Time Capsule: Def Leppard, 'Hysteria'

In 1983, Def Leppard had just unleashed their third studio album, Pyromania. Set in motion was an accompanying tour opening for Billy Squier, droves of new American fans, and a hunger not yet satiated by a #1 record. Producer Robert John “Mutt” Lange put a very simple, very difficult North Star in front of the band: Every song on the next album had to be a viable hit. Considering Pyromania’s only blockage from the top of the charts was Michael Jackson’s Thriller, it wasn’t an impossible task.

By this time, the band—vocalist Joe Elliot, guitarists Steve Clark and Phil Collen, bassist Rick Savage, and drummer Rick Allen—were nearing rock’s summit stateside, and Pyromania was British glam metal at its most cutting edge, with singles “Photograph” and “Rock of Ages” aiding in its selling of over 6 million copies. The opening slot with Squier began in March, and by September they were filling US arenas on their own. The only catch: That popularity wasn’t translating in the slightest back home in the UK. “The word apparently would’ve been big in our families. ‘Yeah, apparently they’re quite big in America,” Elliott joked in a 2018 interview. “We weren’t on the telly or on the radio in England, so it was just hearsay.”

The discrepancy meant that, while they’d made quantum leaps from 1980’s On Through the Night and 1981’s High N’ Dry, there was an element of commercial appeal missing if they wanted to break worldwide. Indeed, there’s a calamitous lyrical spirit to tracks like “Die Hard the Hunter” and “Too Late For Love” that could have branded them a heavy metal band for life, had they let it. Allen’s drumming was ferocious and determined, laying a foundation for what was becoming an irreplicable duo in guitarists Clark and Collen. Elliot’s voice was growing in conviction and range. Savage was the band’s rapid, raggedly beating heart, and together, they were formulating a sound that hundreds of bands would attempt to replicate in the ensuing decade. But to be the biggest band in the world, they needed a bittersweet divergence from the sound that had nearly gotten them there. If ever there was a time to kill their darlings, this was it.

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“The amount of alcohol consumed was just beyond belief,” Elliott said of the period that followed, when the band moved into a Dublin house together and braced against the challenge of writing their next album. “I think reality would be that we were a little scared.” It wasn’t just writing songs that terrified them—it was learning that Lange, who had all but become a sixth member of the band, wasn’t going to be available for collaboration like he was with Pyromania. “[It] completely mortified us,” Elliott said. Jim Steinman took over soon thereafter, but his hands-off production style proved ineffective, stalling the album’s progression as the band suffered through embryonic versions of “Animal” and “Gods of War.” The partnership with Steinman wasn’t working, so they bought him out.

If the loss of Lange as a producer hadn’t deterred them from crafting Hysteria, Allen’s near-fatal car accident in 1984 very well could have. The crash cost the drummer his left arm, and while he quickly re-learned how to play using a custom kit with extra foot pedals, it momentarily threw his personal and professional life into question. “I don’t think people really understood what I was going through, the level of suffering,” Allen told Forbes. “As a 21-year-old, it wasn’t on my radar to be in this situation. I was still full of dreams, tons and tons of energy.” He’d been hailed for his playing on Pyromania. Now, he had to reconfigure his understanding of drumming and find a way forward that didn’t sacrifice the soul of his original style. Allen’s accident was the turning point, not just for him or his bandmates, but for Def Leppard’s spiritual identity and Hysteria’s survival.

Following Allen’s crash, Lange returned to produce. Though the writing sessions up until then had been unfocused and unsuccessful, Def Leppard suddenly had their greatest collaborator back on board while Allen recalibrated and recovered. “Without wanting to break anybody’s hearts, we basically redid the album,” Elliott said. Taking that chance is what set “Animal” back on track after three years of stagnation. It’s in the chorus harmonies you can hear not just Lange’s signature melodic deliverance, but a band suddenly aware of how evanescent life and fame are. And for all the primal lust served up vocally, it’s the guitars that tell the rawest tale. “Gonna take your love and run,” Elliott sings, passing the baton to Collen, who uses his six-stringed voice to grunt and wail a message of his own.

You can call Def Leppard a technically proficient band, and you’d be right. You can call them a band rich in spontaneity and fun, and you’d also be right. That balance of perfection and provocation is why they’re still selling out arenas 50 years later. “Pour Some Sugar on Me” is culturally omnipresent, and because of that it’s often taken in jest, unnoticed like a good haircut. But Hysteria was hammered, molded, constructed, and reconstructed ad infinitum to house a song with that level of palatability. “Lyrically, ‘Pour Some Sugar On Me’ was obviously a nod towards the fact that sugar has always been a great metaphor for the mating ritual, if you like,” Elliot once said. “We all knew it wasn’t Bob Dylan, but it’s like, ‘God, phonetically it’s just bang on.’ I always hark back to Little Richard. He’s got this one song and it goes, ‘Tutti frutti, oh rootie, a wop bop a loo bop a lop ba ba.’ Right-o, what does that mean? But who cares?”

Backwards vocal bits of “Gods of War” kickstart “Rocket” with that same self-aware amusement. “Armageddon It” is pure late ‘80’s decadence, a song about jewels, animal instincts, hunger, and restlessness—wordplay its seduction of choice: “Pull it, pull it, c’mon, trigger the gun,” Elliott teases, “‘cause the best is yet to come.” There’s a performance of “Armageddon It” that encapsulates the magic of Hysteria. Allen is behind the kit pounding away, and Clark moves to Collen, leaning his head against him, as the pair devolve into childlike smiles and laughter, barely able to contain their excitement long enough to transition into the first verse. Savage looks out to the crowd with the biggest smile you’ve ever seen, and Elliott ushers Clark in: “C’mon, Steve, get it.” And in that moment, it’s like every hardship they’d endured together finally meant something. They were the hungry ones, five guys in shameless pursuit of success—the music their ticket to a world they promised to keep in good repair.

And through it all, Allen shines as a force made stronger by personal upheaval. “Rocket” is his and his alone, with Elliott screaming alongside him, as if to lend his friend additional capacity. Hysteria resonates as a seamless relay race between the five members. If it isn’t Savage’s harmonies and bass holding down the sleazy verses of “Love Bites,” then it’s Collen’s guitar filling them out in “Don’t Shoot Shotgun.” There’s a sense of urgency there, no doubt a result of the pressures up against the band.

And that title track. To me, the intro of “Hysteria” has always sounded like sweet relief—like love, or a summer sun cast between shoulder blades. Amidst Lange’s intricate layering is Collen and Clark taking turns in silky yet rugged instrumental flight. In the now famed 1988 In the Round In Your Face live film, these dynamics are wilder, more playful—this was a band hitting its stride after weathering a series of tragedies that could have led to implosion, and enjoying every minute of it. The magic of “Hysteria” is just that—raging lightning and raucous laughter. The message here is to not think, to follow the feeling, to allow everything you’ve ever wanted to satiate you, if only for the length of a damn good song. The message is to start believing.

The dynamic most skillfully explored in “Hysteria” is that of Clark and Collen, whose antics, despite having only begun near the end of Pyromania’s sessions (when Collen joined the band, replacing Pete Willis), had already nicknamed them the Terror Twins. Collen works diligently to solidify the verses, while Clark’s parts fly overhead, providing both strict structural integrity and a more free-flowing melodic partner to Elliott. Never is there an uninteresting bar, but it doesn’t feel cluttered with noise, either. The pair swap seamlessly between rhythm and lead, often playing both roles in the length of a single song, and always playing on their classical/jazz backgrounds to varying expertise.

What makes Hysteria such a sweet spot in Def Leppard’s discography, however, is how fleeting its sweetness actually was. “There was always a looming sense of tragedy around every corner. We just wouldn’t let it in,” Elliott said at their Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction. “But it is true [that] every time we made some musical headway, life would just knock us back down somewhat.” If it wasn’t label pressures, it was personal tensions. If it wasn’t personal tensions, it was life-threatening addictions, like the alcohol dependence Clark was developing. One after another battle arose, threatening to tear down the groundwork that had finally culminated in the worldwide success they’d craved since forming in Sheffield a decade prior.

Def Leppard’s resilience would be tested yet again by Clark’s ultimately death in 1991, just days after his contributions to a demo of “When Love and Hate Collide.” Hysteria was the last album the guitarist contributed heavily to, marking the end of his full-time role in the band’s writing process as his personal struggles deepened. Kicking Clark out was never in the cards though, and that presented an excruciating chapter ahead while he battled against fame and addiction, and, often, the effects of the two in unison. “By coincidence or torture, I often got the room next to Steve,” Elliott told The Guardian. “I could hear through the walls the pain he was in. I remember the night before one tour started, he was trying to smash his knuckles on the sink so he wouldn’t have to play, because he was scared to death of getting up on stage. And then we did the gig and he was like, ‘I’m fine.’ With bruises everywhere. He was always apologizing for being the way he was.”

While the last thing Clark should be remembered for is his tragic passing, the demons he and his best friends were wrestling put the band’s overtly cheerful demeanor into perspective. Their positivity was born of experience, not naivety. And I’d be remiss in Clark and Allen’s situations in particular not to mention how much of a miracle it was that they had the strength to make Hysteria what it was. Rather than retreat into the depths of their own suffering, they looked outwards, using sticks and strings to ease millions of fans’ pain by rising above their own. As consistent as the band has been in terms of cultural presence, their story is one of unrelenting adaptability—for better or for worse, they’ve always had change on the horizon. The difference is you can feel that in Hysteria’s DNA, as an outcome and a foreshadowing. Every second is steeped in the knowledge that they were approaching the precipice of something they’d never quite emulate again.

Certainly, the mood associated with Def Leppard is one of anthemic, optimistic arena rock. But that exhilaration you feel at the onset of a song like “Animal” only exists because of the three-year fight it took to build that feeling from the ground up. Every note is carefully placed, and for all the seemingly impromptu grunts and laughs Elliott is known for, you can bet they were meticulously recorded and re-recorded until every last syllable was just right. Lange’s presence is both felt and savored here, and rather than reading as a band puppeteered by a producer, there’s a sanctity to the collaboration evident in every line. Hysteria was to be their magnum opus. I’d imagine they knew that from the moment they stepped foot in Ireland. But they also knew it would be a hard-fought battle to make it so.

The album found its initial footing at Windmill Lane Studios in Dublin, and when Collen found it had been sold for dirt cheap and converted to an apartment building, he expressed regret at having not been able to swoop in and turn it into Def Leppard’s “spiritual base.” When I visited both the grounds of that site and the new Windmill Lane across the street this month, I was met with a startling realization: Hysteria’s power derived entirely from within. Nowhere did I feel the lingering presence of the album they worked so hard to bring to life. Over the course of the three years it took to finalize, they put every ounce of energy into the music, and into their survival as a group. There simply wasn’t anything left in reserve to leave as an energetic memento.

Some critics brushed the record off as a mechanized sell-out. Their fanbase said otherwise. Hysteria was released through Mercury Records on August 3, 1987, and went on to become their biggest-selling album to date—moving 20 million units and, 38 years later, remaining one of the greatest pop metal albums of all time. Elliott said it best in the chorus of the title track: “God, it’s a miracle.” Whether or not you knew their story, you knew he meant it—he was speaking both for his current self, and the kid designing posters for a then-fictitious band named “Deaf Leppard” in art class.

Emma Schoors is a music journalist, photographer, and wannabe fifth Bangles member based in Los Angeles, California. Find her on Instagram @eschoors.

Time Capsule: Def Leppard, Hysteria

If a series of personal and professional tragedies couldn’t tear the English rockers apart, following up the smashing success of their fourth studio album stood no chance. What didn’t kill Def Leppard made Hysteria.