The album spawned seven hit singles, including the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 number one “Love Bites”, alongside “Pour Some Sugar on Me”, “Hysteria”, “Armageddon It”, “Animal”, “Rocket”, and “Women”. Their next studio album Adrenalize (the first following the death of guitarist Steve Clark) reached number one in the UK and U.S. charts in 1992, and contained several hits including, “Let’s Get Rocked” and “Have You Ever Needed Someone So Bad”.

Their 1993 album Retro Active contained the acoustic hit song “Two Steps Behind”, while their greatest hits album Vault, released in 1995, featured the UK hit “When Love & Hate Collide”.

As one of the world’s best-selling music artists, Def Leppard have sold more than 100 million records worldwide,[8] and have two albums with RIAA Diamond certification, Pyromania and Hysteria. They are one of only five rock bands with two original studio albums selling over 10 million copies in the U.S.

The band were ranked No. 31 in VH1’s “100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock” and ranked No. 70 in “100 Greatest Artists of All Time”.

Rick Savage, Tony Kenning, and Pete Willis, all students at Tapton School in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, formed a band called Atomic Mass in 1977. The band originally consisted of Willis on guitar, Savage on bass (after originally playing guitar), and Kenning on drums.

Only 18 at the time, Joe Elliott tried out for the band as a guitarist following a chance meeting with Willis after missing a bus, in November 1977. During his audition it was decided that he was better suited to be the lead singer. Their first ever gig was in the dining hall in A Block in Westfield School in Mosborough, Sheffield.
Soon afterward they adopted a name proposed by Elliott, “Deaf Leopard”, which was originally a band name he thought up while writing reviews for imaginary rock bands in his English class (and in at least partial reference to the band Led Zeppelin).

At Kenning’s suggestion, the spelling was slightly modified in order to make the name seem less like that of a punk band. In January 1978, Steve Clark joined the band. According to Joe Elliott, he successfully auditioned for the band by playing Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird” in its entirety.

In November, just prior to recording sessions for what would be a three-song release known as The Def Leppard E.P., Kenning abruptly left the band; he would later form the band Cairo. He was replaced for those sessions by Frank Noon.

By the end of the month, Rick Allen, then only 15 years old, had joined the band as its full-time drummer. Sales of the EP soared after the track “Getcha Rocks Off” was given extensive airtime by renowned BBC Radio DJ John Peel, considered at the time to be a champion of punk rock and new wave music.

Throughout 1979, the band developed a loyal following among British hard rock and heavy metal fans and were considered among the leaders of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal movement. Their growing popularity led to a record deal with the major label Phonogram/Vertigo (Mercury Records in the US).

Def Leppard’s original management, MSB, a local duo consisting of Pete Martin and Frank Stuart-Brown, were fired after Martin and Joe Elliott got into a fist fight over an incident on the road. The band approached Peter Mensch of Leber-Krebs management, who had booked them on a tour of the UK supporting AC/DC. Mensch, who admitted that he had had his eye on the band, became their manager.

Musical style and legacy
Def Leppard’s music is a mixture of hard rock, AOR, pop and heavy metal elements, with its multi-layered, harmonic vocals and its melodic guitar riffs. However, even though they were often considered one of the top bands of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal movement of the late 1970s, in the mid-1980s the band were associated with the growing glam metal scene, mainly due to their mainstream success and glossy production.

Pyromania has been cited as the catalyst for the 1980s pop-metal movement. Def Leppard, however, expressed their dislike of the “glam metal” label, as they thought it did not accurately describe their look or musical style.

By the release of the Hysteria album, the band had developed a distinctive sound featuring electronic drums and effects-laden guitar sounds overlaid with a multi-layered wall of husky, harmonised vocals.

Def Leppard has been cited as an influence by a wide range of musical acts, from heavy metal and thrash metal bands such as Slayer, Pantera, and Metallica as part of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal movement as well as by popular contemporary artists Matt Nathanson[82] and Taylor Swift.

With Pyromania and Hysteria both certified Diamond by the RIAA, Def Leppard is one of only five rock bands with two original studio albums selling over 10 million copies each in the US. The others are The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and Van Halen. Both Pyromania and Hysteria feature in Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

Def Leppard was among the most successful of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal bands in the early 1980s. They combined the raw power of metal with a pop emphasis on melody, catchy hooks and vocal harmonies that, particularly later on, contrasted sharply with harsher contemporary metal and punk bands.

Their early albums such as On Through the Night (1980) appealed to metal fans and influenced the likes of Dimebag Darrell of Pantera and Jeff Hanneman of Slayer.

Their hugely popular later albums, such as Hysteria (1987), appeared irregular due to their perfectionism in the studio, but appealed to a broad range of music fans.

Despite their huge commercial success, Elliott has said in an interview that he feels the band does not receive its fair share of respect from the British music press and he claimed the band had been barred from the BBC’s Later with Jools Holland series because they were “not cool enough”.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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