Def Leppard’s Early Days
Def Leppard formed in 1976 in Sheffield, England. They were part of a new wave of British heavy metal in the early 1980s. Their first album, On Through the Night, reached #15 in the UK and #51 in the United States, where it went platinum. The follow-up, 1981’s High ‘n’ Dry, peaked at #26 in the UK and #38 in the United States. It bested its predecessor in sales by going double platinum.
Their third album, 1983’s Pyromania, proved to be a commercial juggernaut. It “introduced a new form of highly polished, melodic heavy rock.” TB. It got to #18 in the UK and #2 in the United States where it went ten times platinum, thanks to heavy exposure on MTV with videos for “Photograph and “Rock of Ages.”
Delays in Making the Fourth Album
Def Leppard began work on an intended quick follow-up in late ’84, TB but were derailed on New Year’s Eve when drummer Rick Allen lost his arm in a car accident. To their credit, the group “stuck by their old mate,” 500 going on hiatus for most of 1985 TB and waiting for him to learn to play drums with a customized drum set built which allowed him to trigger fills with his feet. PR
During that time, they started producing an album with “Mutt” Lange, who’d produced Pyromania, which was to be named Animal Instinct. After Lange dropped out, the band enlisted Meat Loaf songwriter Jim Steinman. He, however, was more interested in a raw rock record while the band wanted a more pristine sound. The band then tried unsuccessfully to self-produce the album. WK
After Allen’s accident, work slowed, but the band stuck by their drummer’s plan “to return to the drum kit despite his disability, using a combination electronic/acoustic kit with a set of foot pedals that triggered…the hits he would have played with his left arm.” WK
Eventually, Lange returned, but sessions were delayed again when he suffered injuries from a car accident and then once more when singer Joe Elliott was hit with the mumps in 1986. WK
The Making of Hysteria
Lange was dissatisfied with what the band had done so far so they scrapped nearly all the oringla recordings and started again almost from scratch. AB They had a new name for the album suggested by Allen – Hysteria. RD Reportedly, Lange’s goal was to make the album “a hard rock version of Michael Jackson’s Thriller, in that every track was a potential hit single.” WK Like Pyromania, the members of the band were brought in separately to record. WK “The multiple vocal harmonies were enhanced by Lange’s techniques…[and] guitar parts were now focused more on emphasising melody than hard rock’s more basic and cliched riffs.” WK
The eventual release was “three years in the making at a cost of a cool million.” PR
The Album’s Reception
The bar had been set impossibly high with the success of Pyromania. The long delay also created some nervousness about whether the public would have moved on and not be interested in Def Leppard anymore. However, instead of flopping, the resulting album was “probably Def Leppard’s best album, and certainly their most successful.” AZ Not only that, “Hysteria pretty much sums up 80s hard rock: catchy, tuneful, and fun.” AZ “Where Pyromania had set the standard for polished, catchy pop-metal, Hysteria only upped the ante.” AM “It’s also one of the few albums from the period that doesn’t sound dated now.” AZ
“The strong pop hooks and ‘perfect’-sounding production of Hysteria may not appeal to die-hard heavy metal fans, but it isn’t heavy metal – it’s pop-metal, and arguably the best pop-metal ever recorded. Its blockbuster success helped pave the way for a whole new second wave of hair metal bands, while proving that the late-‘80s musical climate could also be very friendly to veteran hard rock acts, a lead many would follow in the next few years.” AM “Def Leppard may be remembered more for their hair than their music these days, but that’s more due to changing tastes than anything else. It’s still good.” AZ
Not surprisingly, “some critics dismissed the record as a stiff, mechanized pop sell-out.” AM While the album had “production value bleeding from its pores” ZG and was “dripping in clichés,” ZG its “unavoidably addictive hits” ZG showed that “few…pop-metal bands…could compete with Leppard’s sense of craft; certainly none had the pop songwriting savvy to produce seven chart singles from the same album.” AM
The Songs
Here are thoughts on individual songs.
“Women”
People may forget, though, what a slow burner it was. Tfirst U.S. single, Women, “confirmed Leppard was as heavy as ever.” RD However, when it peaked at a lowly #80, the forces behind the band had to be concerned. After all, the usual expectation is for each album’s singles to hit a little lower than its predecessors. However, Hysteria defied the odds.
“Animal”
In the U.K., Animal was the first single and went top ten. When it was released as the second U.S. single, it returned the band to more familiar territory – the top 20, where Pyromania singles “Photograph” and “Rock of Ages” had settled in as well.
“Hysteria”
Follow-up singles in the U.S. were even bigger. The title cut, Hysteria, got the band in the top ten for the first time stateside.
“Pour Some Sugar on Me”
“The glossy ‘Animal’ and ‘Hysteria’ built the momentum, then the strip-club anthem Pour Some Sugar on Me blew it sky high.” ARD It took the band all the way to #2 and, with the album nearly a year old, finally took the album to the top of the charts.
“Love Bites”
With the album showing no signs of letting up, the band released its fifth, and biggest, U.S. single – the #1 “bittersweet Love Bites,” RD “one of the few pop-metal ballads that doesn’t sound saccharine.” AZ
“Armageddon It”
Next up, “the tongue-in-cheek Armageddon It” RD gave the band another top 5 hit on the Billboard Hot 100.
“Rocket”
Finally, as the band’s seventh and final single, they released the “British glam rock tribute Rocket.” AM It landed the group in the top 20 once more. While blockbusters like Michael Jackson’s Thriller and Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. had made it seemingly normal to throw a half dozen or more singles at the charts over a couple of years, this was an unprecedented move for a more metal-oriented band. Def Leppard had become one of the elite.
Notes: A 2006 deluxe edition of the album added a second CD with the original B-sides and bonus tracks from the same era.
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