Page 103 - Classic Rock - The Complete Story of Def Leppard 2019
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Phil Collen decided early on that he
would play all the guitars on the album.
He explains: “Why bring someone in who
doesn’t get what we’re all about? I’d be
teaching someone. The weird thing was
that I had to learn Steve’s parts from the
demos we’d laid down together on four-
track. It was like listening to a ghost; he
was in the room. I just wanted to do him
justice, to make it sound as close as I could
to how it was with Steve.”
The first stages of recording were at
Wisseloord studios in Holland, where
much of Hysteria was made. But, as Collen
says, “that was costing a fortune”. So
operations were moved to Elliott’s home in
Dublin, where a studio had recently been
installed. Hysteria had taken the best part of
four years to record. But not Adrenalize. “By
our standards we blitzed through it,” Elliott
said. “And we wanted this one to be a little
less polished than Hysteria, with the edge
that Pyromania had. We wanted it to rock
a bit more.”
Certainly there were echoes of Hysteria
on Adrenalize. Make Love Like A Man was an
anthem like Pour Some Sugar On Me, its
tongue-in-cheek title described by Elliott
as “totally taking the piss – not chest- Steve Clark (left) put it to bed it was like we’d done group drenalize was released on March
beating macho bullshit”. Tonight and Have with Leppard therapy,” Elliott recalls. “After that we 31, 1992. In Rolling Stone, JD
You Ever Needed Someone So Bad were two during the making needed something completely ridiculous.” AConsidine wrote: “There’s no
of Hysteria.
finely crafted ballads in the style of Love Cue Let’s Get Rocked, its mood and title overriding concept to the album, no sense
Bites. Tear It Down, previously released as inspired by Let’s Go Crazy, the explosive of the group confronting its demons or
the B-side to Animal, was a no-brainer rock funk-rock blowout from Prince’s classic wrestling with the problems of the world;
song like Run Riot. Best of all was Stand Up album Purple Rain. “Phil and I were instead, what we get is an unending string
(Kick Love Into Motion), with beautiful vocal infatuated with Prince then,” Elliott says. of energetic, hook-heavy, gosh-we-luv-’em
harmonies, a song similar in feel to the title “We wanted Let’s Get Rocked to be songs about girls. A perfect Def Leppard
track from Hysteria. something he could have done. It was album, in other words.”
The last two songs written for Adrenalize, celebratory, written for a stadium.” And if It was also an album completely out of
after Clark’s death, were White Lightning Phil Collen (right) Elliott’s lyrics were dumb and cartoonish, step with what was happening in rock
and Let’s Get Rocked. Collen alone created and former then no wonder – he wrote them after music at the time. Just two months earlier,
the music for White Lightning, with direct Whitesnake, watching an episode of The Simpsons. Nirvana’s Nevermind had topped the US
guitarist Vivian
reference to Gods Of War, the epic track Campbell, Clark’s With this album there was one last chart. A new age of alternative rock had
from Hysteria that Clark wrote in homage replacement in drama, during the end stages of recording, arrived, led by the Seattle grunge bands
to Led Zeppelin’s Kashmir. In the words Def Leppard. when Mike Shipley contracted hepatitis, – Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice
that Elliott wrote for White Lightning was a potentially fatal liver disorder. “As In Chains – and Californian outliers Faith
Clark’s story and those of other rock usual another major trauma No More and Jane’s Addiction. It was the
stars who died young, including attacked us in the final hour,” most seismic change in popular music
Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. One Elliott said with gallows since punk in the late 70s, with Smells Like
line in the song, depicting the humour: It definitely screwed Teen Spirit, its revolutionary anthem,
private hell of an addict, was him up for a while.” Fortunately, ringing out like the last bell for the big-
painfully acute: ‘And no one will Shipley recovered. haired stars of 80s rock.
ever hear you scream and shout.’ With the work done, Elliott says now that he was largely
“I think it’s the most personal, the mood in the oblivious to it all: “When we were making
moving lyric I’ve ever band was defiantly Adrenalize it was still the arse end of the
written,” he said, “because upbeat, as eighties, from a mental point of view. The
it’s the only one that’s illustrated by the nineties hadn’t kicked in. We weren’t aware
specifically about album’s title. of what Kurt Cobain was doing until the
someone we know.” In “There’s no album was out.”
that song, he was such word as Not so Phil Collen: “With grunge, I saw it
saying all the things ‘adrenalize’ in coming a mile off. There were so many
that he couldn’t get the dictionary,” awful hair-metal bands around. Something
through to his Elliott says, “but had to happen. Nirvana and Pearl Jam were
friend. “We did say it sounded right. a breath of fresh air.”
those things,” he We wanted it In this turbulent time, some stars from
said. “He just didn’t to be like the 80s were big enough to ride out the
hear them.” plugging the storm. Guns N’ Roses were riding high
So much power back in, with Use Your Illusion I and II. Bon Jovi, with
emotion went into re-energising their 1992 album Keep The Faith, had what
White Lightning. the band Manic Street Preachers bassist Nicky Wire
“By the time we musically.” called “a brilliant reinvention”. And there
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