Adrenalized

by Phil Collen

  JOE ELLIOTT: Back when Def Leppard was first getting started, the one local band that stood out to me was Girl. Okay, so it didn’t hurt that their lead singer, Phil Lewis, was with Britt Ekland. But it went much further than that. They reminded me of so much that was not happening at the time. It seemed like every other band was dressing like Iron Maiden, but these guys looked like true rock stars. In fact, they seemed more like Rod Stewart. And while they weren’t quite Japan, they were aware of who the band Japan was.

  I saw them on TV when they performed on the Whistle Test, and they were just amazing. They were snotty and had this great pop rock sound. They just had a sparkling presence. They could play hard and they could also play soft. They were not just straight-ahead hard rock. For me, this gave them a sort of Bowie edge that really intrigued me.

  I wanted to go out of my way to hear them live, and so when I saw that they were opening for UFO at the nearby Sheffield City Hall, I knew I just had to go. I didn’t go there that night just to meet Phil Collen. I was there to see all five guys. But then backstage after the show, Phil Lewis, Phil Collen, and Steve Clark and I decided to go to a little discotheque called Genevieve’s. There was a lot of dancing there, but bands also played, and on this particular night there was a group called Sledgehammer. After they finished their set, we asked if we could borrow their gear to play a few songs onstage. Nobody knew who we were, and we were just having a bit of fun. Phil Lewis handled the lead vocals, the other Phil played guitar, Steve played bass, and I sat in behind the drum kit, which I could basically play anyway. I remember that we played the KISS song “Do You Love Me?” because it was something that Girl had just recorded. And it actually sounded pretty good, even though we were basically pissed out of our minds.

  That night, the guys from Girl were booked to stay in a hotel out in the countryside about twenty miles away. But it was two o’clock in the morning, which meant it would have been a real haul to get there. So I let them stay at my mum and dad’s house.

  We did not have a spare bedroom, so I told them that they would be sharing a bed, and they were drunk enough to just say fine. My dad was up to work early the next morning, so he never saw them, but my mum met them and liked them quite a bit. They played with her little Yorkshire terrier and she found Phil and Phil quite charming.

  After they left, she went to make the bed and noticed makeup all over the pillowcase. She thought I had snuck some girls into the house over the night, but I had to explain to her that these guys were a band that wore makeup, kind of like Marc Bolan or the New York Dolls.

  Phil Collen and I exchanged numbers that morning, and I had a pretty good idea that he and I would be staying in touch. We seemed to have a pretty similar view on the local music scene and how the press handled everything. He was refreshing. At that time around Sheffield you had the Human League, Thompson Twins, ABC—in Def Leppard, we were like the outside stepchildren.

  Sometime in 1981 I got a strange call from Joe Elliott one day while I was at my mum’s house in Walthamstow. Def Leppard were out on tour opening up for Ozzy Osbourne in the States, and things, according to Joe, weren’t really working out with Pete Willis. Joe said, “Can you learn sixteen songs in two days?” Of course I replied, “Yeah.” I mean, even though I was still in Girl, I was sure all the guys would have been cool with me helping Def Leppard out on their U.S. tour. But Joe called back the next day and said they had smoothed things over.

  But back to Girl. . . . Then of course there were the gigs we played with KISS, their last shows before taking the makeup off that first time. Gene Simmons was dating Diana Ross at the time. He introduced us to her (and impressed us at the same time by remembering all of our names). I was happy to meet her but I thought, Wow! The shiny and expensive Diana Ross is here with us in this shithole at Bingley Hall, a venue in Birmingham. Bingley Hall was quite interesting for a few reasons. We had an all-male audience. Joe Elliott came to see us. We got spat at like we were the Clash, and to top it all off, I got rip-roaring drunk, had sex with a girl, and threw up all over her while I was fucking her. Phil Lewis was in the room doing the same minus the regurgitation. Bingley Hall.

  Toward the end of Girl, we were doing some pretty creative stuff. We were getting studio time in this great little studio called Matrix that was owned by Nigel Frieda, brother of the ultrafamous hair designer John Frieda. Nigel was ultracool. He would call us if a band canceled or finished early so we could get the graveyard shift for free or a limited price. We’d show up at one in the morning or 6 a.m., whenever we got the call. We did some really cool demos there. It was around this time I got a phone call from Paul Di’Anno, Iron Maiden’s lead singer, whom I had known since I was six from when we went to school together. He asked if I’d be interested in joining the band, as Dennis Stratton, one of Maiden’s guitarists, had just left. I mentioned it to the guys in Girl. Not for selfish reasons, but they really didn’t think it would be the right choice for me. But before I got a chance to respond to Paul, Adrian Smith joined the band. That’s ironic, actually, because Adrian is one of the five people whom we considered for a guitarist after Steve passed. He’s a great guy who successfully merged back into Iron Maiden.

  My last gig with Girl was a show at the Zig Zag club in London in 1982 with drummer Pete Barnacle, who was the best fit for the band. The Zig Zag was an interesting space. Zig Zag was a London magazine that decided to open a live music venue under the same name. It was located at 22–24 Great Western Road, London, and was open for just a year. All of the guys from Def Leppard had come down to watch the show. I decided to just go crazy with my guitar that night and play the wildest solos I could. I played with my teeth and one hand. I played the guitar behind my head and I put on as great a show as I knew how. I put all the Jimi Hendrix tricks out there purely because I was hamming it up for everyone in attendance. Little did I know it was kind of my audition for Def Leppard. It was one of the only times in my life I played semidrunk, so I was extra-uninhibited up there and had an amazing show. The irony of that was that Def Leppard were replacing someone in their band who had problems with alcohol.

  In June of 1982 Joe phoned me up and asked if I would like to come down and play a couple of solos on the new Def Leppard album. I was already familiar with what they were doing because I had lent the guys an amplifier when they were recording in a studio in Hastings. I said, “Sure. Absolutely,” not really thinking anything of it. When I showed up, everyone explained what was going on and that was that it wasn’t working out with Pete Willis. By this time, he was drinking excessively, and it had started affecting his playing and the rest of the band. Nothing was really said, because they obviously wanted to see how I would do. The producer Mutt Lange was there. I had met him earlier in the year during the recording of the High ’n’ Dry album in Hastings. He gave me a cassette and said, “Have a listen to this song and come up with a solo for it.” The song was “Stagefright.” So I went in the next day, plugged in my fifty-watt Marshall head, and just let it rip. It blew everyone away because I got it in the first take, and that’s what you hear on the record. From that point on I was asked to do more solos on the tracks that Pete would have played on, i.e., “Photograph,” “Rock! Rock! (Till You Drop),” “Foolin’,” “Rock of Ages,” and then fun lead guitar stuff on “Billy’s Got a Gun” and “Too Late.” It was a lead guitarist’s dream. All the hard work had already been laid down by Steve and Pete. When Mutt found out I could sing, he had me foghorn on everything—stuff like the two-part harmonies that I do with Joe all the time, which can particularly be heard on “Too Late” and “Foolin’.” Now it’s part of our signature sound.

  Several days later, with Joe joining me in my old MK3 Ford Cortina, we headed off to Def Leppard manager Peter Mensch’s house for a meeting with the band, Peter, and Mutt. Peter lived just off Kensington High Street near Holland Park, and by the time we got to his house the stick shift had come off in my hand and we practically drove through his front window.

  JOE
ELLIOTT: Over the next year or so whenever I would go on to London, I would ring Phil up and we would go to the pub to talk. Or we would crash at each other’s homes or apartments. As Def Leppard began to get more popular, Phil and I remained in touch. He was a great guy and we always had interesting conversations.

  We knew we were making something really special in the studio, and so when our producer, Mutt Lange, started getting concerned about Pete, we knew something had to give pretty soon. In essence, Mutt was a part of our band, and his voice carried a lot of weight. When we realized that Mutt might actually walk off from working with us because of Pete, we knew we had to do something. And I knew that Phil was the right guy for our band.

  So there was one day in 1982 when we sat Pete down and explained to him that it was time to go. It was a bit of a difficult conversation, but I think he was relieved as well, because all of a sudden a lot of pressure was lifted off of him. That same day, we had Phil come down to visit at our manager’s house. He pulls up in that old rust bucket of a Ford Cortina and we all have a decent meeting. We play him some of the music we’re working on and he gets really excited. He couldn’t believe the sounds we were getting in the studio. As we were taught by Mutt, the studio was essentially another band member, and Phil loved that concept.

  I should add, what really sealed the deal for me was a performance I’d seen a few weeks before, when Girl played at a place called the Zig Zag club. Phil played about as brilliantly as I had ever seen someone play up close like that. And when I met him backstage afterward, I realized he was completely pissed out of his mind. It struck me: if a guy can play that well being as blitzed as he was, then that really said something.

  So before he left our manager’s house, Mutt gave Phil a cassette copy of a song we were working on called “Stagefright.” Phil’s assignment was to go home and create a solo for that record, which only had rhythm tracks on it. The next day he came down to the studio where we were working. The rest of us were watching World Cup soccer on TV while Mutt went into the studio to work with Phil. About thirty minutes later Mutt came rushing out excitedly and had us come in to the studio to listen to the solo that Phil had created. It was amazing. It was just the kind of sound and attitude that our band needed to get to the next level.

  Once Mutt blessed him, that was it. But I think I always knew in the back of my head that Phil was the right guy.

  The meeting was pretty comfortable from the start because I had become friends with the band. Mensch’s house was the hang. He was the New Yorker living in London. We’d go around there to drink coffee and talk shit. I had met Mutt years before, and I knew Peter because a year earlier when I needed some business advice, Joe suggested I speak to him. Mensch was really cool like that. Although he was very busy, he made time to give me some career and business advice related to the whole Girl situation. At this point they were not giving me a formal offer to join the band, at least not that I heard. They just needed some help with the guitars on the album. But then it quickly morphed into “Right. So we’re going to do a European tour to promote this album. It’s going to be called Pyromania. You guys had better start rehearsing.” So I packed my stuff up and went to Sheffield. It sounded like a lot of fun. You have to remember at this point Def Leppard were still playing clubs. They were an opening act, and not much bigger than Girl was in England. None of us ever envisioned this as a turning point in our life of what we’d become.

  When I went back home and told my girlfriend Liz, she was ecstatic. I was leaning toward accepting the tour offer because of the comfort level that was established so quickly with these guys. Plus, it was a chance to see the world. And any small doubt I had was erased by Liz’s enthusiasm. “I’ll never speak to you again if you don’t accept this offer,” she told me. “This is a band that is very disciplined and poised to do great things, and you can help them get there. Everything else you’ve been doing up until this point has been designed for this moment. You need them and they need you. It’s perfect.”

  I could not argue with Liz. She was exactly right. The guys in Def Leppard in many ways were like me and vice versa. They approached their music like it was art. They hadn’t gotten into rock and roll for all the cheap thrills. That doesn’t mean we didn’t enjoy some of the cheap thrills, but their overarching goal was to create music that would last.

  There wasn’t a solid invitation for me to join the band. About ten years later (I think), Joe finally gave me an official invite into the band, which I promptly declined and still haven’t accepted to this day.

  LIZ SHORTS: I remember distinctly when he came home and told me about the opportunity to tour with Def Leppard. He was really struggling with the decision and wanted my advice. I like to think he needed my advice. He really loved being in Girl and he was fiercely loyal to his bandmates. I think he had a real hesitation about jumping from the frying pan into the fat. Part of it was, I think he was scared of the unknown. But he was also scared of leaving those guys on their own. They had done so much together, and I know he didn’t want to feel like he was abandoning them.

  My whole speech to Phil was about helping him understand that there was a vocation at stake. If he wanted to survive as a musician, he had to look at things in terms of what was the best job going to be. I really felt that with Def Leppard, he had a bigger chance of going someplace. And I tried to let him know that he wasn’t being disloyal if he moved on. Oh sure, I knew the guys would be very pissy at first and that they would certainly be devastated. But they loved Phil just as he loved them. The one thing with all the guys and Girl was that they were very smart. Emotion aside, they knew it was the right thing to do and that they would certainly have done the same thing if they were in Phil’s shoes.

  Nevertheless, it was not an easy discussion, and Phil and I argued about it for about two weeks. I couldn’t stress to him enough to take the touring assignment with Def Leppard. He would agree with me to a point but then fall back on the loyalty. Finally, I think he understood. He really just needed somebody he trusted to help him get there. And just like I thought, when he told the guys, it was really difficult. But as they began to process the information, they all came around pretty quickly and supported what he was doing. Those things are never easy. When guys are in bands like that, there’s a brotherhood that exists that is very sensitive. Part of it was, I think they knew that Phil now had a shot of going on to bigger and better things. They were happy for him. And for Phil it was like he was bidding farewell to some of his favorite friends in the world. But sometimes you just have to look beyond the moment at the bigger picture. To me, Def Leppard was the bigger picture.

  I had a discussion with the guys in Girl. They all were in agreement that I should do the Def Leppard tour since it seemed like Girl had plateaued and everything was changing so fast around us.

  Back then Def Leppard had hired Mutt, who was one of the greatest, if not the greatest producer in the world at that point, to help them achieve a unique sound, and they were giving me a chance to join the team. I take that word, team, very seriously. I noticed right up front that there was a Def Leppard democracy in terms of how responsibilities and achievements were shared equally. This was not a band that was about egos but a band that had a working-class focus on making the best records and creating the best live performances possible. They were ultracompetitive and had an emphasis on musical substance. I was the exact same way.

  I also met Malvin Mortimer the first week I started playing with the band. Malvin wasn’t just a guitar tech. He took on many other duties, including keeping everyone fed, which was no easy feat considering the various dietary specifications from the band. Bacon, eggs, beans, mushrooms, tomatoes—kind of the typical English fry-up. And nobody was better than Malvin at cooking that up for the guys, but I became a vegetarian at the end of the Pyromania tour, and Rick Allen followed suit during the recovery from his accident. So Malvin would simplify things for us. He catered to us and always made us the best English comfort food, like Hein
z beans on toast. I quickly learned he was really an extension of the band.

  Steve Clark and I liked each other but we played guitar very differently. We had drastic styles. Listening to Pyromania, it was obvious that a guitar orchestra was on hand. To be quite honest, you’d need at least four guitar players to get most of this stuff done. So it was important that we work together. Rehearsals were the beginning of our deep friendship and concepts for a new style of guitar playing. Steve’s favorite guitar player was Jimmy Page. I always felt that the genius of Jimmy Page wasn’t his lead playing per se but total depth in arrangements and production. People often get confused about Jimmy Page’s role. Steve didn’t, so he would come up with these wonderful guitar lines that I hadn’t heard before. They weren’t standard but totally unique. If you add Mutt Lange plus my guitars into the mix, we had a whole new style based on a team effort, which most other rock bands didn’t seem to do. I didn’t really delve into the psyche of the music then because I simply looked at it as a lot of fun. I was twenty-four and thought I was a part of something that, if it didn’t do well, would still be okay. It was still something to be proud of. The fulfillment of doing all that overrode the sex, drugs, and rock and roll part of it. During Hysteria, that became even more apparent.