Page 29 - Classic Rock - The Complete Story of Def Leppard 2019
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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.
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