Def Leppard Atomic Mess News

Aging hard-rock bands have been piling up the covers albums lately, baffling their fans by revealing heretofore-unacknowledged influences. If Def Leppard's Yeah! is any indication of what makes a veteran metal act's heart beat, then it appears 20-odd years of arena bombast have been masking a glam-rock band.

On Yeah!, Def Leppard muscles through songs by David Essex ("Rock On," naturally), Roxy Music ("Street Life"), and David Bowie ("Drive-In Saturday"), as well as more power-pop-inclined acts like E.L.O. ("10538 Overture") and Badfinger ("No Matter What").

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Def Leppard may be enjoying somewhat of a career renaissance. A successful tour in support of their double disc hits package set the stage for a band that seems to be reinvigorated after a few years of silence.

The iron is hot and the band has decided to strike with, of all things, a covers album. What could have been a simple cash-in stopgap to keep their name in record stores until the next release; Yeah! is actually the best and most exciting record Def Leppard has made in years.

Yeah! may be the lamest name for a record that I have heard but Def Leppard delivers the goods on some well- and lesser- known songs that influenced each band member.

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Def Leppard have a huge chip on their shoulder about being lumped in with the U.K. and U.S. hair-metal bands of the Eighties. To set the record straight, they've recorded this album of covers of songs by their real heroes: people like David Bowie, T.Rex and the Kinks, as well as lesser-known Seventies rockers such as Sweet and John Kongos. Happily, Yeah! is their most convincing album in fourteen years, which proves their point.

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Not prodigal sons Def Leppard who wore their hearts on their sleeves as they returned to their hometown for a night of emotion and efficiency.

"It's Father's Day tomorrow, I hope you've not forgotten," said lofty singer Joe Elliott in a pause between the tunes. "This is for my dad who is up there somewhere - it is his favourite."

Aside from dedicating chugging ballad Love Bites, Joe also managed to make his band blush. Rick Allen – the enduring musician who surely remains the world's only one-armed drummer – was given an unrivalled reception as he was singled out.

It's hardly unusual that Def Leppard would hit the road in support of a new disc.

But the latest release by the British band that spent the 1980s as king of the hard-rock hill is an extraordinary 14-track '70s glam-rock tribute titled "Yeah."

On it, Def Leppard covers songs from Bowie to Blondie, stopping along the way to take in T. Rex, Badfinger, Sweet, Mott the Hoople, the Kinks and Roxy Music.

"We're showing our roots," says guitarist Vivian Campbell, who cut his teeth with metal acts Ronnie James Dio and Rainbow in the 1970s before joining Def Leppard in 1992 after the death of Steve Clark.

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Coming hot on the heels of their Platinum-certified 2-CD hits package, Rock of Ages: The Definitive Collection, Def Leppard have release their 12th studio album `Yeah!' (Island/UMe) and plan to heat up the temperature this summer with a US tour - scheduled to kick off on June 23rd.

Presented by VH1 Classic and Live Nation, the band - Joe Elliott (vocals), Vivian Campbell (guitar), Phil Collen (guitar), Rick "Sav" Savage (bass) and Rick Allen (drums) - will be hitting cities across the country with Journey through August 31st.

On their new album, Def Leppard have created a heartfelt and hard rocking tribute to their musical heroes of the late 60's and 70's – including the Kinks, Badfinger, T. Rex, David Bowie, Sweet, Roxy Music, Mott the Hoople, Free, Faces, and Thin Lizzy.

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GLOBE-TROTTING rockers Def Leppard unveiled their very own bit of hometown pavement - as Sheffield made them the latest famous sons to be honoured with a bronze star.

And singer Joe Elliott told waiting crowds: "It's a pleasure to be on the same pavement as Gordon Banks."

The former England hero and city-born goalkeeper was the first to get his name on the Walk Of The Fame outside the Town Hall.

Def Leppard flew into town ahead of their show at Hallam FM Arena tonight and were clearly proud to be honoured in the city that spawned one of the world's biggest-selling rock bands.

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Rock legends Def Leppard will be inducted into Sheffield's 'hall of fame' when they pay a visit to their home city on Friday.

In 2005, Sheffield residents were invited to nominate people who have brought the city recognition at national or international level.

A new 'hall of fame' outside the town hall already includes actor Sean Bean and former Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker.

The band will unveil a bronze plaque outside the town hall at 1230 BST.

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Added a new sample to the Audio section for the cover of Photograph by Brian Charles from the album Then Covered Now and also added a sample of Townsend's cover of Pour Some Sugar On Me.

I've added audio clips of 20th Century Boy and Rock On from the May 23, 2006 performance on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno to the Audio section.

Nearly a year ago, Def Leppard "leaked" its version of Badfinger's "No Matter What" as a tease for a long-in-the-works covers album, "Yeah!" It's an ideal song for a band that specializes in layered harmonies and sticky choruses, and it allowed singer Joe Elliott to turn down his increasingly distracting rasp.

Frankly, "No Matter What" was so good, it roused plenty of interest in even the most jaded Lep fans.

That the underrated '80s rockers — always more British glam than hair metal chose songs from bands that directly influenced them (Mott the Hoople, Sweet, ELO, The Kinks) gives the album a hint of purpose. But at least half of these songs never needed to be pursued outside of sound checks and goof-off jam sessions.

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Hollywood, 1992, and a photo shoot of Def Leppard in a deserted parking lot is interrupted by the arrival of two teenage boys in a pick-up truck. "Hey! Def Leppard!" they honk, waving frantically. Accustomed to such behaviour, Def Leppard duly wave back. Do they want an autograph, perhaps? A photo? They do not. The boys do, however, have a message for the band, one that will encapsulate the increasingly popular perception of these arena-rock colossi. "You guys suck, man!" "And with that, they were off," recalls Leppard guitarist Vivian Campbell with a smile, his King Charles II curls gently flapping in the early afternoon breeze. "There was nothing we could say because we probably did suck. We were so stuck in the 1980s. We didn't have a clue, heh-heh! We'd had the rug pulled from under us. But, y'know, that's what you need sometimes … "

Fourteen years after the rug parted company with Def Leppard's white trainers, the group could find itself poised on the verge of a comeback, in the US at least. Grunge - the press-championed movement that did to Leppard and their tightly trousered, irony-free brethren what punk did to prog rock in the late 1970s - now seems as ludicrous a concept as the "hair-metal" genre it purported to destroy. Def Leppard's contemporaries Mötley Crüe and Bon Jovi have recently enjoyed a critical re-evaluation, and Leppard's new album Yeah!, a muscular tribute to the bands and singles that tickled their adolescent fancies, has secured a solid no 16 placing on the current Billboard Chart.

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The five band members will take time out from rehearsing for a gig to unveil a bronze plaque immediately outside Sheffield Town Hall next Friday (June 16).

The band has come a long way since their first rehearsal in a spoon factory in Sheffield's Bramall Lane in November 1977.

Councillor Jan Wilson, Leader of Sheffield Council said: "Def Leppard truly deserve their place as Sheffield Legends and have been great ambassadors for the city wherever they have performed throughout the world and the nominations they received reflected this. In terms of international record sales, they are up there with the top musicians of all time. I am looking forward to meeting them and thanking them personally."

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Forget "The DaVinci Code." Def Leppard has answered a more mysterious question for the ages. Can a hair-metal band from the '80s successfully cover a handful of glam metal and seminal rock songs from the early '70s?

Without a single car chase or hidden message, these five Brits have proved that they have a deeper set of rock 'n' roll roots than one might expect. "Yeah!" is a rollicking journey through a set of 14 album tracks from a vital time in the U.K. rock scene.

With any collection of cover tunes, the artist lives or dies by the song selection. Stick with the obvious and you're boring - go too deep into the obscure catalog and you risk losing the average listener. With "Yeah!" Def Leppard has chosen to reconstruct the music that first put the glint of a Gibson guitar in their eyes.

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It's quite possible that there's no room today for unironic rock. From the opening chord of "Yeah!," Def Leppard's first release in four years, the album's expectation's are set — and met with predictable mediocrity.

Nearly every song can be described as "Sounds like Def Leppard covering ______," and this is precisely what a covers album should not be. The band's take on hits by T. Rex and Thin Lizzy flaunt how derivative Leppard is, while Bowie and Kinks covers reveal their thinness.

The band themselves may not be to blame; Gen-Xers deflated rock's sincerity. Today, only commercial rappers can get away without some amount of irony, unabashedly flexing their cash, money and hoes. Really, they're the ones rocking out.

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