![]() ![]() Instead of using big amps they used Rockmans, small Walkman-like machines that generated a sound you could control to the nth degree. What we’d done was good enough – as good as Pyromania – but Mutt said: ‘Why do Pyromania 2? That was a leap from High’n’Dry, now we have to make a leap from Pyromania.’ We were thinking: ‘Can we do this?’ It turned out we could.” “It was Mutt’s encouragement that helped us do that. ![]() Elliott says, almost shuddering at the memory. ![]() And then – as if to confirm that bad things really do come in threes – they had to scrap all the recordings again. With true Yorkshire grit, Allen was up and about in a matter of weeks, working with pioneering electronic drum makers Simmons to create a kit that could be played with two feet and one arm.Īfter further weeks of struggling through recording sessions, attempting to imitate their missing producer, Lange finally felt able to return to work, and committed to Hysteria. But with the kind of time the band had been experiencing, there must have been question marks over everyone’s heads, despite the band’s insistence ever since that no thought of quitting or getting a new drummer entered their heads. It was a cruel blow for anyone, let alone a musician. On New Year’s Eve, Rick Allen crashed his car in Yorkshire, and in the accident his left arm was torn off. Lange suggested they bring in Nigel Green, who had engineered Leppard’s previous two albums, so, working alongside Green the band started down the ‘self-produced’ trail. ![]() The thinking seemed to go like this: Meat Loaf’s Bat Out Of Hell was a classic album, and Hysteria is going to be one too, so surely Steinman can do what’s needed? But as Elliott pointed out at the time, Steinman was more of a writer than a producer. Management attempted a coup by putting Jim Steinman in the producer’s chair. Which is where the first kick in the nuts took the wind out of them: Mutt Lange had just completed work on The Cars’ Heartbeat City, and was forced to decide that he was too emotionally exhausted to work on Def Leppard’s album. With a stack of songs in their pocket, the band moved to Hilversum, Holland, in August to begin the recording. Guitarists Collen and Steve Clark demolished the concept of the big riff, replacing the solid rock face with a complex construction of fine brickwork.Īs soon as the management and label heard “Animal”, they knew everything was going to be okay. And it set out the band’s stall big-time. The first song to be written to anything like completion was “Animal”. In classic ‘sixth member’ mode, Lange had already become part of the organisation and was happy to work on co-writing. Fortunately, they had Robert John ‘Mutt’ Lange on board, the producer who had got so much out of them in their two previous studio epics, High’n’Dry and Pyromania. We’d learned we couldn’t write on the road”. “We had absolutely nothing in the way of ideas. “We were scared,” singer Joe Elliott recounts. Waking up after another drunken night in the city, drummer Rick Allen observed: “This is hysteria!” And, boom, they were off… But no one can tell you how to achieve that. The pressures of success come from all directions – fans, management, your label, all need whatever you do next to be better than what you did last. To say they were worried would be an understatement. The band that started out in a spoon factory in Sheffield had a respectable count of massive US gigs and six million sales of 1983’s Pyromania to their name when they settled into a shared house in Dublin to start the grand cycle all over again. But it’s a good thing they didn’t, because the album that resulted from their very real battle against extinction turned out to be one of the classic British rock albums.īy February 1984 Def Leppard were already a big deal – well, in the USA anyway. Perhaps if they’d known exactly how much ‘whatever it took’ would turn out to be, they’d have knocked it on the head and got a job at B&Q. Def Leppard were under no illusions about what they wanted to do: they wanted to become the biggest band in the world, and were prepared to do whatever it took to achieve their ambition. ![]()
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