In the spring of 2020, Def Leppard made plans to gather at Joe Elliott’s house in Ireland to record a handful of tunes before starting rehearsals for their stadium tour with Mötley Crüe, Poison, and Joan Jett. And sometimes you don’t know where that extra yard is, which is why it takes such a long time to get there.Joe-elliott-credit-Anton-Corbijn - Credit: Anton Corbijn* “You go through hell, but there’s always light at the end of the tunnel, and there’s a big feeling of self-elevation at the thought of getting somewhere, finally achieving it. “I’d rather be in Def Leppard than Big Audio Dynamite,” Elliott says flatly. Yet in its own low-key, catastrophe-prone way, the former teenage Wunderkind of Britain’s late-Seventies heavy-metal renaissance has struck multiplatinum with its trademark brand of soaring guitar chorales and sumptuous vocal harmonies, becoming one of the biggest-selling bands in the world while leading a monastic, studio-intensive lifestyle in its search for Hard Pop perfection. Formed in Sheffield, England, in 1977, Def Leppard is not the most prolific rock group in the world – Adrenalize is only its fifth album in 15 years together – and the only kind of headlines it seems to make are of the bad-news variety. Pyromania has sold 10 million copies worldwide Hysteria, released in 1987, has globally eclipsed the 14 million sales mark. Life has not been easy for the band, but it has been good. Unlike most milkmen, the Leppards – Allen, lead singer Elliott, bassist Rick Savage and guitarist Phil Collen – can at least take comfort in their success. “They’re not band-born tragedies,” he insists. And there’s not that many people who know that Pete Willis was ever in the band. In all honesty, I don’t think there’s that many people who know that I had mumps or that Mutt had a car crash. When Steve died, we’d sold 15 million records. When Rick lost his arm, we’d sold 6 million records. “They just don’t get reported, because they’re not as big as we are. “But I don’t know if the amount of things that happen to us don’t happen to everybody else,” he adds with renewed impatience. Watch Billy Joel Perform 'Pour Some Sugar On Me' With Def Leppard's Joe Elliott The band’s producer, Robert John “Mutt” Lange, was seriously injured in a car accident during the making of the star-crossed follow-up record, Hysteria, and Elliott himself was laid up with a nasty case of the mumps during the vocal overdub stage. Founding guitarist Pete Willis was fired for alcoholism during the sessions for the group’s 1983 breakthrough album, Pyromania. There have been other, less-publicized calamities, as well. The evidence is grimly convincing – drummer Rick Allen left with only one arm after an auto accident on New Year’s Eve, 1984 guitarist Steve Clark found dead in his London home on January 8th, 1991, from a fatal mixture of alcohol and drugs. “Are we any more of a sob story than the Grateful Dead? Those guys have really had it bad! Talk about Spinal Tap! Twenty-six years together and three keyboard players die on ’em.”Īn exasperated Joe Elliott is discussing, and wearily denying for the umpteenth time, the existence of what he calls in a mock-horror-flick voice “the Curse of the Leppards,” the apparent pox of bad luck ‘n’ trouble that has dogged his band for nearly 10 years.
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