Page 44 - Classic Rock - The Complete Story of Def Leppard 2019

“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.”

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