From: STEELE.FAIRBANKS@uboc.com Date sent: Wednesday, 2 October 1996 10:29am PT Subject: Excellent Lep Article The following is an article from the latest issue (October 1996) of Guitar School magazine that I thought you all might find interesting. It has been referred to at least once in prior LepNet postings. It gives great insight into some of the Lep's best songs. ROCK OF AGES: A revealing look at pop-metal pioneers DEF LEPPARD and their endless parade of hits. by Joe Lalaina With the release of 1983's Pyromania, Def Leppard single-handedly set the standard by which rock albums would be recorded - and judged - for the rest of the decade. That multiplatinum pop-metal extravaganza ignited the Eighties' pop-metal explosion, paving the way for the ensuing success of Whitesnake, Ratt, Poison and even Bon Jovi. Pyromania had it all: great songs, savvy production and stellar musicianship. It also benefited mightily from the exposure and adulation the band received from MTV, which loved its infectious, riff-charged sound and youthful, clean-cut image. Leppard's anthemic rockers (epitomized by "Photograph", "Rock of Ages" and "Foolin'") became instant crowd-pleasers for a new generation of music fans who'd lost their patience with synthesizers and skinny ties. "We liked the new wave stuff that was popular at the time, but the bands that played it were not inspirational to us," says bassist Rick Savage. "We wanted to be a hard-rock group that was as melodic as possible. We never claimed to be the most original band around, but looking back, we did create music that was a bit new, and the timing was right for us." Sixty million album sales later, Def Leppard returns with Slang, the band's first album of all-new material in four years. Slang displays a progressive, often introspective and grown-up Def Leppard. After toiling in high-tech, windowless studios everywhere on earth for the post-Pyromania mega-sellers Hysteria and Adrenalize, the band chose to record its seventh album (on portable ADATs) in a rented villa in southern Spain, overlooking the Mediteranean Sea. "We looked out the window and saw North Aftica and the Rock of Gibraltar sticking up," marvels guitarist Phil Collen. "We were way up on this hill, and the weather there is beautiful year-round. We didn't have that sense of, 'okay, we're in a studio dungeon - let's get to work.' We've seen enough of that]" "We needed a change," adds Savage. "A change in thinking and in environment. Getting out of the studio environment was one of the best decisions we ever made. It was great to be able to record as a group, living in a house, and have total freedom. That, combined with recording real acoustic drums again with Rick (Allen), inspried a whole new sound for us. We did the right thing for now, regardless of how it sells. Anything that doesn't measure up to our multiplatinum past achievements might give people the impression that it's over for us. But the spirit within the group is better and bigger now than ever before, and we still have a long way to go. ROCK BRIGADE Rick Savage: This was one of the first songs we wrote. It was put together very quickly one evening during rehearsals. (Original Def Leppard guitarist) Pete Willis played the solo. At the time, he was going through a Micheal Schenker phase, and I think he tried to recreate that type of tone as best he could. Overall, his contribution to our first album was pretty major. What comes through on "Rock Brigade" is that we were a guitar group that played metal riffs, but we wanted to add some depth over the top that was more melodic than metal was used to. And if that meant doing three-part vocal harmonies on the chorus, that was what we wanted. We fused a bit of everything into our sound - from the metal of Judas Priest to the harmonies of Queen. WASTED Savage: We have good memories about that song. We were rehearsing one night and Steve Clark (Leppard's former co-guitarist) missed his bus and was late for rehearsals. About a half-hour into rehearsals Steve comes diving through the door, runs across the room to pick up his guitar and then immediately starts blasting out the riff to "Wasted." It had come to him while he was riding on the bus and he didn't want to forget it. I'll never forget seeing him play this riff that nobody had heard before but the whole band thought it was amazing. And he wasn't wasted - the lyrics came a bit later. BRINGIN' ON THE HEARTBREAK Savage: About six months after the High 'n' Dry" album had stopped selling, MTV started playing the video to "Bringin' on the Heartbreak", and then a lot of radio stations picked up on the song. Suddenly, the song added new life to the album and became a launching pad for releasing Pyromania. The timing was perfect: as we were finishing off Pyromania we already had an active single in the U.S. "Heartbreak" wasn't even going to be on High 'n' Dry because we really didn't want any ballads on the album, but we felt the song was too valid and too good to dismiss. The intro was written by Pete Willis, and Steve Clark came up with all the jangly parts. ANOTHER HIT AND RUN Savage: The song was a breakthrough for me becasue it was the first song that I actually wrote entirely. With the help of producer Mutt Lange it was basically all my own work. Joe (Elliott) just came in with the lyrics. I remember sitting in my parents' back room, picking up an acoustic guitar and playing the jangly riff that eventually became the chorus. It was something I did without thinking, and I developed the song from there. PHOTOGRAPH Savage: The song that broke us. One day, during the High 'n' Dry tour, we were riding on the bus while on tour supporting Balckfoot. I picked up a guitar and started playing what would become the chorus. I thought it sounded a bit like Rush at the time. I recorded it and thought nothing of it until we started rehearsals for Pyromania. When I played the tape for the band everyone loved that riff and wanted to use it as a chorus. Then Mutt started singing "pho-to-graaaph" over the top. We had this great chorus but no beginning or ending for a song. Then, about three days later, Steve Clark came up with the bridge. Then Steve and Phil, who'd recently joined the band replacing Pete Willis, came up with a guitar idea that ended up being the verse riff as well as the intro. We just pieced everything together and, before we knew it, we had one of our biggest hits. The video was the number-one MTV request for weeks - our first real awakening to mass popularity. We were a fresh-faced young group and that did us a lot of favors. Phil Collen: I absolutely loved "Photograph," and I could see why it was our first big hit. It was a cross betwwen pop and rock, but a rock band doing a pop song and not the other way around. It was the first video we'd done for the Pyromania album, and we did it on my birthday. Since I'd just joined the band, I didn't write any songs on Pyromania; I just played a lot of guitar solos and sang background. It was a guitar player's dream to be able to play over such great songs. Leslie West later told me he loved the feedback bit that I did in the solo. It blew me away that someone like him would notice. FOOLIN' Savage: Once again it was Steve Clark who came up with this jangly idea. Steve was great at writing little pieces of songs - inspirational eight-bar bits. He'd write a bit and then leave it for other people to finish. Steve was never logical about making songs make sense; he'd just come up with these riffs that would blow your mind. And "Foolin'" is a great example. Collen: It was beautifully recorded. For a while we've had a problem playing it live because we used to do it at a funny tempo, but we're doing it great now. You have to play all of the guitar solos on Pyromania note for note onstage because they were such an important part of the songs. They weren't just spewed out. ROCK OF AGES Savage: Steve Clark came up with the idea, which was very remimiscent of the opening riff to Led Zeppelin's "In the Evening." And again, he came in with the opening riff and expected the band to make a song out of it. In all fairness, Mutt Lange deserves credit on that song for having the foresight to create a crowd-participation song. It was based a bit on Joan Jett's "I Love Rock and Roll," where everyone throws a fist into the air. Collen: It's a great song to play live. On the album, the keyboard bit was played by Thomas Dolby; on stage, we used to do it with a Moog thing, but it sounded horrible. For this tour we decided not to have a keyboard at all, because it's not us. So Sav plays it on bass. He kicks in a fuzz box and it gives the song more energy. POUR SOME SUGAR ON ME Savage: The Hysteria album was nearly finished. We'd spent almost four years recording it, and were sick of it - we just wanted to get on stage and rock. But then Joe comes up with a rhythm and an image of a song. Mutt knew he had something, and that it could be the biggest song of the Eighties if we did it right. We wanted the song to be a variation of "Rock of Ages." We incorporated some of the rap stuff that was new and popular at the time, but took it a step further and kept it rock and roll. Collen: That song was the most representative of the band, and was exactly what we were trying to do. It's easy to get ballads played on the radio, but it's very hard to turn a rock song into a hit. We had to sell five million copies of Hysteria just to break even because we'd spent four years in the studio working on it. We changed producers, did a lot of re-recording, Rick lost his arm. We had so many delays. When the album was finally released, it stopped selling at three million. That might sound blase, but we hadn't made the money back, so we were in debt. Then suddenly, "Pour Some Sugar on Me" was getting played in the Florida strip bars and soon became a strip-joint anthem, and was getting requests on the radio. Before we knew it, Hysteria had jumped back up the charts. ANIMAL Savage: It was a guitar riff that Steve and Phil came up with together. We recorded the song with all these guitar parts and then recorded the vocal, which we all thought was one of Joe's best efforts. In fact, the vocal was so good we decided to redo the backing tracks. What eventually happened is that we kept a finished lead vocal and completely rewrote the song underneath that vocal. We had to keep the same chord changes so the vocal would work, but the verses, bridge and chorus were all rewritten. The original version sounded much heavier, but once we heard the style of the lead vocal we thought it would be best to make it more of a pop song. Collen: Our first top-ten hit in England, and it broke us in Europe. It took about three years to finish recording the song] We kept changing the guitar parts. I used a clean, compressed tone reminiscent of the Fixx. LOVE BITES Collen: That was written by Mutt. When he first showed it to us, it sounded a bit country-and western. Mutt has always been a big fan of country music. He recently produced his wife's album (Shania Twain's multiplatinum "The Woman in Me"), and it's one of the biggest-selling country releases. For "Love Bites," we just added Def Leppard guitars to it. There was a harmony guitar thing that me and Steve did where we orchestrated the chords. Steve and I jammed the song out with a drum box, and recorded it. The backing track was recorded live, and it ended up on the record. The song went on to become our first and only number-one U.S. single. ARMAGEDDON IT Savage: The song has a loose, lazy rock and roll feel. I came up with an idea of a verse that was in the vein of "Rock of Ages," and that inspired the song. But the beat sounded so square we ended up changing the entire guitar part. Then we came up with an ideas for a chorus, but we had no idea what the lyrics should be. All we had was the line, "Gimme all your lovin'." We knew the melody should be like that, but we didn't want to use those lyrics because we wanted something that said a bit more. Try as we could, we could not come up with anything that sounded better. Then Mutt finally said, "This sounds good, leave it the way it is." And it worked. Collen: A fun song to do live. It's kind of like T. Rex's "Bang a Gong." A good party song. It never gets boring to play and it translates well to acoustic. HYSTERIA Savage: We all decided to take a weekend off and try and write a commercial rock song. I came up with something, and it became the main riff to the song. Phil thought it was great and he came up with the bridge and sang it to me. We took out some acoustic guitars and played it for some friends. The following Monday, we went back to the studio and everyone was blown away, even though it wasn't the type of song we wanted. Stringed instruments can set a mood, and we wanted to do the same thing but do it on guitar. We didn't want to cop out and do a keyboard thing so we got into using E-bows and orchestrating sustained notes with harmonies. It gave that orchestral sound to the guitars. LET'S GET ROCKED Collen: "Let's Get Rocked" was the last song we did for the album. I must have redone the guitars at least three times] We should have put Adrenalize out a bit earlier because it sounded better when the songs were more raw. We recorded the album in exactly the same vein as Hysteria, and that was possibly a mistake. For my guitar solo, Mutt told me to just blitz. Had it been for something on Hysteria, the wild solo I played would have been out of context. But it worked. I think I used the rhythm pickup sound on Joe's Les Paul Cusom for the fast run in the solo. WHITE LIGHTNING Collen: "White Lightning" has one of my best guitar solos ever. The song is about Steve. He used to run around the stage like white lightning, played a white Les Paul, and his hair looked white under the stage lights. It was a great song to solo over. Part of my solo was improvised, and some of it was worked out. Although Steve didn't play on Adrenalize, he demoed some of it just before he died. So I ended up learning a lot of his parts because we'd always do at least two guitar parts on every song. Savage: From Joe's lyrical point of view, it's what really happens when you start falling down the sprial. For a long time in rock and roll, the drinks and drugs had been glamorized in a very false way. Joe's lyrics just tried to put across that it's not glamorous at all, and that you're in the gutter, basically. The song probably got spoiled by recording it the way we did. We used to do it live on the Adrenalize tour, and it had a lot more punch because we were playing it as a group. Whereas on Adrenalize we did it individually and very studiously, and it could've turned out better. MISS YOU IN A HEARTBEAT Savage: That was written during the Adrenalize days, but we didn't want to over saturate the album with too many ballads, so the song got left on the shelf. Phil wrote it. In fact, the Firm did a version of it with Paul Rodgers singing. As sometimes happens, what we'll do is say to our publisher, "Look, we've got this song that really isn't appropriate for us right now - can you see if anyone selse wants to record it?" And that's exactly what happened. When we were putting together the Retro Active album, we realized that we had a place for it there, so we re-recorded it. WORK IT OUT Savage: It started off as a pop song that (guitarist) Vivian Campbell wrote. It was very, very poppy, reminiscent of Crowded House or the Rembrandts. We loved the song, but we couldn't perform or record it the way the demo was - it had its own little charm but wasn't a Def Leppard song. Although lots of our songs are pop, we'll always add more of a rock edge. We wound up keeping all the melodies exactly the same, but we wanted to create a post-grunge Ninties adaptation of it. Collen: The original vocal was very high, which would've been perfect for Joe in the Eighties. But we didn't want that, so he sang it an octave down - really low, like some of the David Bowie and Iggy Pop stuff. It's cool to push the envelop a bit; otherwise, everything can start to sound the same. BLOOD RUNS COLD Savage: That song is close to my heart. I really like the fretless bass parts; it's not often that one gets to play fretless to that degree. The lyrics sum up our feelings for Steve Clark more than any other Def Leppard song. It's a culmination of four years of grief since his death, where we could actually analyze it a bit more and come to terms with it better. Collen: It's about the hopelessness of Steve's situation. People would say, "So why doesn't he just stop drinking?" They don't really understand how hard it is to stop. That's what the opening line is about. THE END Copyright Guitar School Magazine ---------------- STEELE.FAIRBANKS@uboc.com