Page 54 - Classic Rock - The Complete Story of Def Leppard 2019

RICHARD SAVAGE

THE VISION THAT WE’D HARBOURED SINCE

DAY ONE WAS: WE WANT TO SELL AS MANY

RECORDS TO BANK MANAGERS AS BLOKES

WHO RIDE MOTORBIKES.

The landscape was really changing, yeah. We absolutely went through that process,
I became aware of Peal Jam and maybe yeah. But it wasn’t to try and keep up or
even Nirvana kind of just before they all hang on to the supremacy that we’d

broke. My girlfriend at the time was created in the 80s. It was more internally.
closely associated with [the grunge We got to the point after the Adrenalize
scene]. She was in the video business but album and before we went in to record
she came from Seattle and she played me Slang, we really got to the point where

Pearl Jam and I remember thinking, we couldn’t make another album like
bloody hell, this is good! But it’s not even Adrenalize again. Or even Hysteria again.
encroaching on where our music’s at. We’d go mad. We’d absolutely just go
I thought, it’s good and it will probably nuts or just call it a day. We had to do
replace Tom Petty, rather than replace Def something different. Even the recording

Leppard. I didn’t feel threatened by it at process had to go completely different.
all. I admired it. I thought, what a lovely Just for our own benefit. Slang was
singer. And great feel to the drums and the such an important album within the
tracks in general. I didn’t realise that it band, because what it did was… it

was gonna get that big that it just gave us a springboard to the
swallowed up the bands that had been so second half of our career. Without
big in the 80s, whether it be Def Leppard, it I don’t think there would have
Mötley Crüe, Bon Jovi, although they been a second half to our career.
sidestepped it a bit. And then Nirvana, We needed to make that record

along the same sort of lines. It was like, for ourselves just to change it
bloody hell, it’s completely changed! around and record an album in a
We even said at the time: “Listen, completely different way without
everybody has their day.” Music, it is like worrying whether it’s gonna be

that. It is cyclical and whatever has commercially accepted or not. I
become overly popular for many years think that was the important
suddenly just… there’s something that thing. We just had to do it.
just comes along that is 180 degrees the In fairness, When Love And
opposite to what people have been Hate Collide was a song that

buying. The grunge thing was exactly didn’t quite make the
that. It wasn’t about glam. It wasn’t about Adrenalize album. So it was
David Lee Roth or Jon Bon Jovi or Joe more akin to that. We just
Elliott or all that stuff. We called them gave it more of the Slang sort
shoe-starers because they were all of treatment. We didn’t want

miserable buggers that were into art and to turn it into some big Love
doing heroin instead of cocaine. [Laughs] Bites-fest or anything like
That was basically it! that. From a songwriting
point of view, that was
Def Leppard and Bon Jovi survived it written four or five years

much better than bands like Mötley before it came out.
Crüe, Poison and Whitesnake. Because The record company,
of the more universal quality of your they wanted something to
songs you weren’t so wedded to that release a greatest hits album [Vault], but

one era. You also all cut your hair, began obviously they needed a lead-off single, a
dressing down, and released big power- brand new track just to sort of introduce
ballad comeback hits: Always for Bon it. So they were listening to current songs.
Jovi and When Love And Hate Collide They were listening to stuff that [later
for Leppard. Agree? ended up] on Slang, and they were like,

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