Circus Magazine August 31, 1983 Growing pains for Def Leppard by George Arthur The North of England has its traditions. The fiercest of these is rock & roll, played straight-ahead and as powerful as the motion of a steam turbine. Birmingham - the Detroit of the U.K. - has spawned Robert Plant and Judas Priest, while Sheffield has produced Joe Cocker as well as the newest champions of steel-belt rock: five musicians known as Def Leppard. For their first two Mercury albums, On Through The Night and High 'n' Dry, the youthful Def Leppard played the challenger to the hilt. Provincial underdogs battling against the 1980's prevailing English trends, the members of the band have gone from their home-turf circuit of unfashionable working-class pubs to headliner status in a move that's been nothing short of phenomenal. Three years ago, Leppard were opening for Ted Nugent. Now their third LP, Pyromania, has shot to #2 on the LP chart and supplied a Top 10 hit, "Photograph"; and bands on Nugent's level of popularity are guesting for Leppard. The band's enthusiasm, on stage and in the pub, has made the old rock legend shine anew. Even the shuffling of key personnel (the band's on its second co-guitarist, Phil Collen) hasn't damaged its rowdy rank-and-file appeal. "We hadn't been on stage in the United States in eighteen months." admits vocalist Joe Elliott, "and we can't complain. We booked part of this tour before we released Pyromania, so it could have been a lot worse - we could have been third on the bill to Triumph!" Both now, with a marathon three-part spring and summer tour, Def Leppard are facing the biggest challenge of their career. Already denounced as money-hungry turncoats by England's cranky critics of their stateside stardom, Joe Elliott, Rick Savage, Steve Clark, Richard Allen and Phil Collen are learning for themselves another of rock's most venerable truths: The toughest act to follow is your own. "We were very naïve to the music myth," Joe Elliott confides, "and come last year, we learned a lot. We had to learn, to get a grasp of everything around us." From the beginning, Elliott and the band understood that "we were the guys making the music. No matter how professional the management is, the actual product has got to be good. You can have all the bullshit promotion in the world, and if the show is no good, the public is going to become aware of it." Leppard gears up for a gaggle of U.S. dates "We've got to go for it sooner of later," says singer Joe Elliott of Def Leppard's headline swing - five months of crisscrossing North America. "You can't be a support act for the rest of your life." But preparing for a headline tour brings responsibilities along with it. Consider the statistics. Four truckloads of equipment, including 450 aircraft lights, a nine-foot inflatable "Monk" (for "Rock of Ages"), and stage effects designed and executed by the firm responsible for Kiss's pyrotechnics, are accompanying the group throughout its American jaunt. In Detroit this past June, relatively early in their travels, Def Leppard sold all 14,500 seats in Joe Louis Arena - in advance - within three hours; a second date and another 12,000 ticket sales quickly followed. Joe's vocal problems forced Leppard to cancel the dates, but the figures were impressive. As opening act for Billy Squier, Leppard performed box-office magic in Seattle, too; it was a decisive factor in selling out the 14,000-seat Seattle Coliseum a month before the show. Def Leppard now plays a set lasting one hour, 15 minutes - a long time to sustain the level of live intensity that a bind like this must build. Is it all getting out of hand for a quintet of rockers that a mere five years ago financed, pressed and distributed its own Getcha Rocks Off extended-play disk - with a cover printed by the north-of-England firm for which Richard Allen's mother works? "Out of hand is one thing it'll never get," tour manager Robert Allen confidently declares. "Anyway," adds guitarist Steve Clark, "we didn't want to get stuck with the title of 'The Great Support Band.' We took a risk, and it's really paying off well." Can Leppard follow their own act? From the beginning, the five musicians of Def Leppard played off their image as a pack of rock & roll buddies. On the road this year, they found themselves at the center of a much bigger gang, including drivers, equipment handlers, a production designer and assorted gofers. As the Def Leppard extravaganza made its way across North America, possibly only our manager Robert Allen, 23, really has a handle on what is happening to this hottest of new bands. "Nobody ever dreamt we'd get this far," Allen cheerfully admits. Even more than most managers - whose job makes the part of every confidence and crisis in a band - Allen is in a position to know, for there are bloodlines here: Drummer Richard Allen is Robert's younger brother. "Richard started drumming when he was 10," Robert boasts with a touch of fraternal pride, "Playing workingmen's clubs - places where they sell a lot of beer, play bingo and see an act once a night. When Richard joined [in November '78, replacing Tony Reuben], I was determined not to work for 'em." As much of the hard-rock world was eventually to do, however, Robert succumbed to the Leps. "I worked for the band for six months without a penny; it was blind faith, really." If Robert, for all his rock & roll experience is slightly stunned by the band's rapid rise, brother Richard, just 19, has thought hard about the return trip. His one and only drum teacher had played with Joe Cocker in the days when the singer was trying to escape Sheffield and , according to Richard, came back "one of the casualties." Certainly there have been those who've resented Leppard's relatively quick leap to the top. And the prospect of having veteran guitarist Gary Moore (ex-Thin Lizzy) open for Def Leppard gave the young drummer genuine pause. "He's got Ian Paice!" he says with the awe of a true fan. "One of the first rock bands I started to listen to was Deep Purple. I bought the Made in Japan album. I learned a lot from Deep Purple. "I don't like the idea of that," Allen admits, returning to the current plan of having Moore and Paice open for Def Leppard dates. "It's making me feel awkward, very awkward." No longer the underdogs, slightly bemused by the fuss made over their youthfulness in the recent past, Def Leppard may be relieved that some uphill challenges still remain. Joe Elliott, Def Leppard's 23-year-old singer, recognizes the challenges of not facing them. "Making decisions is a bit of a bind," he says, "although we always look at it from the point of view that if we weren't making these decisions, we'd probably still be back in Sheffield driving vans or making furniture, like we did before. " It was Elliott himself who piloted the van. That job went by the wayside long before stardom stuck, sacrificed to the long , late hours which are an inescapable feature of a rock & roll band's lifestyle. Adds Joe, the band's onstage focal point: "I think the tendency is for a manager to say to a young bad, 'Listen, boys, we know what's happening and if you'll just follow along, we'll make you stars.'" That's clearly the scenario this young band was never prepared to follow. This year, Def Leppard have had to balance the demands of success against the claims of their music and roots. (Joe Elliott is only partly joking when he calls the boys of the band "part-time businessmen.") With access to a world far beyond Sheffield, Leppard's interior horizons have also expanded. Robert Allen is even willing to concede that "I don't think we're a heavy-metal band anymore; we're not with the same audience. We started out in that, but we're crossing over a hell of a lot." It's a delicate balance, expanding the band's audience and range without abandoning the original inspiration and following. Allen's musings about "crossing over" have to be understood in the context of Elliott's often repeated conviction that Leppard "won't wimp out to pop music." Pointing to hard-rock giants like Led Zeppelin and Bad Company, the singer explains: "They might do some acoustic material, but they never water down the electric stuff. And neither do we. Look, we're barely five years old. We're not mellowing out yet, and we don't plan to, either. We just want to keep the guitars raunchy and still be melodic." Tour manager Allen is willing to voice another heresy. "We're all getting on," he says with a chuckle. "We're no longer 'the young band of England.'" Quickly, he adds, "That's no problem when you look around. There are a lot of old men about. We'll still be a young band. Anyway, Leppard are playing good music; that's what matters." Def Leppard: A role model for platinum success By Michael Smolen At a time when the record industry is producing fewer million-selling albums, Def Leppard have become an unstoppable force in the battle for platinum success. With sales currently topping five million, Def Leppard's 1983 release, Pyromania, ranks as PolyGram Records' biggest-selling non-soundtrack ever. And when a young band like Leppard - with an average age of 22, a sound that is rarely described as anything but "incredibly hot," and looks that are the stuff of female fantasies - sells over a million records in a matter of months, the reasons for success call for a closer look. Only five years ago, Def Leppard were a bunch of Sheffield boys "barely old enough to drink," in lead singer Joe Elliott's words. "Come last year, we learned a lot; we had to learn it. To stay up there, to get up there, we had to get a grasp of everything around us." But what were the magical elements that led to such an incredible success? Musical virtuosity? Age? Naïveté? Union Jack T-shirts? only a poll of the five million people who bought Pyromania could elicit the necessary answer. The Cinderfella story of Def Leppard began in early 1978, when the band consisted of Elliott, Rick Savage, Steve Clark, Pete Willis and Tony Kenning. The group performed for the first time in July of that year, and with a different drummer, produced an EP (Getcha Rocks Off) financed by Elliott's parents and released on Leppard's own Bludgeon Riffola label. In 1979, riding a wave of British press and DJ support, the band was able to garner enough exposure to be snatched up by PolyGram Records. They released their debut LP, On Through The Night, in 1980, and their second album, High 'n' Dry, in 1981. It charted as high as #38 and received a second wind from MTV's airing of the "Bringin' on the Heartache" video. "Everybody in the band worked hard to get where we are," Elliott said at the time, "even if it was for only nine months, not ten years like some bands. It all happened that quickly. All we were when we first got together," says Elliott, "were five friends who decided, 'Let's try to be a rock band.'" In the beginning, Elliott recalls, "We wanted to be up with the Zeppelins and the Queens, Bad Company; anybody you want to name - a universal band." The singer claims that he wanted to be in a rock bands as soon as he heard the Beatles at age five. And his dreams did not stop there. "When I was in school in Sheffield, I used to write imaginary reviews of gigs that never happened, instead of writing English essays. In art, instead of a vase full of flowers, I'd draw posters with imaginary bands on then." Not surprisingly, the name of the band on those posters was Deaf Leopard, and the "marquee" depicted a strange-looking jungle cat with an ear trumpet. When teachers asked Elliott what he was planning to do with his life, he invariably told them he was "going to be a pop star." And Joe Elliott was not the only one with early visions of stardom. Rick "Sav" Savage met and started playing with Pete Willis when he was in school at Tapton Comprehensive in Sheffield. At that time Sav was playing guitar rather than bass. In 1975, at the age of 14, he and Willis formed the band that would eventually become Def Leppard. "When I started out," says Savage, "we played a lot of old Thin Lizzy and T. Rex tunes. We used to cut class and rehearse in this old building, playing old Deep Purple songs." Enter Joe Elliott. "We fired our vocalist," recounts Sav, "and hired Joe in his place." Guitarist Steve Clark was soon added to the lineup. Rick Allen was the last to join. "I first stared playing when I was 10," says the drummer, who turned20 two months ago. "Then when I was 11 I started playing in clubs. My first band was called Smoky Blue; it was the worst." Allen's luck changed one day when he saw a newspaper advertisement that read: "Leopard loses skins"; it proved to be a call for drum auditions with a band called Deaf Leopard. Allen saw his chance to fill the drum seat abdicated by Tony Kenning. Def Leppard's career is proof that, in rock & roll, time is not of the essence. Much to the chagrin of such veteran rockers as, say, Scorpions, Judas Priest or other who have taken years to obtain their first gold record, Def Leppard's upward mobility was lightning quick. But their approach to making it big was different from that of most rookie outfits. "We rehearsed for six or seven months," says Elliott, "before we even attempted to play live, because we wanted to go out and play a full set of our own material. We wanted to shock people. We went on stage and didn't do any songs that anybody had ever heard before. And for some reason, it worked." One reason is that the group - then and now - functions as a team on which each member has a specific role to play. A glance at the credits on each of Def Leppard's albums reveals numerous songwriting collaborations. There is some vying for the spotlight, however - Elliott laughingly refers to Pete Willis's replacement, Phil Collen as "a born poser" whose only problem is trying to "outpose" fellow guitarist Clark. Yet, it's all in the spirit of camaraderie, not competition. Collen says fitting in with the Leps was "really easy," even though it required a major adjustment to his playing style. Famous for his show-stealing antics as the sole guitarist with his former band, Collen found there was little room for that in Def Leppard. "As soon as I got into this twin-guitar situation," says Collen, "I had to adjust my style so as not to overplay. Apparently he managed; fellow axeman Steve Clark says he's ecstatic over having Collen as a partner. "When Phil joined, it was a completely fresh attitude. He was excited about working, and his attitude rubbed off on everyone else in the band." Unless there is a drastic change in attitude within the ranks, Def Leppard will never become the vehicle for any one member's solo excess; they're as much a team as ever. "We haven't actually sat down yet and thought about how successful we have gotten," muses Savage, "because we've still got a long way to go. The minute you sit down and think about it, it's bad news." Sooner or later, though, Leppard are going to have to sit down and ponder their success, because they are now faced with their toughest challenge yet: following up Pyromania. The key to hurdling that challenge, Elliott feels, is the band's songwriting talent. "If we keep writing good songs," he says confidently, "our audience is going to grow along with us." Def Leppard seemed equally excited about the new technical freedoms they had, as they were about greeting audiences from coast to coast. At almost every venue, their stage set would be in the round, with a rotating drum kit, allowing each person to enjoy an unblocked view of the show. Elliott also planned to bring a video camera along and tape at least part of the tour, "so we cna see what we're doing wrong." Although the band doesn't expect video to play as important a role this time as MTV did Pyromania's success, they're not turning away from it, and have completed videos for the first two singles from Hysteria, "Women" and "Animal." Altogether, Def Leppard believe that, in their case, waiting has been worth it. By holding out until their new record met their demanding standards, Def Leppard have managed to hold their place among rock's superstars. before Hysteria was released, Savage stated that he felt certain it would sell "millions of copies," an opinion which has turned out to be justified. Now, as they take Hysteria to the people, Def Leppard similarly have no concern about holding their own onstage. Says Elliott, "A band an an audience is the same from the ['60s] days when Blue Cheer were gigging. You have an arena or a little club. The kids are there, the lights go off, everybody cheers, and the band comes on. We're a little more experienced now, but it's still the same path."