This is from Hit Parader, Nov '82
Joe Elliott sat quietly in the corner of Def Leppard's closet-sized dressing room trying his hardest to down a gallon-sized jug of Budweiser. The group had just finished their show at New York's Palladium Theater, and while the normally jaded Big Apple crowd had rewarded Leppard with a standing ovation, Elliott couldn't hide his disappointment over the evening's performance.
"We sounded like shit," he said with only the slightest hint of a smile. "We'll be lucky if they ever ask us back."
Just as the tall, stocky vocalist gulped down the last drop of brew, the dressing room door swung open and in walked AC/DC's Angus Young. The diminutive guitar demon casually popped open a can of suds, walked up to Elliott, and whispered something into his ear. In a matter of seconds Joe's attitude changed from sullen to joyous, as if some secret seal of approval had been stamped on the band's show.
Hours later, long after Young had departed and the band had escaped from their cramped dressing facilities, Elliott revealed what the magic words had been. "Angus told me that we remind him of AC/DC a few years back," Joe said with a grin that practically split his boyishly handsome face in half. "He said that if we keep working as hard as we are now, there'll be no stopping us. You know," he added almost shyly, "I think he's right."
As Elliott disappeared into the New York night in search of "a friendly little pub," he seemed to radiate with the belief that there may, indeed, be no way to stop Leppard's charge to the top of the hard rock hierarchy. In the three years since the release of their debut album, On Through The Night, Elliott, and band mates Rick Allen (drums), Rick Savage (bass), and Steve Clark and Pete Willis (guitars), have risen out of the London club circuit to become one of the hottest new heavy metal bands around. By employing a musical arsenal that features both sonic guitar thunder and melodic pop interludes, Leppard has proved, according to Elliott, "that we're more than just a bunch of bleedin' headbangers.
"We've tended to be lumped with every new hard rock band that's come along during the last few years," Joe explained. "That's not necessarily a compliment. Most of those acts couldn't carry our guitar straps. A lot of those groups look at rock and roll as a job; we look at it as fun. There's nothing in the world like playing in a band like ours," he added as he took another swig from a glass of his favorite brew.
"It's a great release for our energy, and it's also a great way to pick up girls. If you can't enjoy playing rock and roll you should be declared legally dead," Joe joked. "We've never been into that gloomy scene that Sabbath made famous. We prefer a more upbeat philosophy than the 'we're all gonna die' stuff that a lot of new bands seem to get off on. We've really tried to stress that upbeat quality on the new album."
On their latest release, Pyromania, the band has used their maturing songwriting and instrumental skills to prove that a hard rock group can still be "heavy" while avoiding what Ozzy Osbourne once called "the death, doom and destruction trilogy." New numbers such as "Rock 'til You Drop" and "Rock of Ages" reflect the band's belief that "Rock and roll is supposed to be fun."
"On the new album we have a lot of material that everybody should be ale to relate to and enjoy," Elliott stated. "I mean a song called 'Rock 'til You Drop' is pretty self-explanatory. When we recorded this album we tried to get ourselves as drunk as possible, then we turned the amps up as high as they'd go and let loose. That's not to say that we decided to only go full speed ahead; in fact, this is the most melodic album we've ever done. But we realized that the heart of our music is still high energy rock and roll, and that's the way we always want it to be. I don't think anyone can listen to Pyromania and not thing it's one hot album."
While many rock fans may assume that Def Leppard's rapid trip up the rock ladder has been a smooth and carefree journey, the band's recent history has actually been marred by a number of unforeseen difficulties. Following the release of On Through The Night in 1980, the group embarked on a hectic international tour that kept them on the road for much of the next year. When they finally returned to the studio for their second album High 'n' Dry, they discovered that their producer, 'Mutt' Lange, was already involved with two other projects -- AD/DC's Back in Black and Foreigner's 4. As Elliott explained, "We just didn't know how to handle either the situation with "Mutt" or, quite honestly, our own success.
"The results on High 'n' Dry were something of a mess," Joe explained. "It wasn't really a bad album, but it didn't capitalize on the strengths we had shown on the first record. That's why I consider Pyromania to be our 'real' second album. We've learned what our strengths are, and we've used them to our best advantage. On the last album, we actually had too much time to think about what we were going to do in the studio, and because of that we lost a lot of our spontaneity. We had finished touring and had almost all of the songs written, but with 'Mutt's' time divided up between a number of projects we just sat around kept re-writing all the material.
"On Pyromania 'Mutt' was able to give us his undivided attention," Joe continued. "We did a lot of the songs live in the studio, and we kept the overdubs to a bare minimum. What you hear on the record is exactly what we played. This album really shows what we're capable of doing. It's a very solid rock and roll album, but we've been able to incorporate a lot of melody into each song. I'm not saying it sounds like REO Speedwagon," he added with a look of disgust on his face, "but we feel that a little melody isn't going to hurt anybody."
On Pyromania Def Leppard has used their melodic sensibility to highlight the power of their metal attack. Yet the album's most intriguing numbers is their dirge-like 'mini-epic', "Die Hard The Hunter." Based on a story similar to that of the Academy Award winning movie, The Deer Hunter (which Elliott swears he's never seen), the song tells the tale of a soldier of fortune who can't adapt to civilization once the violence and mayhem of war has stopped.
When asked if the song was based on the experiences of anyone in the band, Elliott chuckled and said, "Thank goodness none of us has ever been in a war. Maybe the Queen should have sent us to the Falklands a few months back. We could have blasted the Argentines into submission with our guitars.
"Actually, the subject matter of 'Die Hard The Hunter' is very serious," he added. "While I've been told it has a number of similarities to The Deer Hunter, it's in no way a take-off on that picture. The story of a soldier returning from the war, yet still living the battle, was a great subject to write about, and I think we've done some of our best playing on it. It was one of the few numbers where we actually stayed sober during the recording."
Being sober isn't a favorite state for any of the Leppard members. While Elliott insisted that "sometimes our main goal is just to see how many brain cells we can kill in an evening," he also said that, "nobody in the band is an alcoholic."
"Drinking plays a very major role in this band," he said. "It's the only activity, aside from our love of rock and roll, that we all have in common. We're all into different things, but when it come to lifting a few pints down at the pub, that's one thing we all share. Sometimes a little shot gives you the courage needed to go on stage," he added with a grin. "There are those nights every once in a while when you just don't feel like going out there, and you need all the help you can get.
"We talk about that subject on the new album with a song called 'Stage Fright'," he continued. "It's one of my favorite tracks. It just lets everybody know that there's more to rock and roll than just booze and birds -- there's a serious side as well. In this band, we just try to get those serious things out of the way as quickly as possible so we can just get on with having a grand ol' time."