Page 88 - Classic Rock - The Complete Story of Def Leppard 2019

the band on all four sides, Steve would take
off running like a greyhound out of the
box, throwing his shapes with magnificent
abandon, his long blond hair
flowing behind him like he was in a gale-
force wind, his signature red bolero jacket
and white silk scarf all following the one-
man circus of colour and style, tight white
pants and thin-soled dance shoes… right
knee pumping forward and upward like a
Lipizzaner stallion. What an entrance!
I would watch the audience. All eyes
would be following Steve’s parade.”
Clark was inspired by Jimmy Page – of
course – and his guitars were slung low.
Very low. That made it impossible for the
five feet, two inches tall Mortimer, who
started life in Leppard as Steve’s guitar
tech, to tune them in the usual manner.
“I couldn’t reach the bloody tuning
pegs!” he laughs. “Steve used to turn up
for soundcheck and make me wear his
Firebird just so he could laugh at how
ridiculous I looked with the longest
guitar strap in the shop.”
Frontman Joe Elliott remembers
Clark’s first jam with a fledgling Leppard:
“He picked up his Les Paul copy from his
guitar case and put it on way too low.
I just remember thinking: ‘Aye-aye, this
looks good.’ He had the long blond hair
and denim jacket, skinny as a rake and
wearing white clogs like Brian May or
Brian Robertson. He played Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Free
Bird and did the whole end bit on his own. It was
like: ‘Holy crap! This guy’s great.’
“He had that slightly sleazy sound, so he was
very complementary to the studded, funkier style
of Pete [Willis, fellow Leppard guitarist]. It was
instant. I remember telling Steve: ‘Look, you’ve got
the gig.’ Then Pete said: ‘Hang on, don’t you think
we should discuss this first?’ So I went: ‘Absolutely
not. So you want to lose this guy for somebody
else? Are you kidding?’”
ff stage Clark was a humble person, with
no airs and graces – except when he put
Othem on for a laugh. Cigarette in one
hand and a drink in the other, watching the world
go by, he was detached but approachable – a rare
but endearing combination. And as a guitarist,
Clark was the riffmeister. His right hand was
perfectly loose, yet his style was fluent and classy.
Nobody looked and played like he did. No wonder
he gained the nickname Steamin’.
As Leppard’s career accelerated ever more
rapidly, relations between the hard-drinking Clark
and the equally hard-drinking Willis became
strained. “By the time we were touring in 1981
Steve couldn’t even stand to be in the same room
as Pete, because Pete would always be the one who
used up all the towels whenever he had a shower,
and things like that,” Elliott reveals. “All those kinds
of crappy things that ended up in Spinal Tap. When
Pete had to go, there weren’t any great protests
from anybody in the band.”
Enter Phil Collen, hotfoot from London-based
Hollywood Teasers, Girl. “Steve was great,” says
Collen. “Just a really warm, lovely soul, and you got
that from the first time you met him. Steve had
such a good vibe about him.”
Yet according to Joe Elliott, “when Phil came in,
86 CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM
Clark at Crookes Steve was. Being on stage allowed
in Sheffield, 1979. him to escape. Writing songs gave
him that escapism.
“Steve was an artist – not just a
musician,” he continues. “And
usually the best artists are quite
sensitive. I consider myself an
artist but I’ve got a rhinoceros hide.
Steve didn’t have that tough
exterior. He was still a very
sensitive type of personality. He
took what he did very seriously.
I never saw him drunk on stage. He
might’ve hada drink but he kept it
under control. He was very into
what he did. He wasn’t going to
fuck that up.”
t’s better to burn out than fade
away’ might be an oft-used
‘Iphrase, but it’s one that sums
up Steve Clark’s life and career in a
nutshell. He died on January 8,
1991– unbelievably, a quarter-
century ago – at age 30, during the
making of the Adrenalize album. In
his absence, Phil Collen had to
recreate Leppard’s signature two-
guitar sound alone, playing the parts
that Clark would have played, as well
as his own.
“We had recorded demos on multi-
track, so it was really easy for me to
get inside that,” says Collen. “I was
“Steve really sitting there with him when he played the original
parts. I could relay that. But it was like playing
did have a lot along to a ghost. When you hear that original track
and there he is, it feels like he’s alive. It’s really
weird, a very strange sensation.”
more left To this day, Joe Elliott believes that Steve Clark
does not get the kudos he deserves. “It’s because of
to say.” the band he was in, it’s as simple as that,” he says
surprisingly. “Steve gets due respect from the long-
term Leppard fan, but generally speaking we’re not
Phil Collen on the same level as Zeppelin, the Stones, The
Beatles or The Who. But Steve went out on top. His
last album was Hysteria, so you really can’t go
for about three days Steve was a little intimidated wrong. If you’re going to go, that’s the one. We were
by him and his speed-playing. Guitarists can the ones who were left with his legacy and who had
sometimes hate each other because of ego to build it up again from scratch. We had to suffer
jealousies. But once Phil explained that he wasn’t the downside of the success of Hysteria, which we
there to outdo Steve, that he was there to knew was going to come no matter what.”
complement what he was already doing, the two of “I remember how [record producer] ‘Mutt’ Lange
them buddied up over a bottle of beer and probably summed up Steve one time,” recalls Collen. “He
about ten bottles of vodka. And that was it.” said: ‘Give me the thinker over the player, any day.’
Clark and Collen – dubbed the Terror Twins by That was Steve. ‘Mutt’ said there are a million
Leppard’s road crew – were more or less glued to session sausages – that’s what he called session
the hip from 1983 right up to ’87, when the latter players – but they have no ideas, they’re clinical. But
decided enough was enough and stopped drinking. Steve, he was a thinker. As a player and as a man.
“They never fell out,” says Elliott, “but Steve lost his “There was a lot going on in Steve –
drinking buddy and became a lot more isolated.” unfortunately, sometimes a bit too much. Steve
“Our relationship became something completely was a work in progress. It’s very easy to talk about
different,” explains Collen, “something that’s not this after someone has passed away, but Steve
based on going out and getting drunk. There was a really did have a lot more left to say. Steve was on
whole part of my life that disappeared pretty much this path to discovery, and booze put an end to
straight away, and that was still part of Steve’s life. that. If the drinking had just been a phase, if he’d
So that’s when we started drifting apart.” have come out of it, it would’ve been wonderful.”
There is a popular image of Steve Clark as a dual “Steve Clark left behind a masterclass for
personality: extrovert on stage, introvert off stage. absolutely anyone that wanted to write a unique
But according to Collen, the truth was “way more opening riff and be a 24/7 rock star,” concludes
complex than that. Playing in a band, being an Malvin Mortimer. “To think that someone once
artist, there’s an escape from reality. That was how called it Bludgeon Riffola.”