Page 58 - Classic Rock - The Complete Story of Def Leppard 2019

Pyromania: “We wanted an
album that sounded how
Spielberg movies looked.”
band: “We can make a record that nobody’s ever
made before.” Mutt listed the cutting-edge studio
technology at their disposal – digital recording,
new drum machines and synthesisers – and
explained how these could be applied to the
recording of hard rock. But he warned: “If we go
for it, we’re gonna go down a lot of dead ends and
come back frustrated. Even I don’t know where
we’re going with this.”
As Elliott says: “Mutt needed a band that was
prepared to go with him, and we needed
somebody that was prepared to take the
responsibility. It was perfect for Mutt. He had a
band that wasn’t full of ego. We hadn’t had any
previous success to fight him with. Foreigner had
had triple-platinum records. You can imagine
them thinking, ‘Who does this guy think he is?’
But with us he could try anything.”
What made Def Leppard such willing pupils
was a keen appreciation of rock history. “We’d
read about Queen and The Beatles using all these
toys in the studio,” Elliott explains, “and we
wanted to do the same thing, but within a hard-
rock format. There were certain records from the
70s that were much better than the stuff that was
coming out in the early 80s. Boston’s debut and
the first four Queen albums, they were huge
productions, and that’s what we wanted – a
massive sound.”
Leppard wrote most of the songs for their third
album in February 1982. Some of the songs were
brand new, built from a stockpile of riffs the band
had worked through after the High ‘N’ Dry tour.
But they also remodelled a couple of older songs
that hadn’t made the cut for High ‘N’ Dry: Medicine
Man was beefed up and renamed Rock Rock (Till
“I THOUGHT, I’M NOT
PUTTING MY LIFE ON THE
LINE FOR THIS TWAT ANY
MORE.” – JOE ON PETE WILLIS’S SACKING
56 CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM
Confidence man: “If
Good friends really: Joe
Elliott and Rick Savage.
You Drop), and a previously unfinished track,
described by Joe as “a dual-guitar pop song”,
was finally completed, and titled Photograph.
Aside from drummer Rick Allen, every band
member contributed to the writing, as did Mutt
Lange, who co-wrote all of the album’s 10 tracks.
Guitarist Pete Willis wrote the riff to Rock Rock
(Till You Drop). Their other guitarist, Steve Clark, a
Jimmy Page fan, created the Zeppelin-styled epic
Billy’s Got A Gun. Rick Savage came up with the
express-train rocker Stagefright.
Elliott: “When we were piecing these songs
together it was all written with vocals in mind.
Guitar is a backing instrument to a voice. It
sounds like an egotistical statement from a singer,
Pyromania doesn’t sell
six million I’ll eat my hat.”
but it’s true. And with Pyromania the whole thing
was driven by vocals.”
Recording began in March, and money was
tight. The band were in debt to their record
company to the tune of £700,000, and each band
member was on wages of £40 a week.
“Mutt was like a sergeant major,” Elliott recalls.
“I remember him reaming Pete Willis for eating
an apple while we were supposed to be recording.
Mutt was shouting: ‘We don’t have the money or
the time to be pissing about!’ We were laughing.
It was like being back at school.”
It was only when Willis screwed up again that
the gravity of the situation really hit home.
Elliott: “Pete turned up one morning around
10am, and he was so bollocksed he was actually
doing the Paul Kossoff and wearing the guitar
backwards – strings inside – strumming the back
of the guitar. Mutt was laughing so hard. But then
he sent Pete home. I was really scared that Mutt
was gonna walk off the project. And I’m afraid,
truth be known, Mutt was more important than
Pete was.”
Pete Willis had become a liability. And after
lengthy discussions, a decision was made. “We’d
made the decision 99 times before,” Elliott sighs,
“and every time we’d been talked out of it, either
by Pete or management.”
The band had already identified a replacement
for Willis: Londoner Phil Collen, guitarist with
NWOBHM-era glam-rock band Girl and a good
friend of Joe’s. During the High ‘N’ Dry tour, Joe
had called Phil at 2am following another drunken
outburst from Willis. “I asked Phil if he could
learn 18 songs in three days,” says Elliott. “But of
course, in the cold light of day I rang him again
and said: ‘Look, one day, but not now.’”
Collen didn’t have to wait long. Willis was
summoned to a band meeting and told he was
out. When he pleaded for one last chance, Joe
replied: “You’ve had a hundred chances.”
It was a tough call but as Joe sees it, Pete had
only himself to blame: “When Pete had a few
drinks he thought he was King Kong. I mean,
Steve was a drinker but Steve was a nice guy. Pete
wasn’t. In the end I thought, I’m not putting my
life on the line for this twat any more.”