Page 42 - Classic Rock - The Complete Story of Def Leppard 2019

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
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