It was just really hard to get a convincing vocal-which is amazing now, considering he kills it every night.” You can barely hear anyone else! It was the longest vocals that Joe ever done in the studio. It had these soaring vocals, and you can hear Mutt doing the main backing vocals on that track. We messed around with it for a while, got these different guitar parts, and then Mutt went to town and made it anything but country. He played it to me and Steve and it sounded like a real countrified Don Henley song. We kept the lead vocal and re-modernized the track, recording everything from scratch. So we used some of the stuff that Frankie Goes to Hollywood and Trevor Horn were doing on ‘Two Tribes’ and put it into a rock format. We actually ended up going to Paris because we’d moved studios, and Joe did this really amazing vocal-and the backing track sounded dated all of a sudden. “I remember I did a demo for this when we were all living in a house just outside Dublin, which was hysterical, great fun. It was really super cool, blending all these different genres.” Before you knew it, we had this kind of unique-sounding drum rhythm with a Siouxsie & The Banshees thing and chanting, Slade-style vocals. We created this drum pattern using Fairlight machines, then I did this weird guitar riff, reminiscent of Siouxsie & The Banshees. John Kongos, this guy from South Africa, had a couple of hits in the ’70s and he would loop up drum parts and African drum rhythms, so that’s kind of what we did on this. ![]() Joe Elliott had this idea of doing a drum loop. “We wanted to do something very different. I heard that Stevie Wonder and Prince had commented on how great it had sounded when they first heard it.” It had that pulsing, the sub-bass and kind of kick drum and massive snare and all of that. We’ve got to keep our credibility.’ It didn’t do great as a single, but I think it kept that credibility thing there because it was a rock song and it sounded very Def Leppard. Our former manager Cliff Burnstein was like, ‘We really want to connect from a rock point of view. It sounded different to anything else out there.” Let Collen guide you through Def Leppard’s swaggering peak, track by track. It was great when it started taking shape. “It was a journey making it we were trying to achieve something. Mutt and us wanted to make a hybrid of AC/DC, full-on rock, and Queen, who were just magical.” After a slow reception initially, Hysteria’s success was given a boost by the success of glam-rock stomper “Pour Some Sugar on Me.” It kick-started a phenomenon. ![]() It was the first time an album in the rock genre was being presented as a pop album. “Most rock bands are very narrow-minded and stick within a genre, but to us it was anything that sounded great. “There was so much great stuff happening, like Prince, Michael Jackson, Frankie Goes to Hollywood-great-sounding records,” says Collen. Pyromania had infused the group’s metal anthems with an expansive pop sheen, and here they sought to channel an even wider range of influences into their sound. Mutt Lange was amazing, a genius, and I don’t say that lightly.” “We ended up having seven singles off of it,” lead guitarist Phil Collen tells Apple Music. Released in August 1987, the resultant album Hysteria sold over 20 million copies, which tells you all you need to know about how successful the group was in achieving Lange’s aim. They should, Lange said, make the rock version of Thriller. He told them that too many bands were copying their sound and they needed to set themselves apart from the pack. ![]() With earworm hooks the size of mountain ranges and a weapons-grade onslaught of undeniableWhen Def Leppard arrived at the follow-up to their mega-selling third album, 1983’s Pyromania, producer Mutt Lange shared his vision with the Sheffield heavy metal crew. The third in Def Leppard's trilogy of Mutt Lange-produced '80s blockbusters, Hysteria presented the band's pop-informed hard-rocking roar writ larger than ever.
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