Page 100 - Classic Rock - The Complete Story of Def Leppard 2019

For Those About To
Get Rocked
In 1992, reeling from the death of their guitarist Steve Clark and facing the onset of grunge,
Def Leppard were determined to keep the party going. The result was Adrenalize
– hard rock’s last great blockbuster album of a golden era.
Words: Paul Elliott Photos: Ross Halfin
t began with a question: ‘Do you wanna get rocked?’
The answer came back loud and clear when Def
Leppard’s Adrenalize hit No.1 globally in 1992.
For one of rock’s biggest bands, it seemed like
Ibusiness as usual. In reality it was anything but.
If ever a band had to dig deep to make an album, it
was Def Leppard with Adrenalize. They had done so
before, in creating their 1987 album Hysteria after
drummer Rick Allen lost his left arm in a car crash on
New Year’s Eve 1984, and had to reinvent the way he
played, using a specially developed electronic kit. But in
the making of Adrenalize the band suffered their darkest
day – the death of guitarist Steve Clark on January 8,
1991, following a long struggle with alcoholism.
As Leppard singer Joe Elliott says now, looking back
at that difficult time: “It was tough. Emotionally, so
draining. But we didn’t want to split up the band like Led Zeppelin
did after John Bonham died. We were tying to keep ourselves from
drowning.”
Def Leppard made Adrenalize under intense pressure, both
internal and external. In the absence of Steve Clark, it was left to
Phil Collen, the band’s other guitarist, to replicate their signature
two-guitar sound. They also had to find a new producer at a time
when their mentor Mutt Lange was busy working with another
client, Bryan Adams. In addition, there was the heavy burden of
expectation to match an album that had sold a colossal
fifteen million copies worldwide. “How the hell do you follow
Hysteria?” says Elliott.
What they achieved with Adrenalize was, as with Hysteria,
a triumph over adversity. Def Leppard was always, in Elliott’s
words, “an escapism band, for us and for everybody else”. And
never more so than on Adrenalize. It included a memorial to Steve
Clark: a powerful, sombre track titled White Lightning. But as they
made this album, one comment from Mutt Lange resonated deeply
within the band. While acknowledging the impact of Clark’s death,
Lange told them: “People don’t want to hear Def Leppard doing
Leonard Cohen.”
Elliott recalls: “A guy’s just died and here we are making this
euphoric, celebratory music. It seemed a bit weird. But we made
a point of remembering who we are, what we do and what we do
well.” And it was the question ‘Do you wanna get rocked?’ – the
opening line from would be the album’s opening track, Let’s Get
Rocked – which set the tone. For all the sadness that surrounded the
making of it, Adrenalize was a celebration of the life-affirming Savage, Joe Elliott,
power of rock’n’roll.
98 CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM
In February 1992, one month before the release of
Adrenalize, Joe Elliott ended up in tears when he spoke
to me about the death of Clark and the band’s efforts to
save him. In a room at the St James Club in Hollywood,
he said solemnly: “We’d lost Steve a year before he died.
We couldn’t do anything more for him.”
t was in January 1978 that Steve Clark joined Def
Leppard, five months after the band formed in
ISheffield. At his audition, he played the end solo
from Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Free Bird. It was so good that
Elliott said, without hesitation: “He’s in.”
In the band’s early days they dreamed of emulating
their heroes – Zeppelin, Lizzy, Queen. Those dreams
had come true with Hysteria, and predecessor
Pyromania, another multimillion seller. On stage, Clark
was the classic guitar hero. Off stage, he was an introvert who
became heavily dependent on alcohol. During the Hysteria tour,
Clark got drunk only after shows or on days off. After that tour
ended in 1988, his problem deepened. As Elliott explained: “Once
we came off the road, Steve’s routine became just drinking.”
What the singer revealed about the last years of Clark’s life was
harrowing. Between 1989 and 1990 he had six separate spells in
rehab. For a long period he remained a functioning member of the
band. During the early songwriting sessions for Adrenalize, in
which Mutt Lange was also involved, Clark co-wrote six of the 10
songs that were included on the album. It was when he was away
from the band that Clark went off the rails. While on holiday in
Minneapolis, he was found unconscious in a street, with an alcohol
level in his blood higher than that which killed Led Zeppelin
drummer John Bonham in 1980; double the level that can induce
coma. Clark was admitted to a psychiatric ward in Minneapolis.
Elliott visited him there, and recalled: “It was basically like a nut
house. I was looking at Clarkie thinking: ‘What the fuck are you
doing in here?’ He looked like a dead man.”
Later, in Dublin, Clark was present as the band began recording
basic tracks for the album. He was also attending a rehab facility
close by, where Elliott would sit with him during group therapy
sessions. What he realised then was that Clark was in complete
denial. “He thought he was fine,” he said. “He didn’t believe that he
had a problem.”
And then there There was a deeper realisation that for Elliott was heartbreaking:
were four: (l-r)
Rick Allen, Rick “Steve was the nicest guy in the world. But he was a very complex
person. I’d known for years, but I didn’t know him at all. He had
Phil Collen. everything, yet he had nothing. You do your best to help.