for Leppard’s inspired remakes of David Essex’s Rock On and ’s .
Certainly there are worse albums. Such as . Def Leppard have always embraced pop music.
When making , one of their key inspirations was Frankie Goes To Hollywood. But with they went too far. By working with cheesy pop songwriters a great rock band lost its balls, albeit temporarily.
Apart from one track, the beefy , is all pop and no rock. This really was a sell-out. Sign up below to get the latest from Classic Rock, plus exclusive special offers, direct to your inbox! Freelance writer for since 2005, Paul Elliott has worked for leading music titles since 1985, including and .
He is the author of several books including the first biography of Guns N’ Roses and the autobiography of bodyguard-to-the-stars Danny Francis. He has written liner notes for classic album reissues by artists such as Def Leppard, Thin Lizzy and Kiss, and currently works as content editor for . He lives in Bath - of which David Coverdale recently said: “How very Roman of you!” The best new rock songs you need to hear right now Watch Wishbone Ash play the classic Blowin' Free on The Midnight Special 50 years ago “Personal and sometimes uncomfortable .
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