Classic Rock - The Complete Story of Def Leppard 2019

NEW INTERVIEWS REVIEWS HISTORY





FROM THE ARCHIVETHE COMPLETE STORY OF

















































40







years of






THE FULL




WILD RIDE!







THE ALBUMS. THE INTERVIEWS.

THE TRIUMPHS & THE

TRAGEDIES



and more














100% UNOFFICIAL Digital Edition DO YOU WANNA GET ROCKED? BEHIND THE SCENES LEPPARD SPEAK!




















FIRST EDITION From Sheffield to the world: Pyromania & Hysteria: the inside story Up close and personal with
Joe Elliott and co.
the birth of the legend
of Leppard’s 80s masterpieces



Future PLC 4th Floor, The Emerson Building,
4-8 Emerson Street, London SE1 9DU
Email [email protected]
Twitter @ClassicRockMag
You can also find us on facebook.com under Classic Rock
Def Leppard bookazine
Editor Dave Everley
Art Editor Big John
Editor in Chief Scott Rowley
Head Of Design Brad Merrett
Classic Rock Editorial
Editor Sian Llewellyn
Art Editor Darrell Mayhew
Features Editor Polly Glass
Production Editor Paul Henderson
Reviews Editor Ian Fortnam
Online Editor Fraser Lewry
News/Live Editor Dave Ling
Advertising
Media packs are available on request
Commercial Director Clare Dove
[email protected]
Advertising Manager Kate Colgan
[email protected]
Account Manager Helen Hughes
[email protected]
Account Manager Jason Harwood
[email protected]
International Licensing
Classic Rock is available for licensing. Contact the Licensing
team to discuss partnership opportunities.
Head of Print Licensing Rachel Shaw
[email protected]
Subscriptions
Email enquiries [email protected]
UK orderline & enquiries 0344 848 2852
Overseas order line and enquiries +44 (0)344 848 2852 n 2001, long before Mötley Crüe movie The Dirt hit our screens in all its bodily
Online orders & enquiries www.myfavouritemagazines.co.uk/ fluid-splattered glory, Def Leppard had their own biopic. Sadly, Hysteria: The Def
classic-rock-magazine-subscription/
Leppard Story was a dismal failure on every front, from the wigs on the hapless actors’
Head of subscriptions Sharon Todd
Circulation
Head of Newstrade Tim Mathers bonces downward. This truly was Hysterical, and not in a good way…
Production I If any band deserve the proper Hollywood treatment, it’s Leppard. Their incredible
Head of Production Mark Constance
Production Project Manager Clare Scott success - from the highs of the 80s to their current status as arena and stadium fillers the
Advertising Production Manager Joanne Crosby
Digital Editions Controller Jason Hudson world over - is matched only by their astounding story.
Production Manager Keely Miller
If you’re reading this, you’ll know it by now: that rocket ride that took them from the
Management
Managing Director Aaron Asadi backstreets of Sheffield to US superstardom and the backlash that followed; the monstrous
Brand Director (Music) Stuart Williams
Commercial Finance Director Dan Jotcham success of Pyromania and the car crash that cost drummer Rick Allen his arm; the even more
monstrous success of Hysteria and the tragic death of guitarist Steve Clark; the commercial
Printed by William Gibbons & Sons Ltd
troubles of the mid-90s and their astounding mid-00s bounce-back.
Distributed by Marketforce, 5 Churchill Place, Canary Wharf,
London, E14 5HU www.marketforce.co.uk Put it down to Sheffield steel, northern grit or whatever other cliché you want to trot out,
Tel: 0203 787 9060
but Def Leppard are survivors. Yet there’s way more to them than just a good movie waiting
We are committed to only using magazine paper which is derived from
responsibly managed, certified forestry and chlorine-free manufacture. to be made. None of what they’ve achieved would have happened without the music. Stone
The paper in this magazine was sourced and produced from sustainable
cold classics such as Photograph, Animal, Pour Some Sugar On Me and Let’s Get Rocked are the
managed forests, conforming to strict environmental and socioeconomic
standards. The manufacturing paper mill holds full FSC (Forest Stewardship
Council) certification and accreditation. latterday equivalent of the songs that Joe Elliott grew up listening to, as much a part of the
All contents © 2019 Future Publishing Limited or published under licence. All fabric of rock’n’roll as Bowie or Queen or Slade or even the Sex Pistols. Other bands might
rights reserved. No part of this magazine may be used, stored, transmitted or
reproduced in any way without the prior written permission of the publisher. have the kudos, but Def Leppard have the people’s vote.
Future Publishing Limited (company number 2008885) is registered in England
and Wales. Registered office: Quay House, The Ambury, Bath BA1 1UA. All We’ve brought all of this together in this special collection of exclusive interviews and
information contained in this publication is for information only and is, as far as features taken from the pages of Classic Rock magazine. Inside, you’ll find the stories
we are aware, correct at the time of going to press. Future cannot accept any
behind the landmark albums and the greatest songs, as well as exclusive interviews with Joe
responsibility for errors or inaccuracies in such information. You are advised to
contact manufacturers and retailers directly with regard to the price of products/
services referred to in this publication. Apps and websites mentioned in this Elliott, Rick Savage, Rick Allen, Phil Collen and Vivian Campbell. As the man himself says,
publication are not under our control. We are not responsible for their contents
or any other changes or updates to them. This magazine is fully independent and let’s get rocked…
not affiliated in any way with the companies mentioned herein. If you submit
material to us, you warrant that you own the material and/or have the necessary
rights/permissions to supply the material and you automatically grant Future
and its licensees a licence to publish your submission in whole or in part in any/
all issues and/or editions of publications, in any format published worldwide
and on associated websites, social media channels and associated products.
Any material you submit is sent at your own risk and, although every care is
taken, neither Future nor its employees, agents, subcontractors or licensees
shall be liable for loss or damage. We assume all unsolicited material is for
publication unless otherwise stated, and reserve the right to edit, amend, adapt
Dave Everley,
all submissions.
Editor








Future plc is a public company Chief executive Zillah Byng-Thorne
quoted on Non-executive chairman Richard Huntingford
the London Stock Chief financial officer Penny Ladkin-Brand
Exchange (symbol: FUTR)
www.futureplc.com Tel +44 (0)1225 442 244

CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM 3



Features





06 Before They Were Famous
In 1979, journalist Geoff Barton travelled to Sheffield to watch a promising new
band named Def Leppard. This is what he saw.

08 The Story Of The NWOBHM
A bunch of snotty young British bands would change the sound of metal forever –
and this is how they did it.
22 Joe Elliott Q&A
Up close and personal with the man at the mike.

34 On Through The Night
Partying with Bon Scott and sleeping in John Lennon’s bedroom: how Leppard
made their classic debut album.
38 High ’N’ Dry
Enter super-producer Mutt Lange – and superstardom.

44 Rick Savage Q&A
The beating heart of Def Leppard looks back on his four decades with
Sheffield’s finest.

54 Pyromania
Light the blue touch paper and stand back: how Leppard’s third album turned
them into megastars and changed the face of rock.
58 The Unreleased LP
Def Leppard enlisted Jim Steinman to produce the follow-up to Pyromania.
What could go wrong? Everything, it turned out…
62 Rick Allen Q&A
Up close and personal with the invincible man.
70 Hysteria
Four years, one near-fatal car-crash and a whole lot of heartache in the making.
But it would prove to be Leppard’s magnum opus.
76 Mutt Lange
Producer, mentor, man of mystery – just who is Def Leppard’s ‘sixth member’?

82 The Story Behind Pour
Some Sugar On Me
Inside the tongue-in-cheek anthem that became a strip-club staple.
84 Steve Clark
A tribute to the late, great guitarist, by the people who knew him best.
88 Phil Collen Q&A
From glam rock tart to guitarist in one of rock’s biggest bands – yet he still can’t
afford to wear shirts.
98 Adrenalize
How tragedy and sheer determination shaped what would become the hard
rock era’s last great hurrah.
104 The Freddie Mercury
Tribute Concert
The biggest gig since Live Aid – and Leppard were right there in the thick of it.
108 Leppard In The 90s
It was the decade where the wheels started to wobble. The solution? Knock it
down and rebuild it from scratch.
112 Vivian Campbell Q&A
How do you fill the shoes of the late Steve Clark? The man who faced that task
reveals all.

122 Songs From The Sparkle
Lounge
Joe Elliott on the album that reinvented Leppard for the new millennium.
126 On The Road
Dateline 2015: we join a fully amped-up Leppard as they cross America on their
biggest tour for years.
132 Buyer’s Guide
From the fresh-faced debut to 2015’s acclaimed comeback, this is the best
of Def Leppard.

134 40 Years Of Def Leppard
Joe, Sav, Rick, Phil and Viv look back on four decades of mayhem, monstrous
sales and fulfilling the ultimate rock’n’roll dream.
ROSS HALFIN

“Welcome to the show…”








In 1979, Sounds journalist t’s Tuesday, June 5, 1979. Joe Elliott has just 54p!). And so it is that those academic
picked me up from Sheffield train station in comparisons fade rapidly and the atmosphere
and early Def Leppard a battered white Ford Escort van. After a becomes warm, comfortable and more than
champion Geoff Barton brief stop at Joe’s parents’ house for tea and just a little hazy. Especially after the passage of all

travelled to a Sheffield I biscuits, we arrive at Crookes Working these years…
Men’s Club – the scene of tonight’s gig by a An incredibly fresh-faced Def Leppard burst on
working men’s club fledgling Def Leppard. stage at about 10pm and make an immediate
to witness the birth of The club initially reminds me of my old school impression. Their music is high-powered heavy
dining room: unremarkable, high-ceilinged, lots of rock played to a degree of tightness usually only
the legend… light-coloured wooden tables and chairs, little achieved after a half-dozen gruelling American
cliques of people huddled haphazardly around. tours. Their recently released, independently
Picture: Ross Halfin
But then again you could never buy a scotch and produced Bludgeon Riffola EP, good as it is, doesn’t
Coke for 30p at my school (let alone a double for even hint at their live dynamism.

6 CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM

“The Leps cavort




around the stage with



wild abandon, belying




their tender years.”
















































































Ready, set, go: the youthful
Def Leppard onstage in
Sheffield in 1979.



Kicking off with the punchy Glad I’m Alive, the heavy metal songs,” Joe Elliott says, announcing The rest of the set passes by in a flash: Beyond
Leps cavort around the stage with wild abandon, the masterful When The Walls Came Tumbling Down. The Temple, Sorrow Is A Woman, Emerald (out-
belying their tender years by exuding confidence This leads into Answer To The Master, which in turn Lizzying the original once again), Heat Street, Good
and professionalism. acts as a scene-setter for the evening’s highlight, Morning Freedom, ending with my second- favourite
A superbly executed cover of Bob Seger’s Rosalie Overture. So much stronger than the EP version, the number of the set, Wasted (“I thought you might
(made famous by Thin Lizzy, natch) follows, and song is given the full-on magnum-opus treatment. like that one,” says Joe Elliott afterwards, “it
before you have time to catch your breath Ride Into Indeed, its words – ‘The sun, the moon, the darkened reminds me of Kiss”) and returning to play Getcha
The Sun erupts from the PA, the hoary old ‘driving sky/The morning dew reflecting in my eye/The rising mist, Rocks Off as the encore.
at high speed’ lyrical chestnut sounding fresh and the dampened earth/They’re just reminders of what life’s Def Leppard leave the stage for the final time. Joe
alive once more: ‘It’s such an easy feelin’ with the wind in worth’ – recall the bleak optimism of Rush’s classic Elliott’s mum comes over to me with a glum face
my hair/I’m burnin’ up the rubber and I don’t really care/ 2112. Of the Leps’ future pop-rockin’ direction, and says: “I don’t know how you stood the noise.”
Cos I’m riding into the sun.’ there is not a sign. You’ve probably gathered that But at the same time you couldn’t help but notice
“This next song is about destruction, like all by now. the twinkle of excitement in her eyes.

CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM 7

The Birth Of The

























In the late 70s, the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal saw a new breed of bands giving rock

music a steel-booted kick up the backside – and Def Leppard were right in the heart of it all.

Words: Dave Everley Photos: Ross Halfin































































































8 CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM

CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM 9

ess than a decade after it had been
forged in the white heat of the late 60s,
British rock was in trouble. Its original
pioneers had either split up, lost touch
L with reality or were spiralling into
drug-addled irrelevance, their thunder stolen by
both a wave of platinum-plated American bands
and the incendiary punk movement.
It may have been down, but British rock
wasn’t quite out. As the 1970s hurtled towards
its conclusion, a new wave of heavy bands from
all corners of the United Kingdom sparked off
a grass-roots revolution, rewriting the rule book
on how things could be done and giving their
more established counterparts a shot in the arm.
Leppard’s Joe Elliott and
Maiden’s Steve Harris. Its leading lights would go on to achieve the
unthinkable, but even the bands who didn’t and
got left behind – the foot soldiers, also-rans and
no-hopers – were heroes in their own way.
For a few glorious years in the late 70s and
early 80s, these small islands were the epicentre
The main players in the birth of the NWOBHM. of the most vibrant, exciting and groundbreaking
scene around. This is the story of how British rock
heavied up and changed the world once again…
Geoff Barton Ashley Goodall
Legendary Sounds (and current Classic Rock) Former EMI Records A&R man. Signed
journalist. The first person to use the phrase Iron Maiden and helped put together the
‘New Wave Of British Heavy Metal’ in print. groundbreaking Metal For Muthas compilation. The 1960s marked the dawn of the rock
era. Pop’s simple attractions had given way
Biff Byford Rob Halford to something harder, heavier and more
Barnsley-born Saxon singer. Judas Priest singer, and the man grown up, and the branches of the musical
Has fronted the band since who helped give metal its iconic tree began to spread wildly: blues rock,
they formed as Son Of A Bitch leather uniform. psychedelia, West Coast rock, East Coast rock,
in the mid-70s. country rock, heavy metal. A generation of
Steve Harris impressionable would-be musicians were
Fast Eddie Clarke Founder and driving force behind paying avid attention.
Former Motörhead guitarist Iron Maiden, the most successful
and sole surviving member NWOBHM band of them all. Fast Eddie Clarke (ex-Motörhead): Playing
of the classic line-up. Formed music was always the thing for me. I started when
Fastway after his departure Bruce [Bruce] Dickinson. Neal Kay I was twelve or thirteen, started to see Eric Clapton
in 1982. DJ, tastemaker, compere and just wanted to do it. Then Hendrix comes
and founder of legendary along and blew me fucking head off.
Jess Cox north London rock mecca the
Original singer with Whitley Heavy Metal Soundhouse. Biff Byford (Saxon): I grew up in the 1960s.
Bay NWOBHM pioneers I listened to all the pop groups – the Rolling Stones,
the Tygers Of Pan Tang. Rick Savage The Beatles, The Kinks. My mum was a pianist,
Resurrected groundbreaking Def Leppard bassist and my friend was in a blues band. We’d watch
label Neat Records in the and founder member. him play and I decided to learn the guitar a little bit.
early 90s. That’s when I wanted to get involved in music.
Jess Cox. Brian Tatler
Andy Dawson Guitarist and founder of Joe Elliott (Def Leppard): The first artist that
Guitarist with Mansfield band Diamond Head, whose self- I got into was Marc Bolan from T.Rex. Everything
Savage, whose track Let It Loose released Lightning To The he did, the whole catalogue. I wanted to be Marc
was covered by Metallica on an Nations album was one of the Bolan. David Bowie when he did Starman on Top Of
early demo. NWOBHM’s early successes. The Pops – that blew me and everybody away.

Bruce Dickinson Thunderstick Steve Harris (Iron Maiden): I used to listen to
Leather-lunged former Samson Also known as Barry Graham The Beatles and The Who and stuff like that. Then
singer (also known as Bruce Purkis, ski-masked former I started getting into more rock stuff, and that led
Bruce). Later replaced Paul Samson (and, briefly, Iron to Wishbone Ash and then on to prog. Those early
Di’Anno in Iron Maiden. Brian Tatler. Maiden) drummer. New L Genesis albums gave me goosebumps.
L
album Something Wicked
KK Downing This Way Comes is out soon.
Long-time Judas Priest guitarist. Left the band BRUCE DICKINSON: NEIL ZLOZOWER/ATLASICONS.COM; JESS COX: REX: TATLER ROSS HALFIN
in 2011 and has since opened a golf course. Tommy Vance For many of these aspirant musicians, music
Late Radio 1 DJ and presenter of Radio 1’s The offered an escape from the drudgery of real
Joe Elliott Friday Rock Show. AKA The Voice Of Rock. life, if not a direct route to fame and riches.
Singer and founder member of Def Leppard, T
T
the first of the NWOBHM bands to make it Tony Wilson Rob Halford (Judas Priest): We all came from
big in America. Creator and producer of The Friday Rock Show. tough working-class backgrounds. Walsall and
West Bromwich were pretty bleak. We could all

10 CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM

Saxon: “If people didn’t like
our songs we’d bin them
and write some more.”


relate to the need and the want of trying to break Fast Eddie Clarke: The prog rock lot had gone
out of an unpleasant cycle. a bit over the fucking top. The Yes’s and Genesis’s
By the mid-70s, things had started to change. had lost sight of everything. They all had servants
Fast Eddie Clarke: I come from a working-class For some bands, the lure of America proved and Rolls-Royces. I just thought: “Fuck off you
background. I never thought I’d make money out irresistible and they spent their time touring silly c**ts.”
of music. My dream was to play my guitar and there, hoovering up money and whatever else
earn enough to eat and live. If I could do that I’d was available. For others, years of success had Brian Tatler: I loved Pink Floyd to death, but
be happy for the rest of my life. bred complacency, arrogance or both. I couldn’t get tickets to see them, and if you
did get tickets then you’d be among ten
Biff Byford: In Barnsley, your main job thousand other people in a great big hall.
choice was going down the pit. Mining was At least in the pubs or clubs there was
a good living, it wasn’t awful. But I wanted “I DON’T THINK THERE WERE THAT MANY some excitement, some sweat.
to see the world a bit, meet some girls.
GREAT ROCK BANDS AROUND. A LOT OF THE Andy Dawson (Savage): Things were
Joe Elliott: The ambition was just to be in BIG GUYS HAD RUN OUT OF STEAM BY getting a bit tame, and then punk came
a rock band. It’s like: “I don’t want to work in SEVENTY-SIX OR SEVENTY-SEVEN.” along and kicked everybody up the arse.
a factory all my life.”
Ashley Goodall (EMI A&R man)
Rob Halford: We never really sat down
as a band and said: “What’s the battle plan?” Like Fast Eddie Clarke: I went to see Led Zeppelin British punk was born in the underground
any great thing that comes out of Britain, it had at Earls Court in 1975. Fuck me, there was clubs of London but rapidly spread outwards,
some apprenticeship, some dedication behind it. a forty-five minute drum solo, and Jimmy Page lighting up the cities of Britain like a series
was fucking about with his guitar for an hour. of detonations. Its plastered-on snarl and
Fast Eddie Clarke: None of the musicians back You’d sit there and think: “I didn’t fucking come nihilistic world view was the antithesis of
then wanted stardom or big fucking wads of here to see this.” everything that had gone before. Love it or
money, they just wanted to play their music and hate it, punk had to happen.
make a crust. When I joined Motörhead it was just Ashley Goodall (EMI A&R man):
something to do. We didn’t want to become stars, I don’t think there were that Brian Tatler: I hated the Bay
it was just a chance to play. many great rock bands around. City Rollers and The Osmonds
A lot of the big guys had run and all that stuff, so when the Sex
Brian Tatler (Diamond Head): When I started out of steam by ’76 or ’77: Pistols appeared on TV I thought
Diamond Head in 1976, the dream was just to Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin it was great. I could play like Steve
make records and enjoy it. I had no idea how you a little bit. Queen were sort Jones, whereas I couldn’t play
got from forming a band with your friends to of carrying on, being quite like Ritchie Blackmore. I was like,
playing something huge like Wembley Stadium. pop, but they had gone out “Let’s not hang around – these
It seemed impossible. of favour a bit. guys are doing it.”

CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM 11

Jess Cox (Tygers Of Pan Tang): Most of the Fast Eddie Clarke: Punk was refreshing. Fast Eddie Clarke: It was a very British form of
punk bands were awful, but some were good. We Especially when they said: “Fuck off everybody.” music. The fucking Americans weren’t coming
were well into The Clash, the Pistols, stuff like The I’d been saying that for years. up with anything, anyway.
Tubes. But we all loved Led Zeppelin and Black
Sabbath as well. Brian Tatler: Punk brought things back down Andy Dawson: Saxon were going strong well
to the grass roots, didn’t it? You could go and see before the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal
Biff Byford: We didn’t really get on with the a band in the pub. The New Wave Of British Heavy kicked in.
fashion – the bloody safety pins through the Metal adopted the do-it-yourself attitude.
noses. We did take on the studs, though. There Biff Byford: We were playing quite a few shows
were a lot of studded jackets around at the time. with a lot of youngsters in the crowd. It was quite
We nicked that and turned it into our own style, an aggressive stage show. There was a lot running
as did Motörhead. Punk may have pitched itself as the sworn around and shouting. I think we took that from the
enemy of the ‘dinosaur’ punk bands.
Fast Eddie Clarke: bands, but it had the
Motörhead were accepted unforeseen side effect Fast Eddie Clarke: I thought Saxon were fucking
by all the punks. We had “NONE OF THE MUSICIANS of galvanising some blinding. They were a great band, they had great
long hair, but we wore BACK THEN WANTED STARDOM of the more clued-in tunes, and what a great bunch of guys. When they
leather jackets and we longhairs. Motörhead, supported us on the Bomber tour I used to go out
played loud and fast. We OR BIG WADS OF MONEY, THEY formed in London and sneak into the crowd to watch one of their
were in the same family. JUST WANTED TO PLAY THEIR in 1976 by former tunes, See The Light Shining, every night.
MUSIC AND MAKE A CRUST.” Hawkwind bassist
Rob Halford: The press Lemmy, were one such Biff Byford: We were always chasing a record
just said: “Fuck off, heavy Fast Eddie Clarke group. Barnsley’s Son deal. We’d send cassette tapes off to people. If they
metal, it’s over.” We said: Of A Bitch – soon to didn’t like one lot of songs, we’d throw them in the
“No it’s not.” We saw that punk was gonna be change their name to Saxon – were another. bin and write some more songs.
a short-lived experience. I found it very insulting
that someone would dismiss not only the bands Fast Eddie Clarke: The audiences at our early gigs
but also the fans. So that made us even stronger. were disenchanted rockers. They had long hair and
leather jackets but they didn’t like the punk thing. Around the same time, a gang of streetwise
Thunderstick (Samson): Punk came along They were into Deep Purple and Black Sabbath East Londoners were making a name for
and swept everything away. The first time back in the day, but they’d fucked off to America. themselves in the pubs and clubs of the
I saw it, I thought: “These guys can’t play their capital, most notably the Ruskin Arms in
instruments.” But then I quickly realised that it Biff Byford: Motörhead were flying the flag. Manor Park. Their name was Iron Maiden,
wasn’t all to do with just playing the material. They were big way before us. They were the and they were led with gritty ambition by
It was about a lifestyle. ones busting down the doors. bassist Steve Harris.


























































Samson with Bruce
Bruce (left) and
Thunderstick SAMSON: GETTY
(second from right).


12 CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM

Def Leppard: the
really early days.


Rob Verschoyle (childhood friend of Steve Neal Kay: Steve and [Maiden singer] Paul Di’Anno Joe Elliott: We were a bunch of kids destined for
Harris): I met Steve when I was twelve and he brought it to me on one of the week nights. Steve factory life. We knew the opportunities we were
was ten. The difference between the rest of us and said: “’Ere, mate, give this a listen when you’ve got being given. We were not going to screw this up.
Steve was dedication. He’d be playing bass all the a minute.” I said: “You’ll be lucky. I’ve got millions
time. He became a trainee draughtsman, but he of tapes to listen to.” But that night I put it in the Rick Savage: We were teenagers, and we had this
gave that up to concentrate on playing. His whole player and listened to it. I thought: “Fuck me, this belief that anything was possible. When that way
life was like that. Anything he did, he went at it is going all the way.” I phoned Steve up at two am of thinking is moulded into the group at that very
a hundred per cent. and said: “You’re going to be really rich, because early stage, it never really leaves you.
what you’ve got here is nothing short of brilliant.”
Steve Harris: I wouldn’t say I’m a control freak.
I just like to get things done. Steve Harris: He played it at the club and people
began voting for it as In January 1979, Def
Neal Kay (DJ/founder, Heavy Metal their favourite track. We Leppard released their
Soundhouse): Since 1975 I’d been building up started getting into these self-titled debut EP. With
a small venue in Kingsbury as a heavy metal Sounds charts, which were “THINGS WERE GETTING A copies glued together by
discotheque. It was known as The Bandwagon in compiled from requests Joe Elliott and his mum,
the Prince Of Wales pub, but I rechristened it the there. That’s what got the BIT TAME, AND THEN PUNK it was available via mail
Heavy Metal Soundhouse. The main room held ball rolling for Maiden. CAME ALONG AND KICKED order and at gigs, costing
about seven hundred people, and we had a fuckin’ EVERYBODY UP THE ARSE.” the princely sum of £1.
ginormous sound system. I kept badgering Geoff Biff Byford: We played
Barton at Sounds to come down, because I knew it some universities with Iron Andy Dawson (Savage) Biff Byford: Def Leppard
was unique, and a great press story. It took a long Maiden, supporting a band did the EP and sold it in
time to convince him but in the end he came. called Nutz. The people who booked it said they’d Sounds. I like that early stuff. It was killer.
never seen bands go down so well that sounded so
Geoff Barton (writing in Sounds, August crap. We quite liked that. Joe Elliott: We were just a bunch of teenagers
1978): “The decor resembles Dodge City, messing around, doing what we felt was right. But
American B-movie Western style but, with Getcha Rocks Off did have a vibe about it that was
alternating flashing lights/darkness, your eyes above and beyond what everyone else seemed to
never really adjust to notice that much detail. One hundred and fifty miles up the M1 in be doing. I think there was a good reason we got
The Bandwagon and the music that’s played there Sheffield, another equally ambitious group the deal that hundreds of other bands couldn’t
is very much a present day reality, no matter what of youngsters had their eyes firmly set on seem to get at the time.
the fashion pundits might tell you. And to me, and rock stardom. Singer Joe Elliott, bassist Rick
a goodly number of other punters, it’s like a little Savage and drummer Tony Kenning had Andy Dawson: Everybody I knew went out
bit of heaven on earth.” formed the band Atomic Mass while still in and brought that EP. There was a rock disco
their mid-teens. By the time on Friday, and that would be
Neal Kay: After Geoff Barton’s double-page they played their first gig, in played every time.
spread in Sounds, suddenly all these demo tapes a school canteen, they had
started arriving from oppressed bands who changed the band’s name to Joe Elliott: That naiveté can
couldn’t get out. Among these tapes was the Def Leppard. really drive you. And we weren’t
Iron Maiden demo. stupid. We learned our craft from
Biff Byford: Def Leppard were listening to other people. We were
Steve Harris: We did a four-track demo and gave very young. They were four or students of Pete Townshend and
it to Neal Kay. five years younger than we were. Ray Davies and Plant and Page

CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM 13





and Lennon and McCartney. We knew a good The voice of rock radio:
song when we heard one – and we just tried to DJ Tommy Vance.
rip off as many of ’em as we could.


Geoff Barton: After much phone-call badgering,
Joe Elliott enticed me up to Sheffield in June 1979.


Joe Elliott: The first time Geoff Barton came to
see us play was at Crookes Working Men’s Club
in Sheffield. I picked him up at the train station
in my van – a two-seater so you could throw shit
in the back.


Geoff Barton: I was bowled over. They put on
a hugely impressive performance for the cap- TOMMY VANCE: REX
wearing, ferret-bothering audience. A subsequent
double-page feature in Sounds, plus
strong support from local station
Radio Hallam, helped secure them
a contract with Phonogram.
Thunderstick: Samson was the
Fast Eddie Clarke: Def Leppard first band I joined that actually
I never really got along with. had a manager. We got a retainer
I know them now, but they wage, which was pretty good. We
weren’t really my cup of tea back used to rehearse in a farmer’s shed,
then. They were like a girly band, with all these rotting vegetables in
trying to appeal to girls. it. It had one power point that we’d
run everything off.

Jess Cox: We were just out to make a glorious
The media was so enamoured with punk that it racket. We had no idea how the hell you structure
failed to notice this new movement springing a song. If you listen to some of our early tracks,
up under its nose. All around the country, new you’ll find that there’s four bars here and seven
bands were appearing at a weekly rate. In the bars there.
north-east there were the Tygers Of Pan Tang,
Raven and Fist. Scotland had Holocaust. The Biff Byford: We were playing really fast stuff
East Midlands had Witchfynde and Savage, – it was all Never Surrender and Stand Up And Be
while the West Midlands was represented by Counted. Just getting out on the streets, that was
Diamond Head, the West Country had Jaguar. our message in those days.
London had Samson, Angel Witch, Girlschool
and, of course, Iron Maiden. And that was just Jess Cox: We had drainpipe jeans and fringes.
the tip of the iceberg. I know that sounds hilarious now, but it was a big
deal at the time, because flares were in and you
Ashley Goodall: The punk thing was starting had to have your hair parted in the middle.
to get boring, to be honest. I noticed there were
a lot of kids going to heavy rock events. There was Thunderstick: The mask came about because Rock Show on Radio 1 since 1973, but they decided
a bigger audience at The Bandwagon than there most drummers were faceless. They were hidden that Fluff was too old for the job, and he left and
was at clubs like The Marquee. behind kits. So I thought: “I’ll create a faceless went off to Capital Radio. I said: “Well, we need
drummer.” I couldn’t give it a name of Barry to find somebody else to do another rock show.”
Andy Dawson: Bands like Thin Lizzy, UFO and Graham Purkis, because then it would be a bit I decided that Tommy Vance was the best option,
the Scorpions seemed so far away. They seemed rubbish. So that’s how Thunderstick came about. against the better judgment of Derek Chinnery, the
other-wordly. But then you’d see some of these controller of Radio 1.
bands playing your local venue, and you started
to think: “Maybe we can Joe Elliott: At the time, there were local radio
do it as well.” Even the stuffed stations that had their own rock show. But this
shirts at the BBC was the only one on national radio. So when
Jess Cox: What made “PUNK BROUGHT THINGS BACK couldn’t ignore the you tuned in to listen to Tommy, you knew you
us want to be in a band? DOWN THE GRASS ROOTS. YOU musical shifts that were in for an education.
I guess the answer were happening. In
is that it was easy to COULD GO AND SEE A BAND IN THE November 1978, Tommy Vance (speaking in 2002): The
meet girls. PUB. THE NWOBHM ADOPTED THE Radio 1 launched overriding memory of the Rock Show was that
DO-IT-YOURSELF ATTITUDE.” The Friday Rock Show, I was working for an audience that appreciated it,
Biff Byford: There presented by gravel- they liked it and were grateful for the fact I liked
were tons of gigs, Brian Tatler voiced DJ Tommy it and wanted to play it. But it wasn’t just me,
tons of girls. Vance. Airing at because I had a superb producer, Tony Wilson.
10pm every Friday, it was essential listening
Andy Dawson: A lot of bands were still playing for any self-regarding rock fan who wanted to Tony Wilson: I had completely free rein, because
covers. We used to do a set that would be half hear the lastet cutting-edge band. nobody in the management knew or cared what we
made up of songs from Live And Dangerous and were doing. They were just happy to have someone
half from Strangers In The Night. Then we started Tony Wilson (Friday Rock Show producer): who was interested enough to do something like
introducing our own songs. Alan Freeman had been presenting the Saturday that, as long as we didn’t cause any outrage.

14 CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM

Girlschool.





















































Judas Priest:
defending the faithful


Tony Wilson: People say it was quite influential. Biff Byford: It really took us by surprise, how Thunderstick: I got the front cover of Sounds, with
We did get large mailbags of post every week, and popular we became very quickly. that edition where the phrase The New Wave Of
that was an indicator that people were listening. British Heavy Metal was coined.
I think it was one of the ways for people to hear Neal Kay: Probably the most significant gig I did
music and engage with the new rock movement, at The Music Machine was when I put Samson, Biff Byford: We kept getting little reviews in
and they did. Iron Maiden and Angel Witch on in May 1979. Sounds and Melody Maker. They kept doing little
reviews about us. But it really started to happen
Joe Elliott: He may not be regarded as an Thunderstick: When we played The Music when Geoff Barton came to see us and a did a huge
innovator in the same way as, say, John Peel, but for Machine for the very first time, I couldn’t believe two-page piece on us in Sounds.
all rock fans in Britain at the time [Tommy Vance’s] the amount of people that came through the door.
show was massively important. He’s never been Some of the fans had been laying in wait, waiting Bruce Dickinson (Samson): NWOBHM was
replaced, and he never can be. for punk to run its course. Once they had done, a fiction, really, an invention of Geoff Barton and
they came up and pledged allegiance to the New Sounds. It was a cunning ruse to boost circulation.
Wave Of British Heavy Metal. Having said that, it did represent a lot of bands
that were utterly ignored by the mainstream
Across the country, things were beginning Geoff Barton (writing in Sounds): “The media. Because of that it became real and people
to heat up. Aside from the release of Def band, dressed in cheesecloth shirts and loon got behind it.
Leppard’s debut EP, 1979 saw the glorious pants, tossed their long hair, pouted, posed
one-two of Motörhead’s Overkill and Bomber, and punched their firsts into the air after each Brian Tatler: After the Sounds piece, you
as well as the debut album from Saxon. agonising guitar solo.” suddenly thought: “Okay, there’s other bands
around the country doing what we’re doing,
Fast Eddie Clarke: We didn’t know we were Alan Lewis (editor, Sounds): I coined they’re the same age.” We end up travelling to
making these great albums at the time, but we NWOBHM (New Wave Of British Heavy Metal) Leeds or Newcastle or London. Suddenly our
loved ’em to bits. Overkill was absolutely fantastic. as a front-page headline. But it was sort of an horizons were opened.
We got a new lease of life, and it continued into in-joke. We were always hailing something or
Bomber. We were just fucking cooking like fuck. other as ‘The New Wave Of…’

CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM 15

Joe Elliott: “We were
such young kids.”











































Rob Halford and then-
Sounds journalist
Geoff Barton.


Thanks to the business Ashley Goodall: Iron Maiden stood out because Joe Elliott: We had the time of our lives making
acumen of their they’d taken on some of the punk ethos, which On Through The Night. We were such young kids
new manager, Rod was to do your own thing, put your own record – Rick Allen was fifteen, I was nineteen – and
Smallwood, Iron out, make your own life. Maybe they borrowed we were recording our first album at Tittenhurst
Maiden were jostling some of that from the punk bands. Park, where John Lennon lived before he sold
with Def Leppard for it to Ringo. And I drew the long straw – I got
the position of the Steve Harris: We decided to release The Lennon’s old bedroom. The view was amazing.
NWOBHM’s top dogs. Soundhouse Tapes (in November 1979) because
we’d do really well at gigs, then afterwards there’d Biff Byford: 1980 was a big year for us and for the
Ashley Goodall: I think you have to differentiate be all these fans asking where they could buy one heavy metal genre in general. Everything was just
between Def Leppard and Iron Maiden. Def of our records. When we told them there wasn’t right. There was a massive groundswell and a lot
Leppard had a more American angle; Maiden any yet they couldn’t believe it. They’d seen the of young fans were getting into metal.
had a punk ethos about them, though the were charts in Sounds and assumed we must already
definitely a rock band. They had that street-y, have a record deal of some kind, but we didn’t. Joe Elliott: On Through The Night did pretty well
London attitude. And I think that’s when we really got the idea for us. We sold out Sheffield City Hall, it went
of putting the demo out as an actual record. Top 20 in the UK. But we were a work in progress.
Paul Di’Anno (Iron Maiden, speaking in 1980): Compared to the first Boston album, the first
We still want to stay as close Zeppelin album, the first Van Halen album, it’s
as possible to the kids who got Wycombe Wanderers to their Chelsea.
us up here in the first place. By the end of 1979 and
I don’t want people to start “EVERYBODY WANTED into 1980, the NWOBHM Ashley Goodall: There was a studio in EMI that
muttering: “Oh look, there’s THEIR NEW WAVE OF gathered pace. Every week, wasn’t too expensive, so I thought why don’t we
so-and-so from Iron Maiden a new single appeared from get everybody in there and do a good, rough-
there. Shall we talk to him, BRITISH HEAVY METAL some hitherto unknown and-ready compilation of what’s going on at the
or shan’t we?” Bollocks. They BAND. ALL OF A SUDDEN, band, released on an moment? Basically, aggregate what’s going on
should be able to come over THESE MAJOR LABELS independent label such and make a statement. That was Metal For Muthas.
and say: “Hello mate, how is it? as Heavy Metal Records,
I thought you played like a c**t STARTED TO APPEAR.” Bronze or Newcastle’s Neat Andy Dawson: I remember seeing Iron Maiden
the other night.” Jess Cox Records. The scene’s big at our local theatre on the Metal For Muthas tour. It
guns weren’t resting on was the first time I remember seeing an unknown
Ashley Goodall: I first saw Maiden at the Swan their laurels, either – Def Leppard and Iron band, and they nailed it. They came on stage
in Hammersmith. It was like a football crowd. Maiden both released their looking and acting like they were
They had a hard-core following with the T-shirts. debut albums, On Through The already successful. I’d never seen
I thought: “This is a great gig. There’s something Night and Iron Maiden, in 1980, that level of confidence before.
here that’s really good.” while Saxon released two
stone-cold classics in the shape
Bruce Dickinson: It was blindingly obvious that of Wheels Of Steel and Strong
Maiden were going to be massive. This hyper- Arm Of The Law. And then Inevitably, the Top 20
kinetic band, it was really a force of nature. Paul there was Metal For Muthas, success of Def Leppard and
Di’Anno, he was okay, but I thought: “I could a compilation-cum-lightning Iron Maiden spurred the
really do something with that band!” rod of this new wave of bands. interest of the other big

16 CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM

Jess Cox of Tygers
Of Pan Tang.







































JESS COX: REX



insular. We’d judge everything: “Are they good?
Can we learn from them? Can we steal from them?”

Fast Eddie Clarke: We didn’t mix with Thin
Lizzy or Judas Priest or that lot. The other bands
didn’t want to talk to us. We weren’t looked on
as musicians.

Biff Byford: To tell you the truth, we were so
fucking busy that we didn’t have much chance
to look at what everybody else was doing.

Iron Maiden and Man In Fast Eddie Clarke: We did notice Iron Maiden.
Black Ritchie Blackmore. Our paths crossed, but they were a bit stand-offish.
There was still this thing that Motörhead were
labels. All around the country at the gigs, Jess Cox: In the Tygers we didn’t have two pennies this loud, antisocial juggernaut. And people were
the denim-clad crowds were peppered to rub together. We’d kip on floors or wherever scared of us because of our Hells Angels contacts.
with A&R representatives. we could find.
Joe Elliott: At one gig, I went on stage in a pair
Jess Cox: Everybody wanted their New Wave Of of bright red trousers, and a white shirt covered
British Heavy Metal band. All of a sudden these in hearts. That was me going: “I’m not fucking
major labels started to appear. I remember playing While the music industry turned its beady wearing a leather jacket and jeans like every
Sunderland Mecca on a Friday night, and the head eye on the NWOBHM scene, the bands other bastard band in this movement that we
of labels from Virgin, EMI and CBS had flown up. themselves were treating each other with as don’t think we’re in anyway.”
much suspicion as they were camaraderie.
Andy Dawson: It wasn’t like the major labels Jess Cox: We went to London to do some shows
all swept in and started pumping money. That Brian Tatler: I think there was with Maiden at the Marquee,
happened for a few bands, but the rest of us a rivalry. Because, of course, then all of a sudden bands
were just working our arses off trying to make we’re all trying to make it, and started coming to see us. Judas
this happen. you don’t want somebody else “I THINK A LOT OF Priest turned up at one gig.
to step on you. ENERGY IN THE NWOBHM Gary Moore got up on stage
Jess Cox: The guy we had managing us at the and bloody played with us.
time said: “MCA want to sign you. It means Joe Elliott: We didn’t ask to WAS FRUSTRATION. IT
you get your rent paid and six pounds a week.” be included in the New Wave WAS THE START OF THE
We were, like: “Whoah, that sounds good. Yeah, Of British Heavy Metal, we THATCHER ERA…”
we’ll do that.” were just told we were in it. We Unlike punk, there was no
were happy to take the press, Andy Dawson generational divide here.
Andy Dawson: There were a few bands that but the fact that it kept coming The new breed of metal
made the jump to a major, like Saxon and Iron with this NWOBHM typecast, it became more bands viewed the bands that came before
Maiden and Def Leppard obviously. But for the of a “What the hell is this?” thing. with reverence, while the original masters
majority it felt like an independent scene. That were curious to see what they’d inspired.
was the beauty of it – it wasn’t contrived or Jess Cox: It wasn’t this great big family. Bands were
controlled by a record company executive saying: starting to go: “Hold on, there are too many other Andy Dawson: You wanted to emulate these
“This is what you need to do.” bands, we’re not getting attention.” But we did get bands, not kill them off. Bands like Rainbow were
quite friendly with Maiden. still massive. Everybody still loved then. When you
Bruce Dickinson: In Samson we only ever had went to a rock disco, you’d still hear stuff like that.
about thirty quid a week out of the band. But we Brian Tatler: You’d go and check the competition:
were bonkers, completely out of our gourds, and Angel Witch, Samson, Maiden, the Leps, Saxon. Ashley Goodall: Ozzy Osbourne turned up to
we’d signed the document. We’d meet them occasionally, but it was a bit see Maiden at one of the early gigs at the Music

CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM 17

Motörhead: Lemmy,
‘Philthy’ Phil Taylor and
‘Fast’ Eddie Clarke.





























































































































18 CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM

Machine, so there was a lot of interest in the new on August 16, 1980. The braindchild of young Fast Eddie Clarke: I suppose having a number
generation of bands. promoter Paul Loasby and his business one record got us a bit of respect. I can’t remember
partner Maurice Jones, the first line-up who we went to see, but David Coverdale was there
Rob Halford: We went out with Iron Maiden, featured Rainbow as headliners, supported and he said: “Let me buy you a drink, guys.” And
Def Leppard. It’s what you should do, no matter by Judas Priest, Scorpions, April Wine, I’m thinking: “Fuck me, that’s unheard of.”
who you are or what music you play. We’re all on Saxon, Riot and Touch. There had been other
the same journey. We’ve all been through barely outdoor events before, but this was the only Jess Cox: It was only years later that I realised how
affording gas and sleeping in the van. That’s part one dedicated solely to heavy music. many of these bands there were.
of your apprenticeship.
Rob Halford: We were very aware that it was the Biff Byford: You’ve got Judas Priest, you’ve
KK Downing: I’d never heard of Iron Maiden first festival of its type in the UK and was a major got Motörhead, you’ve got Saxon, you’ve got
until someone told me that they were going to event in that respect. All the festivals that had Maiden… it was endless.
support us on the British Steel tour. Then they happened in the UK before had had a cross-section
started to get mouthy in the press, saying they were of bands, so this was the first to go with specifically Ashley Goodall: It became clear very quickly
going to blow the bollocks off Judas Priest and all one type of music. Our reaction when we first who the leaders were. Leppard were slightly ahead
this sort of stuff. I said: “I appreciate the attitude, heard about it was that we’d like to give it a crack. in a way, but it did kind of blow out a bit by eighty-
like, but let’s fuck ’em off and get somebody who one. Once Maiden were away it was a completely
appreciates us!” But they did it and it was fine. Biff Byford: When they asked us to play Monsters different game.
I’m glad that they emerged and became a force to Of Rock we had no fucking idea what it was.
be reckoned with, and gained their own identity, Jess Cox: Iron Maiden and Def Leppard had
musically, visually and in every way possible. Paul Loasby (Monsters Of Rock promoter): people behind them in the know. They knew
The amount of rain was unbelievable. I’d borrowed how it was all going to pan out.
money personally to put on this show. And
the night before, at four in the morning when Ashley Goodall: I’m a believer that if you’re going
Judas Priest themselves were the bridge a monsoon is coming down in Castle Donington, to be huge, you’re going to be huge. No one else
between the old guard and the new I’m sitting there with a bottle of Scotch in my hand was actually that good.
wave. Their debut album, Rocka Rolla, thinking: “This is the ultimate, the biggest disaster
had come out in 1974, when many of the in the history of rock’n’roll and I’m going to lose
NWOBHM musicians were still at school, everything.” Not that I had anything, but I was
and they’d survived the punk wars largely going to lose it anyway. For the NWOBHM’s leading lights, the
unscathed. Their sixth album, British next logical step would be to set their
Steel, was released in April 1980, as the sights on America. Def Leppard had
movement began to broaden. seemingly made their intentions clear
“ONCE THE AMERICANS GOT HOLD OF THIS with the track Hello America on On
Rob Halford: The title of the album was Through The Night– something that
a statement in itself. Sheffield steel was the THING COMING FROM BRITAIN AND TOOK IT prompted a backlash in Sounds, and
inspiration for British Steel. And we should INTO THEIR OWN KIND OF STYLE AND saw them bottled at the 1980 Reading
all be proud that British musicians are APPROACH, EVERYTHING WENT GLOBAL.” Festival for their troubles. The old
responsible for this force in music called cliché about Britain hating success
heavy metal. Rob Halford stories seemed to ring true, although
the fact remained that America was
KK Downing: We’d made a few albums by Neal Kay: I compered the gig. I was nervous there for the taking – at least for a select few.
then. We weren’t exactly floundering around, – I’ve never faced a crowd that big before. But
but everything did lock in with British Steel: the when I walked out on that huge stage, the first Biff Byford: Def Leppard went off and
artwork, the songs, the stage clothes. Everything ten rows were all Soundhouse members. did a different thing. They went down the
consolidated who we were and where we were American route.
going. It was almost like a rebel’s almanac. Biff Byford: When we walked on that stage
we’d done a hundred thousand records. I would Rick Savage (Def Leppard): Hello America?
Rob Halford: There was a lot of crap going down imagine that ninety-nine per cent of the people in I swear to God, we really weren’t that intelligent.
in the UK. Margaret Thatcher had been in power that audience had got Wheels Of Steel. So it was It was the lyrics of a kid fantasising. I can see
for quite a number of years. The recession was fantastic for us. It was our first festival gig, the how people read into it, but it was way more
going on, people had no jobs and no money. first time we’d played to an audience of over three innocent than that, way more naive.
Everything the government had said they were thousand. The roar when we went out on stage
going to try to do was just a crock of shit, and was incredible. When I walked off I thought: Joe Elliott: The legend about us getting bottled off
people were pushing back. All of that’s in there, “Follow that.” That was a fucking great gig. at Reading 1980 is a myth, really. We probably had
you know: ‘Completely wasted, out of work and down’ six or seven bottles of piss thrown up, and maybe
– no one cares, I’m going to break the law. We Neal Kay: The atmosphere was fantastic. a tomato, but it didn’t put us off. That ‘backlash’
weren’t giving people affirmation to break the law, There were campfires about twilight time. was all blown out of proportion. We’re living
but we could understand their frustration. proof that bad reviews make no difference.
Biff Byford: This was the new generation of heavy
Andy Dawson: I think a lot of energy in the metal. This was our music – fucking have it! Fast Eddie Clarke: We didn’t think: “We want
NWOBHM was frustration. It was the start of to break America.” We didn’t have any delusions
the Thatcher era, which was quite destructive. of grandeur. No fucker over there would touch
us anyway.
After so many years in the doldrums,
British rock now seemed unstoppable. And Joe Elliott: Iron Maiden had been to America
If there was one event that acted as a lightning then in 1981 the unthinkable happened a month before us. I didn’t see them getting any
rod for British rock – not just NWOBHM, but when those perpetual outcasts Motörhead flak. Nor should they have. So why the hell did we?
all of it – then it was the inaugural Monsters managed to reached No.1 in the UK chart
Of Rock festival held at the Donington Park with their steel-plated live album, No Sleep Steve Harris: We were never obsessed with
racetrack in Castle Donington, Leicestershire ’Til Hammersmith. breaking America. We always planned to

CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM 19

playing exactly what we were playing, and
It’s electric: princes
among men, doing fantastic business.
Diamond Head.



Def Leppard’s Pyromania and Judas Priest’s
Screaming For Vengeance were huge hits in
America, but at home the New Wave Of
British Heavy Metal scene was rapidly
deflating. By the end of that year it was all
over bar the shouting.
Nearly four decades on, the legacy of the
British bands of the late 70s and early 80s
remains as strong as ever. The more obvious
success stories of that golden era – Maiden,
Leppard, Saxon, Motörhead – speak for
themselves. But the ambition, independence
and energy of the period mark it out as the
last time British rock and metal truly punched
above its weight on the world stage.


Biff Byford: It was a hugely important era.
Massively important.

Jess Cox: People look back and see the wonderful
naivety and innocence of it.


Andy Dawson: I don’t think any of us realised we
were part of something new. We were emulating
something that we loved that was already there.
But because we were young and innocent and a bit
stupid, it brought something new to it.
come out here and give everything we’d got, and happening across the Atlantic. And it wanted
they’d either like it or they wouldn’t. Fortunately a piece of the action. Fast Eddie Clarke: Maybe we did change things.
for us they liked it. In fact they bloody loved it. We certainly changed things from the way they
But it was always a challenge. We didn’t do things Andy Dawson: By 1983, when Savage finally were in the early seventies.
the normal way. released our first album, it seemed like the British
scene was beginning to peter out. Ashley Goodall: Heavy rock music had been
Glenn Tipton (Judas Priest): If we hadn’t gone out of favour for about five years, and bands like
to America we would probably only have lasted Brian Tatler: A lot of the New Wave Of British Maiden gave it a kick. It made it cool to be into it
for another three or four years. Heavy Metal bands had given up, split up, been again. It was okay to be a heavy rocker again.
dropped – including Diamond Head. The attention
Rob Halford: We were definitely aware of what had gone onto the American bands. It was a tough Brian Tatler: I really think it was an important
was going on with MTV [which launched in period for a lot of British bands. time for British music. It helped keep rock
August 1981]. It was a game changer. going. Just look at how amazingly Iron Maiden
Rob Halford: Once the have done over the last forty years. Everything
Joe Elliott: The fledging Americans got hold of this would sound different without the New Wave
MTV, having nothing to thing coming from Britain Of British Heavy Metal.
play, liked the idea of this “IT HELPED KEEP ROCK and took it into their own
young UK rock band, so GOING. EVERYTHING WOULD kind of style and approach, Bruce Dickinson: Years ago, someone asked:
they picked up on Bringin’ everything went global. “What’s the secret of Maiden’s success?”
On The Heartbreak [from SOUND DIFFERENT I said:“I wish it was complicated, but it’s just: don’t
Leppard’s second album, WITHOUT THE NEW WAVE OF Fast Eddie Clarke: let people down.” Don’t let people down. I can live
1981’s High ’n’ Dry]. So six BRITISH HEAVY METAL.” I remember going to LA with that on my headstone.
months, maybe a year after with the first Fastway
High ’n’ Dry came out, we Brian Tatler album and hearing Steve Harris: We always stuck at what we
started getting these telexes about Mötley Crüe. believed in. I’m proud of that.
saying: “Your album is selling six thousand copies They were calling them ‘the LA Motörhead’.
a week. Then it was ten, fifteen, twenty thousand Biff Byford: We were singing songs for that
copies a week. It was heading toward platinum by Biff Byford: We supported Mötley Crüe. They generation about motorcycles and women and
the time we had Pyromania in the bag. loved us so much they invited us out on their first having a great time. People just loved it, really.
tour. It was a great tour.
Andy Dawson: People have kept a real love of
Andy Dawson: When we did our first Kerrang! that time, and are looking for more of it. I’m sure
Throughout 1982 and into 1983, the stream interview, the journalist, Xavier Russell, was they’d love to see younger bands. It would be great
of bands releasing singles and albums didn’t banging on about how much this band called to see a bunch of eighteen- or nineteen-year-olds
abate. To the casual observer, the British rock Metallica loved Savage. And we were like: “Who?” coming out, doing something like that, with that
and metal scene looked in rude health. But in kind of energy. It would be a fresh kick up the arse.
reality it was starting to run on fumes. Thanks Fast Eddie Clarke: Motörhead were two years
to Def Leppard and Iron Maiden’s Stateside too early. I was fucking surprised when it all Biff Byford: It was very British, but it shot
success, America was waking up to what was kicked in with Metallica and that lot. They were round the fucking world. It changed music.

20 CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM

www.classicrockmagazine.com

The voice of Leppard


candidly sounds off on

more than 40 years of


stardom: the triumphs,

the tragedies and the

truth behind one of


the greatest rock

groups of all time…


































































































INTERVIEW: PAUL ELLIOTT
PORTRAITS: ROSS HALFIN
(UNLESS OTHERWISE CREDITED)

22 CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM

He is the voice of Def Bigmouth strikes glam-rock fan in the 1970s. And although and playing all these American folk songs
again: Leppard’s
Leppard – not only the he is the singer in one of the most famous by Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan. I was
chief spokesman,
singer, but also the band’s Joe Elliott. bands in the world, there is no arrogance going, ‘I want one!’ My dad said, ‘You

chief spokesman.And as about the man, no rock-star bullshit. In a learn to play one and I’ll get you one.’ So
anyone who’s ever met Joe two-hour conversation, Joe is typically I got my mum to teach me.
Elliott will testify, when this candid, forthright and funny as he
man talks, he really talks… discusses the past, present and future of You were an only child. Do you think
“Everybody knows what I’m Def Leppard. Joe Elliott does love to talk. you were spoilt?

like,” Joe says with a laugh. Equally, he always tells it like it is. There is No! All that stuff is utter bollocks. As a
“I love to talk! But that’s why the other no other rock star quite like him. kid I wasn’t spoiled at all. My parents
guys in the band say I’m the perfect couldn’t afford to bloody spoil me. But
frontman – because I don’t know when to At what age did you decide: I want to be maybe being an only child and having all

shut the fuck up!” a rock’n’roll star? that time to myself is what gave me the
In his life as a rock’n’roll star, Joe Elliott I was about five or six. But my mum and desire to want to do this.
has pretty much seen it all. Born on dad always told me that I was absolutely
August 1, 1959, he was just eighteen and totally obsessed with music from the As a young guitar player, did you fancy
when Def Leppard started out. In the day I started to crawl. I believe them, yourself as the new Hendrix?
years that followed he has led the band because I still am. That was never my thing. I wasn’t like Phil

through good times and bad: the Collen – sitting on the edge of the bed
phenomenal success of 1980s albums You were still very young when you practicing widdly-widdly-widdly for two
Pyromania and Hysteria; the trauma of Rick started out playing guitar. Who was years. As soon as I could play chords I
Allen losing his left arm in a car crash; the your biggest inspiration? started writing songs. I wrote my first

tragedy of Steve Clark’s death; and now, My mum! She bought a guitar from a song when I was eight. It was called Going
Vivian Campbell’s battle with cancer. catalogue, this piece of shit acoustic, and Away Forever, and it was about a chick
For all that, Joe remains as passionate taught herself to play it. I was fascinated leaving me (laughs).
about music as he was as a teenage by watching this then thirty-six year old
woman sounding exactly like Joan Baez Is there a recording of it?

There is. When we were making Hysteria I
I SAW THE SEX PISTOLS AND played it to Mutt (Lange, the producer of
that and other Leppard albums). He said,
THE CLASH AND THE DAMNED AND ‘We should do that!’



THOUGHT, FUCKING HELL, IF THEY Was he taking the piss?
He might have been. But like I said, right
CAN DO IT SO CAN I. from the start I was writing songs. It was
always in me. I wrote a rock opera when I


CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM 23

JOE ELLIOT





was ten. It was about a snake called Rock’n’roll
animals: Joe with
Kachina. That was the name of the snake Steve Clark.
that Alice Cooper had – the one on the

cover of the Killer album. I wrote reams of
lyrics. It was awful stuff, but I was so into
it. And I ended up with this rock opera
that was a combination of Alice Cooper

and Tommy by The Who.


Tommy Cooper, you mean?
Ha, brilliant! I wish I’d thought of that.



What were the first records you
ever bought?
The first albums were Every Picture Tells a
Story by Rod Stewart and Electric Warrior by

T.Rex. I was so mad into Bolan and Bowie,
I was insanely into everything they did.
I even thought The Laughing Gnome was
okay, and all the early Bolan nonsense
– Salamanda Palaganda and all that crap.

I still listen to that stuff on occasions. It
takes me back to a time of innocence
that’s long gone.



You joined your first band at fifteen, but
you also left school then to work at a
factory in Sheffield. Did you fear that
you’d get trapped in that kind of job?
I was always obsessed with music, but

yeah, after I left school those dreams kind
of got bashed out of me. I had that job
until I was eighteen. I was there for four
years, at that time a quarter of my life, and
I remember thinking: this is not for me, ROSS MARINO/PHOTOSHOT

and God, this sucks.


What got you out of that place? because we had a mutual friend. I bumped And by the end of 1977, you’d changed
When I was eighteen, it was 1977. Punk into Pete at a bus stop, we talked for a bit, the name of the band from Atomic
happened. I saw the Sex Pistols and The and then I said, ‘Hey, do you wan to put a Mass to Def Leppard – or rather, as it

Clash and The Damned and thought, band together?’ He said, ‘Well, I kind of was originally spelt, Deaf Leopard.
fucking hell, if they can do it so can I. It got one. But we’re looking for a singer.’ Pete suggested a name for the band:
wasn’t anything to do with the music. It And I was like, ‘Ooh, I’ll do it!’ I’d never Accracy. I remember going, ‘That’s
was the nerve they had. The punk bands even sung before, but Pete and Sav and fucking horrible!’ I didn’t know him well

were getting up there and doing it, and Tony Kenning, the drummer, came to my enough to warrant that kind of an
they were on the front pages – not just the parents’ house and saw that I had all these outburst, but I really thought it was an
music papers but also the tabloids. I cool records – Pat Travers and Scorpions awful name. But when I said that, we were
remember thinking, if only the and Montrose. I didn’t get the gig because all in my bedroom – me, Pete, Sav and
opportunity arose… because I could play I could sing. They just thought I was tall Tony – and there was a poster on the wall

enough chords to get me through what and had great records. And I was fun to that I’d drawn myself. I used to design
they were doing. You just needed the balls hang out with, I guess. rock posters in my art class in school,
– and I knew I had them as well. Then I when I was bored of painting bowls of
bumped into Pete Willis, and that was it… Was it clear from the start what kind of fruit and vases of flowers. And after doing

band this would be? posters of all the bands I liked – Thin
Pete Willis was then the guitarist in a The first thing we ever learnt to play Lizzy and UFO and whoever else – I
band called Atomic Mass. The bassist together was Suffragette City. And in the started making up names. One of those
was Rick Savage. early days we did used to play Pretty Vacant, names was Deaf Leopard, and that was
I didn’t know Sav then. I knew Pete but we were nothing to do with punk. the poster on my bedroom wall. I said,


24 CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM

JOE ELLIOT

















































































SUCCESS ISN’T LIKE



WINNING THE LOTTERY,


WHERE THE ODDS ARE



MILLIONS TO ONE. WE’D


DONE THE WORK.






‘How about that?’ Pete said, ‘Rubbish.’ But Tony Kenning didn’t last long in the In the aftermath: for being spiky about that stuff. But really,
Tony and Sav thought it was cool, so we band. In 1978 Rick Allen was recruited the short-lived I don’t care. Call us anything you want.
four-piece line-up
went with it. as the new drummer – on his fifteenth that completed I just think it’s ridiculous to compare us to
Adrenalize in the
birthday – after Steve Clark had joined certain bands from that era, just because
wake of Steve
Whose idea was it to change the as second guitarist. And within a year, Clark’s death. we happened to come up at the same
spelling to ‘Def Leppard’? Def Leppard were being proclaimed by time. You might as well compare us to
After five weeks of rehearsals, Tony stuck Sounds as one of the leading bands, Spandau Ballet, because they came up at

a line down the ‘o’ in Leopard and crossed alongside Iron Maiden, in the New the same time too. We were never a metal
out the ‘a’ in Deaf. It was only then that we Wave Of British Heavy Metal. But you, band. Hard rock, yes. Heavy metal, no.
noticed it looked like Led Zeppelin, but by especially, were never happy about
then we were stuck with the name, so being called a metal band. Def Leppard signed to major label
who cares? Listen, I know that I have this reputation Vertigo/Mercury on August 5, 1979.


CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM 25

JOE ELLIOT





































































A day earlier, you’d seen Led Zeppelin’s One song on that album, the single Putting the phenomenal swagger in Switch 625. And
‘arena’ in ‘arena
gig at Knebworth. What do you Hello America, led to accusations from by the way, it was my idea for Switch 625
rock’ (and also
remember about those events? British fans that you’d sold out. the arena rock to be an instrumental. I said, ‘The guitar
into the arenas):
We played Newcastle Mayfair on August I got totally trashed for that song. But, parts are so good, it’s going to get ruined
Joe during the
3, and drove straight to Knebworth that Christ, I’d written it while I was working Hysteria tour. if I sing on it.’
night in a transit van. We parked up at six in that factory. I wanted to get out of

in the morning till they opened the gates, there. Hello America was like me sending And then, in 1983, came Pyromania: a
and then we fell asleep on blankets. We out a note: ‘Help!’ game changer for the band and for hard
woke up in time to see Todd Rundgren. rock as a whole.
He was good. But seeing Led Zeppelin – The second album, High ‘N’ Dry, was I think the real Def Leppard was born on
wow! There were two hundred thousand such a huge leap forward from On Pyromania. We made a record that was

people there. It was incredible. And we Through The Night. How much of that better than the first Boston album – that’s
actually saw one kid with a Def Leppard was due to having Mutt Lange as the how we saw it. It doesn’t sound anything
patch on the back of his jacket. After album producer? like the American arena rock stuff of the
Zeppelin finished we drove back up to High ‘N’ Dry was the band and Mutt time, like Journey and REO Speedwagon.

Sheffield that night, and the next day we feeling each other out. Working with Mutt We were trying to avoid the cliched sound
went to Rick’s parents’ house to sign the was like the army: ‘Nope, do it again.’ At of that big arena rock thing. We wanted to
deal. Rick was only fifteen. He was too time we were like, ‘Oh, fuck off!’ But when infiltrate the American market the way
young to sign a contract, so his parents we heard how the album was sounding, it The Who and Zeppelin did, in a very
signed it on his behalf. started to sink in. It’s dead easy to make English way, but with an updated sound.

your first record. You’ve been playing it
The band’s first album, On Through The live for eighteen months. But on your Pete Willis was fired during the making
Night, was released in 1980. That was a second record you’re starting from of Pyromania. There is a famous story
very heavy metal album. scratch. Thankfully we had Mutt to guide about him being so drunk one day in the

If Led Zeppelin II is a heavy metal album, us. Sonically, High ‘N’ Dry was a lot more studio that he tried to play his guitar the
On Through The Night is a heavy metal hard-hitting than On Through The Night. wrong way round – with the strings on
album. But we did three-part harmonies. But at the same time it’s so much broader. the inside.
What other heavy metal band ever did It’s got great melodies in songs like Bringin’ Mutt was laughing so hard at that. But
that? None! On The Heartbreak, but it’s also got that then he sent Pete home. Pete said, ‘Oh I’ll


26 CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM

JOE ELLIOT





try a bit harder.’ But we told him, ‘We’ve WE’VE MADE GREAT RECORDS
given you a hundred chances.’ We had
this brilliant opportunity and Pete didn’t BUT NOTHING WILL COMPARE TO

see it. He was there from day one, but he
had become unbearable. We’d also HYSTERIA. THAT RECORD IS IN THE
realized by then that Pete wrote a lot of
clever guitar riffs that other guitarists DNA OF MILLIONS OF PEOPLE.

would like, but he didn’t leave much scope
for melody. Steve Clark was the total
opposite. He never wrote a riff that got in Leppard sound to a whole new level. .
the way of where the vocal would go. We didn’t want to make an album that
Steve did some brilliant stuff on Pyromania sounded like a Thin Lizzy record – where

– songs like Rock Of Ages, where you’re you just plug in and play. We liked
just singing over drums, which makes the playing with all the toys in the studio. We
chorus sound bigger. liked a certain sophistication. We wanted
songs that were going to rock the way

You finished Pyromania with Phil Collen that Tie Your Mother Down did, but we
replacing Pete Willis. And it was the wanted Beach Boys harmonies on them.
album that put Def Leppard into the big We wanted to push the envelope of what
league, selling six million copies in rock music was, and I think we did that.
America. There’s no doubt that Pour Some Sugar On

It’s not like winning the lottery, where the Me was inspired by Walk This Way, the
odds are like ten million to one. We’d Aerosmith/Run DMC thing. We
done all the hard work. We had good loved the idea of rap and rock.
American management, we had a proper What we did with Sugar is a

record company – we had everything in white-man version of that. And
place for us to be a roaring success. The – a little known fact – State Of
only thing missing was the obvious: the Shock by Michael Jackson and
three-minute hit song. But we had this Mick Jagger was the inspiration
song called Photograph and it went for Excitable. You can groove if

ballistic in America. you’re white. You just have to
figure it out. These songs were
Even so, it was never a big hit in the UK. slightly more off the wall and
Did that hurt your pride a little? eccentric than anything on
Of course. We wondered: how come our Pyromania, and that was the whole

home country doesn’t get us? That was point. We were trying to go one up
one thing in our heads. What went from that.
ballistic for us in England was Animal, in
1988. But with Pyromania, when you’re You called Mutt the “sixth member” of
selling six million records in America and the band.

a tour that started off at the Marquee ends We were his willing students. We wanted
with the last gig at Jack Murphy Stadium to learn from the guy. We had a mentor
in Florida in front of 55,000 people, that we believed in, and what he had was
there’s not much you can say about what a band that would try anything. In that

went wrong. Mutt asked us, ‘What was respect, we’re the best band he’s ever
the biggest pisser of the year for you worked with, and he knows that. We’re
guys?’ We said, ‘Michael Jackson stopping the most fun he’s ever had in the studio.
us from getting to number one.’ There are
worse problems, you know? Mutt has always maintained a low

profile, even when he was married to
Your response to this, on the following Shania Twain at the height of her fame.
album Hysteria, was to play Jacko at his He’s been called a recluse. What is he
own game – to create what you once really like?

called “the Thriller of hard rock”. It was He just regards his privacy as his main
an album on which almost every track thing. But he’s a normal guy. He watches
sounded like a potential hit single; an football. He still phones me up and says,
album on which Mutt Lange’s state-of- ‘Are you watching this game?’ Mutt is a
the-art production elevated the Def health nut. He doesn’t drink. He’s a vegan.


CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM 27

JOE ELLIOT





He’s also very questioning. He asks you Sharp-dressed man:
Joe Elliott scrubs up
about everything, from your sex life to alright, 1986.
your food. But he’ll never tell you

anything about himself. To us, he was like
a teacher. He’s somebody that we have
ultimate respect for.



Did you know when you were working
on the Hysteria album that it was a
classic in the making?
Well, people thought we were mad and
we probably were, but Mutt spent three

weeks mixing one track, Women, and
four months mixing the whole album. But
when we heard the finished mixes, we
went, wow, this is something special. I will

always remember the moment when we
heard the final track of Gods Of War. It was
such a big song for Steve, and the
expression on his face when he heard it
was something I’ll never forget. We finally

got him his Kashmir, you know?


Ultimately, is Hysteria the band’s
greatest album?

I think it’s a great record. We’ve made
other great records, and there are great
songs on other albums. But nothing will
ever compare to Hysteria, because that
record is in the DNA of millions of people.



hat Def Leppard created in
Hysteria is one of the most
brilliant and innovative hard

rock albums ever made. It is
also one of the biggest selling
albums of all time. What makes the
success of this album all the more
extraordinary is what happened during its
making.

It was on New Year’s Eve, 1984 that
Rick Allen crashed in his Corvette
Stingray on a country lane just off the A57
near Sheffield. He was fortunate to

survive, but his left arm was subsequently
amputated. The story of Allen’s heroic
comeback – how he found a way to THE REAL DEF LEPPARD
continue playing drums for Def Leppard
– is inspirational. WAS BORN ON PYROMANIA.

In the story of Steve Clark, what
remains for those who loved him is WE MADE A RECORD THAT
sadness for a man who could not be
saved. On January 8, 1991, Clark was WAS BETTER THAN THE

found dead at his home in London. An
autopsy revealed the cause of death as an
overdose of codeine. A long battle with FIRST BOSTON ALBUM –
alcoholism had led him there. He was just
THAT’S HOW WE SAW IT.



28 CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM

JOE ELLIOT





































































30 years old. his right hand, he was getting paradiddles International through – to lose an arm and then carry
jet set: a healthy
“We’ve been through so much as a going and all this stuff. It was Mutt who on being a professional drummer at this
breakfast of coffee
band,” Joe Elliott says. “What happened to gave him the confidence that he could do and cigarettes is level. As Rick says, there’s no book of
served on Leppard
Rick, and what happened to Steve, is just this. And then a guy from Sheffield, Pete Airways flights. one-armed drummers to refer to. You’ve
part of our story. With Rick, it was Hartley, designed a special kit for Rick. got to make it up as you go along.

triumph over tragedy. With Steve, there That kit is now on display in the Hard
was only tragedy. But this is what life is all Rock Café in Vegas. When you look at it So when did you know that he was
about, and we just have to accept it.” now, it’s jurassic. It’s kind of laughable to ready to play?
think that’s what got him back. But at the He came out of that room one day and
After Rick Allen’s accident, in the time, for Rick, it was fantastic. said, ‘I want you all to come and listen to

immediate aftermath, did you ever something.’ So we all went in there and it
seriously believe that he could play the Even so, when Rick returned to working was like going in for the reading of a will.
drums again? with the band at Wisseloord studios in
We weren’t even sure he would live. He Holland, were you all apprehensive Meaning what?
was in kind of a semi-coma for a while. about whether he could cut it? I didn’t really know where to look or what

But when he did wake up, and he Well, he came back to the studio six weeks to do. But then Rick gets on the kit and
suggested that he could play again, I after the accident – and he was meant to starts playing When The Levee Breaks, and
thought he was insane. I’m not going to be in the hospital for six months. That I’m thinking: fuck me, it sounds like John
pretend that any of us thought, oh, he’ll be was pretty amazing. What Rick did was Bonham! Okay, it’s not the hardest thing
fine – of course he can play the drums. lock himself away in this small room as he in the world to play, but in that moment

When he said, ‘I’ve figured out a way was relearning to play the drums. A Rick had the courage to come and get us
around it’, we all thought he was couple of times we’d sneak up to the door and let somebody else finally listen to
completely bonkers. We were like, ‘Okay, and hear his playing and go, Hmmm, what he had. And when he finished, we all
that’s the morphine talking.’ yeah. But we really left him alone. You burst into tears.

don’t want to watch somebody fall off a
When did you start to believe he could? horse. You had to think of his dignity. He In the summer of 1986, the band took a
About a week after he woke up, he began needed a bit of privacy to recover from break from recording to play a number
tapping his feet on this piece of sponge at something that’s so traumatic. There was of Monsters Of Rock festival shows in
the bottom of his bed. With his feet and no precedent for what he was going Europe, the first of which was at


CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM 29

JOE ELLIOT































































Donington Park. Prior to that, you had Portrait of the around to get a drink and then I saw him. him, and the response from those people
artistes as young
six low-key warm-up gigs in Ireland, ‘Oh, welcome!’ was unbelievable. The volume of the
men: On Through
where you had Status Quo’s drummer The Night-era crowd, that wave of emotion, it almost
Leppard (l-r) Rick
Jeff Rich playing alongside Rick on a Savage, Joe Elliott, So that was the turning point for Rick? blew your hair backwards. You could
second kit. Was that Rick’s decision? Pete Willis, Rick Totally. The next night, Jeff said, ‘How sense this feeling of goodwill amongst
Allen, Steve Clark.
It was. We decided to do the Monsters Of about I don’t play this one and just go and 70,000 people.
Rock gigs because we were going stir watch it from out front?’ Rick said, ‘Okay,
crazy in the studio. And when the warm- that’s cool.’ And after that gig, Jeff walked Are there still moments, even now, so

ups in Ireland were set up, Rick said, ‘I in the dressing room and said, ‘I guess I’m many years on, when you think: how the
don’t feel confident being the only going home tomorrow…” hell did Rick do that?
drummer.’ So, having Jeff Rich with us I have that feeling pretty much every day.
gave Rick that security blanket. We did the And the very next gig was at Donington. You don’t sit there gooey-eyed in front of
first three Irish gigs and they were fine, if a Rick was on his own up there in front of him thinking, ‘God, isn’t he amazing?’ But
bit clanky. Jeff was doing our gigs in 70,000 people, and he pulled it off. It was he is. You know that. You don’t take it for

between Quo shows in England. But magnificent. granted, but it’s just human nature to not
when it came to the fourth gig, in go on about it all the time. People who
Ballybunion, Jeff had his flight delayed by There was a wonderful moment during don’t see him every day will go on about
fog. By the time we had to go on, at eleven, that performance at Donington, when it, and rightly so. And that’s what happens

Jeff still hadn’t turned up, so Rick just said, you made an announcement after a few when we play live. We don’t do drum
‘I’ll have to play this one on my own.’ It songs, introducing Rick to the audience. solos, but Rick does an extended diddly-
was midnight when Jeff sheepishly snuck I wasn’t going to make a big song and diddly at the end of Switch 625, which is
in and joined in halfway through. I didn’t dance of it, but I looked at Phil and said, just enough for people to go, ‘Holy shit,
even notice he was there until I turned ‘We gotta do this for Rick.’ So I introduced he’s got one arm, and listen to that – it’s



SEEING SO MANY WOMEN IN OUR AUDIENCE,



I LOVE IT. IT MAKES YOU WALK A LITTLE TALLER,


AND YEAH, I MIGHT WIGGLE MY HIPS MORE,



BUT WHY NOT?



30 CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM

JOE ELLIOT





like Neil Peart!’ I’m not on stage for that
bit. That’s my time to change my shirt and
towel down and do a shot of Jameson. But

I hear it and I go, ‘Fucking hell, man – it’s
just insane that he can pull this off.’ Every
day you think it’s incredible that he’s
doing this.



In recent years, Switch 625 has become
a staple in the band’s live set and a kind
of tribute to Steve Clark.
We do Switch nearly every night now, and

yes, we have images of Steve on the
screens as we play it. It’s become ritual,
almost. We feel an obligation to our fans,
to ourselves, to Steve’s legacy and his

memory, to do that song.


What happened with Steve was so
tragic, it tends to overshadow all the
good times you had with him, and all

the great music you made together. Is
that’s what’s missing from this story?
I don’t know what’s missing, other than
him. He’s gone forever and now he’s just a

part of our history. There are plenty of
people out there that will go, ‘The band
died when Steve died.’ That’s not fair on
us. Steve wrote a lot of good stuff, but not
all of it. He was an integral part of this

band, no doubt, but no more so than
anybody else. So the whole Steve story is
tempered with regret and frustration as
well as smiles and laughter and the good
stuff. He was an enigma in that respect.



The rock’n’roll lifestyle – the booze, the
drugs – was something you all went
through in the 80s. Steve became a

victim of that lifestyle. Could this have
happened to any of you?
Steve lived life to the full, a little bit more
than everybody else. This guy would be
doing drugs and massive amounts of JD

and vodka, but he’d get up on stage the
next night and do a perfect show. He was
always okay when we were working. when you do you turn up can’t do Take two bottles your clothes out of the wardrobe. Sit on
into the shower?
Steve’s biggest problem was the days off. anything. You’re messing it up. We love your own couch. Make a sandwich. Just
Joe Elliott enjoys
He got bored. you, so we want you to go and get well.’ some rock’n’roll live in your house. We’ll give you six
mouthwash during months. We’ll write songs. We’ll do
the Pyromania
You talked about frustration, and regret. How did he react? tour, 1983. whatever we need to do. You’re still in the
When you look back now, do you think There was no big fight. He was always so band – if you want to be. We’re not firing
you could have done more for him? hard on himself: ‘I’ve let you down.’ you. We just want you to go home and get

Steve was our buddy and we put a lot of Did you give him an ultimatum? well.’ And he spent four months not
recording sessions on hold to put him It wasn’t like that. He’d just bought this getting well.
into rehab. That’s how we are. In beautiful house in Chelsea, and we told
September of 1990 we told him, ‘Look, him: ‘You never stay there. You’ve been Was this something you only
this isn’t working. Either don’t turn up or living out of a suitcase. So go home. Take discovered when it was too late?


CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM 31

JOE ELLIOT





We didn’t really know what was going on personality trait. If there’s a comparison, had died – that it was not a shock.
at the time. We were in Dublin, working it’s Paul Kossoff. Kossoff was a tortured That was the saddest thing – that it was
on the Adrenalize album, and he was in soul, there’s no doubt about it. I’ve talked expected. Steve had so much more that he

London. The way Steve used to work is to Paul Rodgers enough to know that. didn’t deliver to the world, and he chose
he’d phone in and go, ‘Hi guys!’ He’d be Kossoff was a very important part of Free, not to do that. It wasn’t taken away from
nice because he’d been sober for three or although by the time he died they’d split him. It was his choice. Of course we miss
four days. And the second he hung up, anyway. But with Steve, it was starting to him. Every day we miss him. But I miss

he’d go straight to the bottle. That’s a interfere with the band, which is why he my dad too, who died four years ago. In
classic alcoholic trait, and also a kind of was given that six-month leave of the end, it’s all about acceptance. We had
absence. We actually couldn’t operate to accept that Steve was gone, and that life
with him in the band. goes on…



Did you fear the worst for Steve? Was there ever a point, after Steve died,
Every day for the last three months that he that you thought about ending Def
was in this band, we all wondered if he’d Leppard altogether?
wake up the next morning. We just did. Yeah, there was. In the days after Steve’s

And then one day he didn’t. We got the death, I remember thinking: what’s the
phone call in January 1991, and that was point? First Rick loses his arm, and then
the end of that. He had passed away in the Steve loses his life. But in the end you click
privacy of his own home. So our fears out of that and go, ‘Well, of course I do.
were justified. This is what I do.’



What if he had lived? In the end, you completed the
I don’t know what would have happened. Adrenalize album without Steve.
He might not have come back to the We weren’t doing it for the money. We

band. This is all speculation. Had just had to finish that record that we’d
February come along, it would have been started. Only now the challenge was
either, wow, he’s great, he’s fixed, or it finishing it as a four-piece. For Phil that
would have been the same old Steve. And was a lot of weight. I’m glad that Phil had
then we would have had to make a stopped drinking by then, because that
decision. Or he would have had to make a would have pushed him over the edge.

decision. That decision was taken away But he had the balls and the ability to step
from us. He was gone. And we were then up to the plate and – in a sense – pretend
stuck with that dilemma: what do we do? to be two people. That’s how we got
Zeppelin decided to knock it on the head through that record.

when Bonham died, as was they wish and
their right. We felt that was not the right And that album featured a memorial to
thing for us. We were halfway through him, in the song White Lightning.
making an album. We decided that we Doing that song was so hard. It was an
had to see it through. Steve was gone, and emotional rollercoaster. We were putting

we had to move on. Steve to bed – metaphorically and
musically. White Lightning was written
You’ve always spoken very honestly about Steve, for Steve, to sound like Steve.

about the moment you heard that Steve It was our way of saying goodbye to him.




IN THE DAYS AFTER STEVE’S


DEATH, I REMEMBER THINKING:



WHAT’S THE POINT? FIRST RICK


LOSES HIS ARM, AND THEN



STEVE LOSES HIS LIFE. I SAID TO



MYSELF, DO I NEED THIS?



32 CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM

JOE ELLIOT








WE’RE A GREAT



BAND. WE’VE GOT


GREAT SONGS.



WE DO A GREAT



SHOW. IT’S ALL


VERY SIMPLE



STUFF.


































And after it was done, Jesus Christ, what Joe Elliott: the what the fuck are you doing? The reason disappointed. It’s a crazy notion to think
a weight off our shoulders. The next sky’s the limit. we go to see live bands is to hear stuff we that we wouldn’t play songs like Animal
song we recorded was Let’s Get Rocked. We know. If Paul McCartney played twelve in England, our first ever hit at home.
said, ‘Let’s do something stupid.’ I had new songs at Giants Stadium, the fucking ‘Oh, let’s not bother playing it.’ Really?

people say to me, ‘That song sucks – the crowd would leave. They want to hear That’s why all of those people bought
lyrics are awful.’ And honestly, I didn’t Yesterday and Band On the Run. It’s the their tickets.
write all of those lyrics. It was a bit of me, same with the Stones. Yeah, play two or
a bit of Phil, a bit of Mutt. That famous three songs off your new record, but You’ve always had a lot of women in
line – “I s’pose a rock’s out of the question” – we’re here for Brown Sugar and Satisfaction your audience.
I absolutely did not write that. But that and Jumpin’ Jack Flash. And it’s the same That’s one thing that I’m very, very happy

was a very important song for us. After with us. We do Photograph and Rocket and about. We’ve never gone on stage in front
White Lightning, we had to get back to Animal and Sugar and Rock Of Ages of what I’d call those hairy European
having fun. And if you weren’t there, you because that’s what our audience wants crowds that Purple used to get, or
won’t understand and you never will – so to hear. Maiden. If it’s a choice between bearded,

fuck off! denim-clad, patch-wearing oiks or
Does this go back to what you said strippers, I’ll take the strippers any day.
What is it that keeps bringing people earlier, about knowing what it is that Seeing so many women in our audience,
back to this band? you’re good at? I love it. It makes you walk a little taller,
We’re a great band. We’ve got great Exactly. I remember one time, years ago, and yeah, I might wiggle my hips more,

songs. We do a great show. It’s all very when me and Sav were hanging out with but why not? I wanted to be Mick Jagger
simple stuff. It’s funny – I’ve had so many Mike Scott from The Waterboys. He was – I didn’t want to be Ian Gillan. We love
people say to me over the years: ‘You tour and he refused to play The Whole Of playing live. It’s why we’re in a band.
guys just play your hits.’ Well, duh! The Moon. I thought, what the fuck is When I was twelve or thirteen year old

wrong with you? It’s the only song by kid and I watched Slade on Top Of The
It’s a simple logic: give the people want your band that anybody knows! It’s like Pops, I didn’t say, ‘I can’t wait to go in the
they want. The Troggs not playing Wild Thing. Or if studio!’ I wanted to get up on stage and
If I’d seen Pink Floyd and they didn’t play you went to see Argent and they didn’t shake my arse and wear silly clothes in
Shine On You Crazy Diamond I’d think, play Hold Your Head Up – you’d leave very front of a bunch of screaming chicks.


CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM 33

Rock brigade:
Def Leppard in
the US in 1980.




























































































































34 CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM

In 1979, five kids from Sheffield entered the studio for the first
time to record their debut EP for £150. This is the real beginning of

the Def Leppard story…

Words: Paul Elliott Pictures: Ross Halfin


979 was a life-changing year for the five Three songs were chosen for the E.P. “We wanted out. A second pressing of 1500 also sold fast. “We
young members of Def Leppard. It to show the different sides to the band,” Joe says. didn’t make any money out of it,” Joe says, “but as a
began with the release of their debut “So we picked Ride Into The Sun, a pop song, Getcha promotional exercise you couldn’t beat it.”
record, The Def Leppard E.P. And before Rocks Off, a full-on rock song, and The Overture, This became apparent when Def Leppard had
the year was out, the band had signed a which was this mad seven-minute epic.” their first national radio airplay after Joe had
major deal with Mercury/Vertigo, The backing tracks for Getcha Rocks Off and The ambushed John Peel, one of the most famous and
performed in 3000-capacity concert Overture were both done in one take, and Joe’s respected DJs in the UK. “Peel did a Radio 1 event at
halls opening for Sammy Hagar and AC/DC, and vocals were recorded in the evening and on the Sheffield University one night,” Joe recalls.
made their first album, On Through The Night, in a following morning. After a quick “I jumped on stage then gave him
mansion that was once home to John Lennon. tea break, the three songs were the E.P. and says, ‘I’m in this band
“It was insane,” singer Joe Elliott recalls. “Before mixed, and at 3.45pm the band – play it!’ The next day, around five
we signed to Vertigo I was a working as a emerged from Fairview with in the afternoon, he called. He
deliveryman for an ironmongery firm, driving a copies of the three tracks on two says, ‘I quite like it, so I’m going to
clapped-out old Ford Escort van. And when we cassette tapes. “The studio bill was play a song at half past seven
made the album, I remember saying to my mates, £148.50,” Joe says, “so with the tonight.’ I rang the other guys and
‘Can you believe that this is going to come out on £1.50 in change we all bought a just shouted down the phone:
the same label as Thin Lizzy?’” celebratory bag of fish and chips ‘Peel’s going to play us!’ I was
The Def Leppard E.P. was the first small step on a before we drove back to Sheffield.” sitting with my mum and dad
long road that led to the band becoming one of the The very next day, Joe asked when it happened – John Peel
biggest in the world, and it was the singer’s father, Frank Noon if he wanted to join playing Ride Into The Sun on Radio
Joe Elliott Sr, who gave them the £150 they needed Def Leppard. Out of loyalty to The 1. Amazing.”
to record it. “My dad literally emptied out his bank Next Band, Frank declined, a decision he looked All across Sheffield, in their separate homes, the
account,” Joe says. “That’s how much faith he had in back on as “the biggest regret of my life”. Within a other members of Def Leppard shared in the
his son, God bless him.” week, Rick Allen, having just turned 15, was experience. “It was one of those moments when
In November 1978, a week before the band’s installed as the new drummer. As Rick says, “Frank time stood still,” Rick Allen says. “I remember
two-day session at Fairview Studios in Hull, original could quite easily have stepped into Def Leppard, thinking, wow, this band is really something now.”
drummer Tony Kenning was fired. As bassist Rick but the planets lined up for me.”
Savage explains: “Tony didn’t fancy doing this as The EP was a wholly independent release for y the summer of ’79, as Def Leppard
much as we did. So a decision had to be made.” which the band chose a tongue-in-cheek name as embarked on a UK club tour, several major
The next decision was to call in a friend, Frank the record label – Bludgeon Riffola. The phrase had Brecord labels entered into a bidding war for
Noon, drummer for The Next Band, a power trio been used in a scathing review by Record Mirror of the band’s signatures. “What we didn’t know at the
formed in Lincolnshire but relocated to Leppard’s Leppard’s performance in September 1978 at The time,” Joe says, “was that somehow a copy of the EP
hometown of Sheffield. And after intensive Limit, where they had opened for another rising had ended up in Chicago on the desk of the head of
rehearsals with Noon, the band arrived in Hull on a group from Sheffield, electro-pop pioneers The A&R at Mercury records, Cliff Burnstein – and that
Friday night, checked into a cheap bed-and- Human League. Guitarist Pete Wills had remarked Cliff had phoned his equivalent in the UK and says:
breakfast joint, and promptly got pissed. that ‘bludgeon riffola’ sounded like canned Italian ‘By no means let this band sign with any other label.
“We were pretty hungover on the Saturday food. The joke stuck. Whatever it takes, sign them.’ The Americans
morning,” Joe says. “But as soon as we started The Def Leppard E.P. was released in January 1979, wanted us so bad that they made sure we signed to
recording, all of a sudden we felt great again.” and within a week, all one thousand copies sold the UK label, Vertigo.”
The deal was confirmed in August, a day after
Joe Elliott, Rick Savage, Pete Willis and the band’s
other guitarist, Steve Clark, attended a Led Zeppelin
concert at Knebworth Park. Rick Allen, still legally a
minor, had his parents sign the contract on his
behalf. And once the deal was done, Cliff Burnstein
quit his job at Mercury to co-manage Def Leppard
with Peter Mensch, who, as manager of AC/DC, É

CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM 35

British steel: Steve
Clark, Rick Savage
and Pete Willis launch
their axe attack.


placed his new protégés as the opening act on the and Judas Priest. Allom was a bon viveur, giving the that one day,” Joe says. “Nine songs. It was easy.”
UK leg of AC/DC’s Highway To Hell tour, beginning band an education on fine wines. “Every night, on Leppard had a broad range of influences. Joe
in October 1979. the stroke of eight o’clock, there was much popping loved glam rock – Bowie, Bolan, Mott The Hoople.
As Rick Savage described it, this tour was for Def of corks,” recalls the singer. Steve was a Led Zeppelin fanatic. Pete was into UFO
Leppard a nightly rock’n’roll master class. “We saw The approach to the album was simple. As Joe and Judas Priest. Rick Savage’s favourite band was
how a seasoned headline act operated,” he says, explains: “We’d been playing most of the songs live Queen. Rick Allen’s was AC/DC. And all of this fed
“and how you interact with a big crowd. The for the best part of a year, and we just recorded into the songs for On Through The Night.
standard of musicianship in AC/DC was them live.” “We wanted to sound like Queen, Lizzy, Mott,
unbelievable. We would watch in awe of how great On the first day of recording, the band worked Slade,” Joe says. “Three-minute songs, with loads of
they were.” And for Rick Allen, there was a fast. “We got most of the backing tracks done in guitars and big choruses – short and sweet and to
memorable moment at London’s Hammersmith the point, like glam rock was in the early ’70s and
Odeon on November 1, when he celebrated his punk rock was in the late ’70s.”
sixteenth birthday, and his tender age was reflected The energy that Tom Allom captured was most
in the gift he received from Bon Scott, AC/DC’s evident on riff-heavy songs such as Wasted, Rock
famously hell-raising singer. Brigade and the newly titled Rocks Off, minus the
“Bon came in to our dressing room singing ‘Getcha’. “You can’t argue with the sheer raw power
Happy Birthday in that strange Australian- of Wasted,” Joe says. There was also live-wire
Glaswegian voice, and gave me a big bowl of electricity in two songs that were written in the
Smarties,” recalls Rick. “That was his funny way of studio at the last minute, It Could Be You and It Don’t
showing me some love.” Matter, the latter incorporating a novel approach to
In the first days of December – just three weeks percussion.
after their last date with AC/DC – Def Leppard “We couldn’t find a cowbell in the studio,” Joe
decamped to Tittenhurst Park, near Ascot in says, “so we used a kettle. It sounded just like a
Berkshire, to record their debut album. The place cowbell, but we dented it to fuck, destroyed it. The
was steeped in rock’n’roll history. It was where John next day, lady that came in to cook and clean went
Lennon, in the famous ‘white room’, was filmed ballistic when she saw what we’d done to it.”
singing Imagine with Yoko Ono at his side, and It was another track originally featured on the
where, after John and Yoko had moved to New E.P. that served as the album’s grandest statement.
York City, another ex-Beatle, Ringo Starr, had taken Overture had its title shorn of the definite article, but
up residence. “We were just soaking up that whole this epic piece, inspired by two mythic rock tracks
Beatles vibe,” Joe says. “And I drew the long straw – Xanadu by Rush and Emerald by Thin Lizzy – was,
and got Lennon’s bedroom.” in Joe’s words, “somewhere off in wacky world”.
The producer for the album, ‘Colonel’ Tom Jump for joy: Joe And if there was one song that pointed to the
Elliott celebrates
Allom, was an old hand, experienced in working Leppard’s success. band’s future, it was Hello America, with its big
with heavyweight bands including Black Sabbath chorus and harmony vocals multi-tracked by Joe.

36 CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM

became the opening track on 1983’s Pyromania. “In
those new songs,” Joe says, “you could really hear
where our music was heading.”
It was apt that On Through The Night had cover art
depicting a giant guitar on the back of a truck. For
the whole of that year, the band was out on the
road, and in the summer came their first US tour,
Hello America!: spread across three months, as they opened for The
(above and left) Def Pat Travers Band, Judas Priest and Ted Nugent. Most
Leppard on the road memorable of all was the show that Leppard played
in the States in 1980.
on August 1, 1980, Joe Elliott’s 21st birthday. At the
Palladium in New York City, they supported
The album was completed in three weeks, at a Selling out Sheffield City Hall was a dream AC/DC, whose had released their comeback album
cost of £16,000 – minimal even by the standards of come true for the five young men who had seen so Back In Black just a few days earlier.
that time. Def Leppard had come a long way in the many great bands play there in the ’70s. This was On Through The Night also made a big impression
thirteen months since they made the E.P. “We were the place where Joe Elliott, at the age of twelve, had on the two guitarists who would later join Def
naïve kids who believed in what we were doing,” Joe attended his first concert on October 23, 1971 Leppard in place of Pete Willis and Steve Clark. In
Elliott says, “but at the same time we couldn’t – Marc Bolan and T.Rex on the Electric Warrior tour 1980, Phil Collen was a member of London glam
believe it was actually happening.” – and where, one night in late 1978, a year after rock group Girl, and a close friend of Joe Elliott.
Leppard formed, he had scrawled in chalk on a “I thought On Through The Night was great,” Phil
n the first two months of 1980, ahead of the wall beside the front doors: DEF LEPPARD WILL says. “It was very different to all the other New
album’s release, the band gigged in clubs PLAY HERE IN 1980! Joe’s prediction was realised Wave Of British Heavy Metal stuff. Good melodies,
Icovering the length and breadth of the British on April 10, and on that afternoon he and Rick lots of harmonies – it was very cool.”
mainland. “It was absolutely the best time,” Rick Savage travelled to the venue from their parents’ Vivian Campbell, at that time in the Irish band
Savage says. “We started the show with all this red homes on the number 52 bus. Sweet Savage, sensed in Def Leppard a huge
smoke billowing out over the stage, and it was “It was only nine years after the twelve year old potential. “There was so much exuberance in that
bloody horrible. It would literally turn your me saw Marc Bolan on that stage,” Joe recalls. album,” he says. “But more than anything else,
eyebrows orange. But we were having so much fun, “And now, that stage was ours. Being a headline I could hear the deep ambition in the band.”
touring in a Transit van and believing that you’re act was what we wanted, and what we believed For the three members of Def Leppard who
invincible.” – naively, arrogantly, youthfully – that we deserved featured on that album, and every other that the
Leppard’s club tour finished on February 29 at to be.” band has made since, there is a strong sense of pride
Newcastle Mayfair. Two weeks later, on March 14, Alongside all the tracks from On Through The in what they achieved. Joe Elliott says simply: “It’s
On Through The Night was released. The album shot Night, the band also performed three new and not the greatest record ever made, but I look back
to No.15 on the UK chart. “Having a Top 20 record previously unreleased songs in which their future on it with an enormous amount of affection.”
was mind blowing,” Joe says. And with it, the band was signposted. Two of these songs would surface A hit in the UK, On Through The Night also made
quickly moved up a level. Beginning on April 5, a on 1981’s High ‘n’ Dry – Lady Strange and When The number 51 in the US. It was a strong start. But as
21-date UK tour saw Leppard headlining in theatres Rain Falls, the latter revamped and retitled Let It Def Leppard knew, from the words that Bon Scott
where, just a few months earlier, they had opened Go. The third, Medicine Man was also restructured, once sang, it’s a long way to the top if you wanna
for Hagar and AC/DC. and renamed Rock! Rock! (Till You Drop), when it rock’n’roll…

CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM 37

unday, August 24, 1980: the then crumbling beneath the twin economic perils
final night of Reading of rampant inflation and sharply rising national
festival. Second-on-the-bill unemployment figures.
to headliners Whitesnake, “We were teenagers,” says Savage, “and we had
this should be the crowning this belief that anything was possible. When that
glory of what has been a way of thinking is moulded into the group at that
momentous year for Def very early stage, it never really leaves you.”
Leppard. Instead disaster It would be several more years before a new
awaits them. No longer the generation of British fans would come along that
S darlings of the New Wave had grown up with the same aspirations. None of
Of British Heavy Metal, thanks to poisonous which seemed probable back in the cold, stark
reviews of their debut album On Through The Night, winter of 1980, as Leppard set about writing the
and being lambasted for sounding ‘too American’ follow-up to their provocative debut. The result
– a hanging offence in 1980 – Leppard have was an even more outgoing and determinedly
suddenly taken on the mantle of sell-outs, even America-friendly album called High ’N’ Dry.
traitors. At least to a particularly vociferous section “The trouble was, we were moving so fast, we
of hard-core metal fans, that is. couldn’t see that we were doing anything wrong,”
Party Seven (seven-pint) beer kegs says Elliott. Indeed, it had been the
– some not empty – fly onto band’s energy and colour that had
the stage as the band run about first attracted people to Def
on it, doing their best to ignore Leppard. At the time I first saw
them. Eggs are thrown at them. them play live, opening for
A huge grass sod flies up and Sammy Hagar at London’s
hits guitarist Pete Willis square Hammersmith Odeon, in
in the bollocks. September 1979, I was working
“Some of it was self-inflicted,” as a PR with both old- and new-
Leppard singer Joe Elliott admits wave rock and metal bands such
today. “I went on stage in a pair as Thin Lizzy and Black Sabbath,
of bright-red trousers, and a the Damned and Motörhead.
white shirt covered in hearts. Unburdened by the narrow
That was me going: ‘I’m not parameters of the self-styled
fucking wearing a leather jacket and jeans like NWOBHM scene, as then portrayed each week in
every other bastard band in this movement that Sounds, I saw only a British band with a very
we don’t think we’re in anyway.’” definite international future.
Be that as it may, it hadn’t stopped Elliott and When their greater ambitions led them to fall
Leppard lapping up the attention that their self- foul of the NWOBHM police, they were puzzled.
financed, self-titled EP was given in music weekly As Elliott points out, by the time Leppard set off for
Sounds – birthplace of the NWOBHM – when it was their first US tour, in the late spring of 1980, “there
released a year before. After championing them, was nowhere else left [in Britain] to play”. They
along with Iron Maiden, as the cream of the had played 47 club shows already that year, “from
NWOBHM crop, Sounds had done a 360-degree Aberdeen to Bournemouth”. When On Through
turn on Leppard, accusing them of being more The Night came out in March ’80 and went Top 20,
interested in pursuing the American dollar than in they moved up to theatres, proudly selling out
making it big in their own backyard. That their biggest local venue, Sheffield City Hall. “The
perception was only reinforced by the release of the next logical thing to do was what every great
album’s apparent mission-statement, Hello America. British band has ever done – go to the States and
“I swear to God we really weren’t that see if we can crack it.”
intelligent,” bassist Rick Savage says with a laugh. Iron Maiden had actually arrived in America a
“It was the lyrics of a kid fantasising… I can see month before. “I didn’t see them getting any flak,
how people read into it, but it was way more nor should they have. So why the hell did we?”
innocent than that, way more naive.” The answer, of course, lay beyond the music.
Not that the people throwing crap at them on Leppard had never conformed to the blokey
stage at the Reading festival in 1980 saw things that stereotype of the NWOBHM. Young, exciting and
way. Regarded now as the lowest point of their defiant, with their musical and sartorial influences
career, Reading may have shown the young as much about Queen and
Leppards to be naive; innocent they most David Bowie as about Led
assuredly were not. Zeppelin and Judas Priest,
there was never anything
ormed in Sheffield in 1977, Def Leppard remotely ’umble about their
had always been a band with big plans. ’eaviness. These attributes set
FHence the later ditching of the small-town Leppard apart from the
management team that got them their major inherently parochial mien of
record deal with Phonogram, in 1979, and any so-called movement with
replacing them with Leber-Krebs, the same New the word ‘British’ in its title.
York-based management operation behind the It wasn’t just in the pages of
then-recent Stateside success of AC/DC, and who the music press they were
went on to form Q-Prime. now being attacked, either. It
No wonder they so soon inspired the sobriquet was also on the streets of
‘flash bastards’. Def Leppard had set out to be the Sheffield, where they all still
flashiest bastards around, and by 1980 they were lived with their mums and
well on the way to achieving it. Not least on the dads. Elliott recalls going out
streets of Margaret Thatcher’s Britain, which were with guitarist Steve Clark É

38 CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM

They were the NWOBHM heroes

who fell foul of their own ambition.
The only thing Def Leppard could do
was look across to the US. Cue High

’N’ Dry… and impending stardom.

Words: Mick Wall




























INSET: ROSS HALFIN MAIN: GETTY
CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM 39

Three of a kind: Joe Elliott
with touring partners
Jackson Spires of Blackfoot, Pete Willis, Rick Allen,
Leppard in 1981: (l-r)
and UFO’s Pete Way.
Joe Elliott, Steve Clark,
Rick Savage.



“Too big for our boots? We were a bunch of kids destined


for factory life. We were not going to screw this up.” – JOE ELLIOTT



and having to fight their way out of Sheffield bars Def Leppard, not just the music.” him the gig at the tender age of 15, but whose off-
they had once been regulars in. Another time “a Closest to Elliott was Rick Savage, the stage proclivities threatened to have him thrown
couple of kids gobbed on us. Me and Steve just stereotypically ‘quiet one’ on bass, who took on the out of the band before it had barely got going. As
looked at each other and went, ‘Sod this,’ and we “responsibility to make sure there wasn’t too much he puts it now: “I was very young then and – what
rented a car and drove to London, and slept on of a distance created between the other factions in do they say? – experimenting.”
the Tottenham Court Road for two days in the the band”. Namely the band’s two wildfire guitarists: Or, as Savage says: “Rick was just happy trying to
back of the car.” co-founder Pete Willis, and Steve Clark. The get away from reality by taking loads of silly drugs
By the time they’d made their fateful Reading former was a super-solid rhythm player whose and hallucinating. But we were a proper band, with
appearance, Elliott had already moved permanently essentially shy character – happy to hide on stage a mutual respect for each other’s position, a gang.”
to London. His parents were on holiday at the time. behind curtains of dark hair – and diminutive
He left them a note. stature belied an equally short temper, especially y the time Leppard began work on High ’N’
“It was a very emotional moment. But I wasn’t a when he’d been drinking, something that was Dry, the gang’s shared sense of injustice
kid any more. I took my belongings – all 75 albums already growing into a crisis by 1980. The latter Bwas also growing.
and a couple of pairs of socks – and legged it down was the spontaneous soloist of the group, whose “Too big for our boots?” Elliott asks rhetorically,
to this house in Isleworth. I had 10A in the ability to improvise sensational breaks and flurries the edge still in his voice 30 years later. “On stage,
basement. [Gillan guitarist] Bernie Tormé had 10B. also disguised a greater insecurity away from the absolutely. We were a bunch of kids destined for
I had a crappy old Morris Marina that my dad had stage, especially in the demanding, do-it-again factory life. We knew the opportunities we were
helped me buy for £595 – those were my environment of the recording studio, and whose being given. We were not going to screw this up.
rock’n’roll wheels.” own drinking habits would also later spiral Off stage, though, there’s nothing more humbling
It wasn’t long before the others began to follow. dangerously out of control. than trying to make a record and signing on, or
“Joe was always the leader,” says Savage, “the guy The loner of the group was also the youngest: poncing off your girlfriend who’s signing on.”
who took the responsibility for the whole entity of drummer Rick Allen, whose brilliance had landed The most money they had seen so far was the
£30-a-week stipend they enjoyed on tour.
Rick Savage: Everything was riding on the success of their next
asleep at the album. Enter their knight in headmaster’s clothing:
wheel. legendarily reclusive producer Robert John Lange
– ‘Mutt’ to his few friends.
Born in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) in
1948, Lange was the son of a South African mining
engineer father and a mother from a well-to-do
German family. A multi-instrumentalist in his own
right but whose band Hocus had failed to make the
charts, Lange had subsequently forged a career as
an in-demand producer of hits for late-70s punk-
pop outfits such as the Boomtown Rats (Rat Trap
and I Don’t Like Mondays both owed their success to
Mutt’s cathedral-like production) and several
others. More recently he had masterminded multi-
platinum hits for AC/DC (Highway To Hell, Back In
Black) and Foreigner, whose album 4 was about to
become their biggest-selling ever.
Leppard’s new American manager, Peter
Mensch, had originally wanted Mutt for their first
album but he’d been unavailable. Now they would
have to wait again while he finished working on
Foreigner’s 4, filling in time by supporting the
ALL IMAGES: ROSS HALFIN
40 CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM

On stage in 1981:
nice show, shame
about the shirt.



Scorpions in Europe. Elliott was working on a
building site when, in January 1981, he was told
they’d have to wait another month for Mutt. “I
went to my record collection, took Double Vision
out and snapped it in half.”
When Leppard did finally start recording with
the producer, in March 1981, it was the start of
what would become the most fraught yet
ultimately rewarding relationship of the band’s
career. With his chiselled, clean-shaven looks and
light-coloured, curly hair, Lange could have been
Elliott or Sav’s elder brother. In fact he would
become the father figure of the group as, over the
next seven years, he helped to transform Leppard
from NWOBHM rejects into globally acclaimed
rock superstars. Mutt held the keys to all this and
more, as he proved time and time again. All you
had to do was follow his rules – to the letter.
“The first day, he was giving us directions,” There’s no place like
Elliott recalls, “and Pete was eating this apple. Mutt home: Leppard give LA
just went off at him, really ripped into him, cos Pete a northern welcome.
wasn’t paying attention. It was like being at school; “Let’s go to work!”
we were all staring at the floor going, ‘Oh, God…’” Leppard would turn up each day at Outside Battery
Studios, London.
That had been at the well-appointed John Studio One – the larger of Battery’s two
Henry’s Rehearsal Studios in north London. With main studios – to find Lange already hard
the steady-as-she-goes commercial breakthrough at work. “He was always first in and last out,” says
of On Through The Night, and now the recruitment Elliott. “Later on, he’d just sleep in the studio – however, “it started to click. I’d got the verses done,
of a producer of Lange’s stature, the budget for work until 4am then pass out on the couch. He just piecing them all together, and [Peter] Mensch
Leppard’s second album had increased worked his butt off, and he instilled that in us.” looked at Mutt and went: ‘Is that my fucking
exponentially – as had expectations for its success. One of the new songs they’d been played at singer?’ He’d never heard me sing like that –
Suddenly the pressure was on. Reading was When The Rain Falls. “Mutt saw it as neither had I. I thought, if this is what working
When, in March 1981, recording finally potentially our Highway To Hell,” says Elliott. “But with [Mutt] can do for me, then I’ll put up with all
commenced, at Battery Studios in Willesden the words were all wishy-washy, introspective the pain.”
Green, north-west London, Mutt was already “like bollocks: me stuck in my parents’ house ’cause it’s “It was the first time any of us really experienced
the sixth member,” says Allen. “High ’N’ Dry was raining. Mutt said: ‘We’ve gotta go more global.’ So what hard work is about,” says Allen, who’d begun
starting with a blank canvas, all we had was just we thought more of Queen, We Will Rock You, and “to doubt my ability to play drums. I was
riffs and beginnings of ideas. [Mutt] proceeded to renamed it Let It Go.” competing with [AC/DC drummer] Phil Rudd.
tear the fucking thing apart and piece it back During the vocal recording of A Certain Heartache People ask who your influences are as a drummer.
together, bit by bit.” – which, at Mutt’s instigation, had been renamed Well, really, it’s Mutt Lange.”
Despite its out-of-the-way location, Lange Bringin’ On The Heartbreak – an exasperated Elliott When the album was finished three months
favoured Battery for its excellent 1976 Cadac went next door to Battery’s Studio Two, where later – “lightning-fast compared to the months and
analogue desk – an antique now, state-of-the-art Whitesnake were recording Saints & Sinners, years we spent on the next two albums with Mutt,”
then. Originally known in the 70s as Morgan, seeking advice from vocalist David Coverdale. says Elliott – they had created what Savage calls
Battery had hosted a wealth of UK rock talent, “I watched David lay down a vocal with one “the launch pad for the rest of our career”.
including Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and Paul take. Next thing he gets out the brandy, and I’m
McCartney. A decade later it was the crucible in leaning on the piano, listening to him tell all these ot that anyone could have foreseen that
which the Stone Roses forged their game-changing Deep Purple stories. I’m getting bollocks-drunk, when High ’N’ Dry was released in July
debut, and where Lange returned to record albums and David’s going [deep-voiced and Yorkshire N1981. For despite a recanting five-star
for Shania Twain and Bryan Adams. When Leppard accent]: ‘Don’t you worry, brother Joseph, it’s review in Sounds, the album singularly failed to
first arrived, Iron Maiden had just vacated it, having gonna be all right!’” catch fire in the UK, barely scraping the Top 30.
been working with their own stellar producer, Elliott’s only other memory of that day is “Everybody loved it,” recalls Elliott, “but nobody
Martin Birch, on their second album, Killers. “puking all over the pavement”. But the next day, bought it. We toured the same places we did a É

CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM 41

“Tonight, Matthew, I’m
going to be Sitting Bull.”
Elliott gets mouthy.


HOW DEF LEPPARD INSPIRED THE PMRC


Formed in 1985 by
The Filthy Fifteen
The Filthy Fifteen
The Filthy Fifteen Tipper Gore, wife of
future US Vice
1 Prince – Darling Nikki
Darling Nikki
1 Prince – Darling Nikki President Al Gore, the
2 Sheena Easton – Sugar Walls
2 Sheena Easton – Sugar Walls Parents Music
2 Sheena Easton – Sugar Walls
3 Judas Priest – Eat Me Alive
3 Judas Priest – Eat Me Alive Reource Center was a
3 Judas Priest –
4 Vanity – Baby
4 Vanity – Baby self-appointed
4 Vanity – Baby
5 Mötley Crüe – Bastard watchdog against all
5 Mötley Crüe – Bastard
5 Mötley Crüe – Bastard
6 AC/DC – Let Me Put My Love Into You ou ou things violent or
6 AC/DC – Let Me Put My Love Into Y
6 AC/DC – Let Me Put My Love Into Y
7 Twisted Sister – We’re Not Gonna Take It
7 Twisted Sister We’re Not Gonna Take It
7 Twisted Sister – We’re Not Gonna Take It raunchy in music.
8 Madonna – Dress You Up
8 Madonna Dress You Up
8 Madonna – Dress You Up
9 W.A.S.P. – Animal (Fuck Like A Beast)
Animal (Fuck Like A Beast)
9 W.A.S.P. – Animal (Fuck Like A Beast) Bizzarely, Def
Leppard were one
10 Def Leppard – High ’N’ Dry
10 Def Leppard High ’N’ Dry of the bands on the
10 Def Leppard –
(Saturday Night) PMRC’s original
(Saturday Night)
(Saturday Night)
11 Mercyful Fate – Into The Coven
11 Mercyful Fate – Into The Coven ‘Filthy Fifteen’ list
Into The Coven
12 Black Sabbath Trashed
12 Black Sabbath – Trashed
12 Black Sabbath – Trashed
– a list of songs
13 Mary Jane Girls – In My House
13 Mary Jane Girls – In My House
13 Mary Jane Girls In My House they found ROSS HALFIN
14 Venom – Possessed
14 Venom – Possessed
14 Venom – Possessed particularly
15 Cyndi Lauper She Bop
15 Cyndi Lauper – She Bop
15 Cyndi Lauper – She Bop objectionable.
The Sheffield “I’m getting bollocks-drunk, and David
band’s High ’N’ Dry (Saturday Night),
deemed offensive due to its alleged promotion Coverdale’s going: ‘Don’t worry, brother
of ‘drug and alcohol use’, made it to an
impressive No.10 in the PMRC chart. Joseph, it’s gonna be all right!’” – JOE ELLIOTT
They were in good company: Black Sabbath’s
Trashed, at No.13, was tarred with the same
brush, while Twisted Sister’s We’re Not Gonna for spending too much time with the roadies, but it was a short-lived, disenchanting affair. Other
Take It (No.7) and Mötley Crüe’s Bastard (No.5) smoking dope, Allen now began to experiment brief forays followed over the years – notably
had their cards marked due to their ‘violent’ with cocaine. “I remember lying in bed in Reno the Roadhouse, whose 1991 self-titled album sneaked
content. Heavy metal had a good showing, with first time I ever experienced an earthquake. But I into the lower reaches of the UK Top 30 – but in
Venom’s Possessed (No.15, ‘occult’), Mercyful didn’t realise it was an earthquake. I thought it was 2003 he announced his retirement from the music
Fate’s Into The Coven (No.11, ditto) and Judas my friggin’ heart.” business. He now runs a property management
Priest’s Eat Me Alive (No.3, ‘sex’). It wasn’t all There was one major casualty from that tour, company in Sheffield. Classic Rock made several
longhairs, though – masturbation-fixated pop though: Pete Willis. “Pete was great,” says Allen, attempts to contact him for this article but he
divas Cyndi Lauper (No.15), Madonna (No.8) “but every time he had a drink it would completely declined to respond.
and even Sheena Easton (No.2) were declared change his personality. He’d go from ‘we, we, we’,
too sexy for their own good. It’s hard to argue, to ‘my, me, mine’.” hatever the rights and wrongs,
though, with the inclusion of Vanity’s Strap On Unfortunately, Willis’s drinking was now an Willis’s replacement by Collen also
Robbie Baby (No.4). everyday thing. “At first it’s funny,” says Elliott, Wmarked the moment when Leppard
And the No.1? Surprisingly it wasn’t recalling how they’d had to “pour Pete off the ceased to be a gang and became something else
W.A.S.P.’s Animal (Fuck Like A Beast), which plane” the first time they flew to Los Angeles. “They entirely: a veritable hit machine. In fact High ‘N’ Dry
only made No.9. The top spot was awarded to were all jolly japes, but you’d get angry with him if was to live a charmed after-life when, eight months
pint-sized purple fetishist Prince (right) whose he had a bad gig the next night. That’s when you after its anti-climactic release, the newly launched
rumpo-tastic Darling Nikki revolves around the start going nuts. We had fisticuffs about it, and MTV started rotating the Bringin’ On The Heartbreak
line: ‘Met her in a hotel lobby masturbating with tears. He didn’t let anybody down in the studio on video like a spit.
a magazine’. Saucy! High ’N’ Dry, but on the tour that followed he was a Elliott: “We were getting telexes telling us the
bigger problem than he’d ever been.” album had sold 10,000 copies that week, then
year earlier, this time to balconies closed off. So much so that Elliott was now making 30,000 copies a month. By the time Pyromania came
Horrible, cold, wintery, crap, half-sold-out venues.” clandestine calls from America to former Girl out, High ’N’ Dry had done 800,000 in America.
More worryingly, it was a similar story in the US, guitarist Phil Collen. “I’d say: ‘Can you learn 18 Now we’ve got an audience that’s primed and
where sales of High ’N’ Dry stalled at around the songs in three days?’ Then in the sober light of day ready to go, at least in the States.”
quarter-million mark – less than half what the I’d phone and say: ‘Look, he’s apologised, so it’s not In Britain it would take the total reinvention with
record company suits had been projecting, and going to happen. But bear this in mind – in case.’ their 1987 album Hysteria to reopen the commercial
only slightly more than On Through The Night . Pete must have been given a hundred chances.” floodgates. By this time Lange was taking two years
There were, however, other consolations. “The “Pete was finding it difficult to either believe to record a Leppard album, and all the curvaceous
American girls were lovely,” says Joe. “I couldn’t get what was happening or understand it, and was twists and jagged turns of High ’N’ Dry had been
a girl to look at me in England, even on stage, for uncomfortable with it,” says Savage. erased in favour of a more svelte sonic plateau.
God’s sake! [In America] we were shocked at some Sacked during the formative stages of Pyromania, Three decades on, however, for many Leppard
of the stuff we saw. The first time I saw [well- after Mutt lost patience and refused to work with fans High ’N’ Dry remains a true rock classic and, as
known groupie] Sweet Connie, in Little Rock, I ran him further until he cleaned up his act, Willis’s Savage says, the springboard for all that followed it.
a mile. I didn’t go where other people have been; it departure may have been, as Elliott insists, “when “Because it wasn’t as successful as we would have
was either the girl behind the counter at the hotel we woke up to the real us”. But it was a devastating liked, Mutt was hell-bent on making sure
or the stewardess on the plane.” blow to their former school pal. He came back, in everything else we did was a hit. And that’s why we
Party nights on the road in the US also presented 1985, to record an EP with the Jonathan King-led started taking so long making records. When High
other temptations. “I kind of pushed that envelope ‘metal supergroup’ Gogmagog (also featuring ’N’ Dry wasn’t as successful as Mutt thought it
as far as I could,” Allen admits. Already chastised ex-Maiden members Paul Di’Anno and Clive Burr) should have been, then it became personal.”

42 CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM

THE UK’S BIGGEST HEAVY METAL MAGAZINE































































Available
from all good
newsagents and
supermarkets






NEW ISSUE ON SALE NOW









THE BIGGEST BANDS. THE HEAVIEST MUSIC.

WORLD-EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEWS.





BUY YOUR ISSUE TODAY







PRINT EDITION AVAILABLE FROM

HTTPS://TINYURL.COM/METALHAMMERSHOP



DIGITAL EDITIONS AVAILABLE ON IOS AND ANDROID


WWW.METALHAMMER.COM



/metalhammer /metalhammeruk /metalhammer

Leppard’s man of

mystery steps out of

the shadows to tell


the story of how

a one-time Sheffield


United FC hopeful

found his true

destiny within the


brotherhood of

rock’n’roll.



























































































INTERVIEW: MICK WALL
PORTRAITS: ROSS HALFIN
(UNLESS OTHERWISE CREDITED)

44 CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM

e catch up on the What’s in First of all, away from the band is it Going back to your own boyhood, I was
a name? He
phone with Rick ‘Rick’ or ‘Sav’? intrigued to learn that one of the first
answers to ‘Rick’,
Savage as Leppard ‘Richard’ and I’m a combination of Rick, Richard songs you learned on guitar when you
‘Dad’ – but you
are approaching the can call him ‘Sav’. and Sav, depending on who I’m with. were just 10 years old was Maggie May
end of the second leg Certainly for the last 10 or 15 years when by Rod Stewart. Tell me about that
of their current US tour. I’m not actually doing anything related to song, and any other songs you learned
“We’ve got two more the band it’s just been ‘Dad’. Like most to play in those days.

shows to go, then we’ve got parents, your life revolves around your Maggie May was the very first song
a week’s break,” says Rick, kids. You go through the stages. You learn I ever learned to play. What it was, I’m
over his morning coffee. Tonight they how to change nappies. You learn to get the youngest by seven years from two
play an arena – natch – in a suburb of St less sleep. And then it graduates to other other brothers. They were seven and

Louis, Missouri, called Maryland things. I’m now getting to the stage where nine years ahead of me. My eldest brother
Heights. “It’s about our 10th time here,” I’ve become a taxi driver. I used to play John had just started work, or got a paper
he recalls without a trace of weariness. a lot of junior football at a very high level, round or something, and he bought an
Rick is the man of mystery in Def at 15 or 16. Now I’m seeing it all again, acoustic guitar. He got the sheet music
Leppard. Joe Elliott and Phil Collen do 35 years later or whatever it is. You for a few songs and one of them was

lots of interviews. Steve Clark was devote your time to your family because Maggie May. It was one of those things
a standout figure. Rick Allen always had it’s a lot harder when you are on the road where you got the lyrics and where the
his lost arm to mark him out. But Rick or in a studio in a different country. You chord changes were it had little dots in
Savage, or ‘Sav’ – not so much. miss [your family life] and you try and boxes, to show you where to go. And he’d

“There’s nothing mysterious about make up for lost time. gone out one evening and I thought, well,
me,” he insists. “It’s really my reluctance I’ll do this. I put my finger there and my
to do interviews. I don’t enjoy them as How many kids have you got now? finger there and started strumming.
much, perhaps, as the others. But that’s I’ve got two boys, aged 13 and 15, and I knew the song, it was current at the
the only reason. I’m not like the Howard a 21-year-old stepdaughter who’s actually time, top of the charts, and I found it all
Hughes of the band. When you’ve got a mother herself. So as far as everybody came rather easily! All of a sudden it was

someone in the group like Mr Elliott it’s there’s concerned I’m granddad. A bit like a brand new door opening. Like,
hard to get a word in edgeways anyway.” weird but… [Laughs] wow, I can actually do this reasonably



AT THE TIME IT WAS: ‘I’LL PLAY BASS ’TIL WE FIND


A BASS PLAYER.’ THANKFULLY WE STILL HAVEN’T



FOUND A BASS PLAYER SO I’M STILL HERE!



CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM 45

RICHARD SAVAGE





well. It probably sounded shocking but to
me it was a very cool thing indeed.



How come you found it so easy? Do you
have long fingers?
Not really. I have very thin fingers. In

fact, I have fingers that don’t really suit a
bass guitar, which is what I’ve been
playing for the last 40 years. I talk to
other bass players and they could play a
stand-up bass, no problem. I have a stand-
up double bass, but I can’t play it to save

my life. I can hardly get my hand around
the neck! But, no, I don’t think I was
genetically engineered to play a bass
guitar; it was more a mental thing. And

having an attitude. Looking at bass
playing from a guitar player’s point of
view. I think that’s kind of what I do.


Did you ever see yourself as a singer,

though? Isn’t that where most kids
start when they fantasise about being
a rock’n’roll star?
I have always, always loved melody.

Don’t get me wrong. And harmony.
One of my earliest memories as a kid
was listening to the Beach Boys and just
marvelling at how their voices sounded,
and how the melodies moved. But the

passion – the real passion – was hearing
guitars. That was the thing. It was more
when Marc Bolan came on the scene. It
was the image and the guitar. Same with Don’t shoot
shotgun: Sav
Slade: it was all kind of guitar-driven, and and Joe Elliott’s
that was what really motivated me more camaraderie MAIN: GETTY
remains strong.
than individual frontmen. It was more
the guitar side of things. on [Bolan]. He was just part of a whole perm our hair [that the Bolan comparison
bag of artists that just looked cool. There came up]. Joe had always got a plan to do

Thinking of Marc Bolan with his was a certain femininity to them without it anyway, purely because his biggest idol
corkscrew hair and low-slung guitar… being over-the-top effeminate. They were was Ian Hunter – and he had that look:
I can see how you related to that. Were guys, and they played like guys, but there the shades and the long, wavy hair. There
you rocking that same look later on? was a certain femininity to them. Whether was a short time where we all had Pete
Yeah. I mean, back in the day it was it was the makeup, or the fact that they Willis-like very straight hair. Then, within

mentioned that there was a certain did have long hair. That was all part of the a space of about 10 days, we’d all been to
similarity. But that was purely attraction. But it was only when Steve the hairdressers and come out with tiny,
coincidental. I never modelled myself Clark decided that we should all go in and tight curls. More like Shirley Temple than
Ian Hunter!
WE WANTED TO INCORPORATE

Your first band, Atomic Mass, which
EVERYTHING. A BIT OF PUNK you were in with Joe Elliott and original
Leppard guitarist Pete Willis, was where
ATTITUDE BUT ALLYING THE SEX you first picked up bass. The story goes

it was because Pete was a better
PISTOLS AND THE CLASH WITH guitarist than you – true?
Pete definitely was [a better guitarist],

BOSTON AND QUEEN. no question. I’m trying to think back,
though, to whether Pete was ever actually


46 CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM

RICHARD SAVAGE





Run riot: Sav
delivers the
trademark
Leppard
harmonies.


























































































































CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM 47

RICHARD SAVAGE








































































in Atomic Mass. We didn’t gig in Atomic a reserve team and an intermediary team, Hell raiser: Tony Currie, who played for England, and
contrary to
Mass, we were just a school band… and I generally played in that. Alan Woodward, who sadly recently just
reputation, on
I think Pete came to see us. We only did the Hysteria tour passed away…
the boys liked
one show. And Joe, he was one of the few But you are a Sheffield Wednesday fan,
nothing more
that also came to see us. I didn’t even so how did that work? than a quiet night So what made you leave football to go
in with the telly
know Joe at the time. But it was more Huge Wednesday fan, yeah. I had the after a show. play in Def Leppard?
when we formed Def Leppard. It was choice of Wednesday, United, Barnsley, It was pretty strange how it all fell into
Pete who was pulling the band together Rotherham and Chesterfield. But out of place. I met Joe in the August of ’77, and
– Pete, [drummer] Tony Kenning and Joe. those clubs, Sheffield United had just had within six or seven weeks I’d made up
I came on board as the other guitar player, one of their best seasons in their history. my mind. Basically, Sheffield United

but we didn’t have a bass player. It was Sheffield Wednesday had just had their made my mind up for me. I hated the two
me who said: “Listen fellas, this is very worst. It was a no-brainer, really. years I spent there. I didn’t get on with the
holding us back. I’ll play bass.” Plus my father was a United fan, and players that were there. There was a lot of
That made us a proper band, like he sort of persuaded me to. They’d just backstabbing going on. It was all dog eat

Zeppelin or Free or one of those. At the finished like sixth in the old First dog, and I’m just not that mentality. Even
time it was: “I’ll play bass ’til we find Division so it just seemed the better in the first team, you saw it. It really
a bass player.” That’s become a running decision. It was a great team, they had turned me against wanting to be
joke. Thankfully we still haven’t found
HEAVY METAL, WE’RE NOT VERY
a bass player, so I’m still here!


You were also very talented as GOOD AT THAT. WE NEVER FELT WE
a teenage footballer. You were signed
on schoolboy terms with Sheffield WERE WORTHY OF THE NAME. AT

United FC. How come you swapped that
dream of being a professional soccer
player for being in a band? THE SAME TIME, THE TITLE NWOBHM
I was signed to Sheffield United at the age
of 14. In those days you had a first team, WASN’T WORTHY OF US.


48 CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM