re: Def Leppard

Stairway To Straw Man wat?

I still sometimes drive home at 2:30 in the morning to "Hysteria". I don't feel guilty.

quote:

---

It still blows my mind that so many people actually claim to like Hysteria and the subsequent crap after it. Absolutely awful stuff.

---

I liked hysteria would be lying to say otherwise. But, you are correct about ALL their later albums. That was basically my point of the thread. What a flipping let down. Why for the love God do they still make the same shite (pop) album after album knowing that it is going nowhere? Why?....Pisses me off, what I wouldn't give for them to go into the studio and write ten hard rock songs and record it all in one month. BOOM!

quote:

---

High n dry


Great rock and roll album. For me, that was their pinnacle. How did that band record Pour Some Sugar On Me? I mean I know why they did it, but shite, c'mon guys.

---

This all day long. Pyro was just too polished and had too many hooks. I remember after that album that there was a lot of backlash from fans. This album was the departure point for people that like the more hard rock. Mutt got them hits though.

Hysteria was awful. Pyromania had a couple of decent songs on it but Hysteria has little in the way of redeeming qualities. Kind of liked "Women" but "Pour Some Sugar On Me" and "Armageddon It" really showed a departure from what people had hoped for the band. Pyro had a mix of really crappy and a couple of decent songs but after that, it was mostly shite.

quote:

---

They went from being a band where the drummer was literally the best musician and the songs were driven in an almost Zepp fashion, to a band that depended on a drum machine and computer generated sounds to make music.

---

This is all wrong. From a musician's standpoint, Rick Allen was never "the best musician" in Def Leppard (which hurts to say, given the fact that I am a drummer). That title would go to Steve Clark, Rick Savage, or Joe Elliot (prior to Phil Collen joining the band in '82). Those guys were the driving force...

With regard to the "...a band that depended on a drum machine..." remark, no "drum machine" was ever used. Granted, Mutt Lange did replace Rick Allen's recorded drum parts on Pyromania with sampled sounds because the samples sounded "bigger" (sampling was in its early stage at that time) than the sounds that could be achieved at that time through tuning and studio miking...but the actual arrangement of the drum parts were composed and played by Rick.

After Rick's accident, replacing acoustic drum sounds with "bigger" sounding samples was no longer necessary because he began using a custom-designed kit comprised of pads and foot-pedals that triggered sampled sounds when played...but again, Rick composed and played all of those drum parts.

Regarding the "...computer generated sounds...", this is also incorrect. The album was recorded to tape, with all editing being done the old-fashioned way, by (a) using a razorblade to cut out unwanted sections of tape and...tape...to tape together the edited parts of the recording and (b) skilled manipulation of the mixing board.

Of course, I realize this information does nothing to refute your assertion that the "sound" of the band softened after Rick lost his arm in '84. I just wanted to set the record straight with regard to "...drum machine[s] and computer generated sounds..."

Jesus Christ it must really suck to be some of you people with only maybe 5 albums in your collections because everything else is "garbage".

I never was a big Def Leppard fan, but I always liked Hysteria. It's probably just nostalgia though. It was a big album at a great time in my life - 14/15 years old and not a care in the world. Animal was always my favorite song on that album.

quote:

---

A LOT of hate for a band

---

My analogy:
It's like the super hot, beautiful girl that puts on a ton of weight in a years span and never loses it. It's not that we hate the fatty, it's just that we want the hottie back, dammit.