Def Leppard: Pyromania/Adrenalize (Deluxe Editions)
Def Leppard release 'Deluxe Editions' of Pyromania & Adrenalize
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Thursday, 04, Jun 2009 10:03
Commercial Marketing, out June 8th.
In a nutshell...
Heavy rock hits pop heights
What's it all about?
Def Leppard's six million-selling major breakthrough album and their troubled 1992 follow-up to the world-conquering Hysteria. Both spawned monster hit singles and cemented the band's reputation as pop-friendly arena-fillers. They albums are being re-released with bonus discs of rare and previously unreleased material, in part to capitalise on their current world tour and headlining slot at this year's Download festival.
Who's it by?
Sheffield band Def Leppard started out as a heavy rock proposition but it soon became clear that their interests lay as much in glam and pop music - interests that came to the fore on Pyromania. While this pop leaning has made Def Leppard a somewhat unfashionable name in latter years, with over 65 million album sales under their belts they remain one of the most successful rock acts of all time.
As an example.
"Rise up, gather round/Rock this place to the ground/Burn it up, let's go for broke/Watch the night go up in smoke." - Rock Of Ages (from Pyromania)
"Don't call me gigolo, don't call me Casanova/Just call me on the phone and baby come on over." - Make Love Like A Man (from Adrenalize)
Likelihood of a trip to the Grammys
65 million albums already sold - over ten million of Pyromania and over seven million of Adrenalize - who can begrudge Def Leppard the victory lap of re-releasing these albums? But, weirdly, these days they are getting nominated for Country Music Awards - for their recent work with Taylor Swift.
What the others say
"Def Leppard may not be highly original, but they mean what they play, and Pyromania puts some much-needed fire back on the radio." - original Rolling Stone review of Pyromania
"Adrenalize is competent, workmanlike, and impeccably produced, but not much more." - All Music Guide
So is it any good?
Def Leppard are a fantastic singles band with one bona fide masterpiece under their belts - Hysteria - which ranks alongside Thriller and Born In The USA as a rare breed of elite 1980s album where the vast majority of tracks either were or could have been deserved hit singles.
Pyromania is, essentially, a dry-run for that masterpiece, a honing of the band's hook laden rock-lite sound as filtered through the meticulous pop production talents of Rob 'Mutt' Lange - his philosophy: if a vocal can be multi-tracked, it will be; if an over-dub will work, let's do it.
Unfortunately, Def Leppard had not yet worked out that they work best as a pop band and so there is still a little to much of the try-hard rock sound and lazy lyrical cliché favoured on their first two albums. However, the meticulous production sheen and new-found self-assuredness of the band lifts even the more generic tracks to certain heights and, even when the songwriting is lacking, Pyromania drags you along on sheer enthusiasm. But at its best - Foolin', Rock Of Ages, Photograph - the album scales pop-perfect heights far beyond the reach of a mere 'hair metal' band.
The bonus disc - a full live set from the LA Forum, 1982 - is also a worthy addition and the best available representation of Def Leppard's pre-Pyromania material. Songs which, on album, were often banal are injected new-found vitality by a tour-hardened heavy rock band self-consciously on the cusp of greatness. It perfectly captures Def Leppard's original two-pronged guitar assault - a fitting testament to the talents of Steve Clark who died tragically in 1991.
Adrenalize, the follow-up to the world-conquering Hysteria, and their first album without Steve, was almost five years in production. Five years when they had more serious problems to focus on than songwriting. Adrenalize is hopelessly front-loaded, as if the band realised their paucity of decent new material and wanted to offer fans the singles first, the filler as optional further listening. That said, Let's Get Rocked and Make Love Like A Man remain fantastically self-effacing takes on the classic Hysteria sound - brilliantly produced guilty pleasures. Even better is Heaven Is - joyous pop a la the Beach Boys or early rock 'n' roll, buffed up with the band's patented multi-track magic. The rest is a pale reflection of earlier glories. Even the Big Ballad, Have You Ever Needed Someone So Bad, is, in truth, a transparent and inferior re-write of Hysteria's Love Bites.
The bonus disc in this case is the definition of inessential - a lazily assembled collection of unnecessary acoustic versions, crummy covers, out-of-context live tracks and even, dating the collection horribly, a collaboration with Hothouse Flowers. Even the Def Leppard completist - should there be such a thing - doesn't need this.
There we have it, Def Leppard: before and after greatness. But always capable of a fantastic single.
7.5 /10 & 5.5/10
Steve Braund