Rocktober 27: Def Leppard

"Pour Some Sugar on Me"

I mentioned Heart in my Vixen post as a band that had a hair metal phase but didn't really qualify as a hair band. Def Leppard falls into that category as well; the difference is that Def Leppard put out perhaps the quintessential album of the era. Hysteria was conceived as rock's answer to Michael Jackson's Thriller album, and it delivered, charting seven singles over the course of three years. Strippers will be dancing to "Pour Some Sugar on Me" until the end of time, and "Love Bites" is one of the biggest power ballads. So while Def Leppard is more than just a hair band, any discussion of hair metal is woefully incomplete without including them.

At the time, Def Leppard was my favorite band. When guitarist Steve Clark died in 1991, I was devastated. Looking back it actually seems a little silly how affected I was, but it was probably the first passing of a celebrity that I cared about, and probably my first real understanding that being involved in pop culture doesn't make someone eternal—these are still actual people with real lives and problems, and sometimes those problems include addiction and other health issues, and sometimes they don't recover from them.

I got to see them in concert once, in August of 1999. They played the Ohio State Fair, and my friend Jessica had recently gotten a job and moved to Columbus, so I came for a visit and the two of us went to the show. Seeing them at that point was almost kind of surreal, and the concert had a weird mix of age ranges. But they put on a good performance, and they played a nice mix of newer stuff (Euphoria had just come out) and their classic hits. I'd go see them again in a heartbeat.

I want to drop a quick note on Slang. I get the feeling their 1996 album is a little polarizing among fans because they moved away from hair metal and even the harder rock sound of their earlier albums and put together a rawer, sort of grunge-influenced album. Personally, I love it. I'm glad not all their albums sound like that, but it is definitely interesting. It's thoughtful and more introspective, and I think it kind of shook them up a little bit. They've gotten back to their classic sound, but everything they've done since has been a little bit different from what came before.