by Phil Collen
I pull a lot of people up on this next point when they say they prefer High ’n’ Dry to Pyromania. I tell them you can still detect other bands in High ’n’ Dry, as AC/DC had a strong influence on that album, since Mutt had just produced AC/DC. I really do consider Mutt to be a musical genius. I think Def Leppard was a really good band. But Mutt took a really good band and made them great. From the beginning, he had a very clear concept of what he thought we should sound like. And of course as it turned out he was right. His idea for the band was that we would be a cross between AC/DC and Queen but more raw. Mutt told us, “Def Leppard will be all about great pop songs that resonate with the punk ethos. We won’t have lovely harmonies like Styx or Foreigner. Our vocals will be more like a screaming chant, which will set them apart.”
I truly believe Def Leppard was still searching for its identity. Pyromania was a departure and way more original sounding because the team had been working constantly. All of sudden it sounded like Def Leppard. It’s amazing that in this day and age that bands or artists don’t have the luxury of being nurtured and allowed to reach their full potential. We did. The music business became more of a business and less about art. I feel really fortunate to have been around at a time when we could exercise that right. I think Hysteria was even more original sounding, and came to epitomize the typical Def Leppard sound, because we had time to take it to a whole other level and we were nurtured to do so. And to be honest, we also had a record label at the time that was prepared to shell out millions of dollars toward recording. Pyromania was a stepping-stone. It didn’t sound like anyone else. However, the band’s true originality, in my opinion, culminated in the Hysteria album.
In the States, meanwhile, a fresh and bold forum was taking over the airwaves that would help us maximize our sound and image: MTV. In its early days, MTV played a handful of videos that were rotated to death. In 1982, Joan Jett’s “I Love Rock ’n Roll,” the Go-Go’s “We Got the Beat,” and Billy Idol’s “White Wedding” were a few of the most played videos. But MTV was new; there still wasn’t that much product out there to fill a twenty-four-hour schedule, and so they had to use what they had. They were hungry for more videos to play, and bands were falling over themselves to make them. It’s true, video killed the radio star, and it was exploding on American cable TV. We wanted in.
So before the tour, we filmed videos for what were to be our first two singles off the album—“Photograph,” filmed on December 2, which was Sav’s birthday, and “Rock of Ages” filmed on December 8, my twenty-fifth birthday. Both were done at the infamous decommissioned coal-fired plant Battersea Power Station in London. This is the same building on Pink Floyd’s Animals album cover. Pink Floyd actually rigged an immense inflatable pig between two of the power station’s southern chimneys that day, but unfortunately, the pig broke loose from its moorings and rose into the flight path of nearby Heathrow airport. Eventually the beast landed harmlessly in Kent, but the band was smart enough to shoot the footage, and it was used in a promo video for the song “Pigs on the Wing.” Alfred Hitchcock was here in 1936 to shoot the opening scene of his classic film Sabotage, and the Beatles even shot here during their 1965 film, Help!
The power station is a foreboding-looking place with four industrial smokestacks towering ominously on the south bank of the River Thames, in Battersea, an inner-city district of South-West London. It was built back in the 1930s, and it’s been the site of many a production for obvious reasons. It just looks fucking cool.
MTV was just about a year and a half old when we started planning the videos for the two lead singles off Pyromania. Our management knew that it would be a good idea for us to have a couple of visual pieces ready when the record was released. Visually, Def Leppard was an interesting band compared to what else was going on back then. We looked different from all the other rock bands out there. People would soon start comparing us to Duran Duran. But the difference was that while Duran Duran had many girls flocking to them, Def Leppard soon had a reputation for getting all the girls and their boyfriends. Twice the audience. Instead of shying away from being filmed, as most rock bands did, we embraced it, thus making ourselves MTV video darlings. That was a huge difference. Plus we were a hard-rock band.
As I said above, video did kill the radio star. But having said, that the internet killed the video star. Now we can watch or create anything we want ourselves and share it almost immediately. But back then, we were absolutely at the right place in the right time, as this thing was exploding on American cable TV, with the most infectious blend of hard rock and pop in our lead-off single, “Photograph.”
Our videos at Battersea were directed by David Mallet, who had a fantastic reputation at the time. He had directed some of the most interesting and groundbreaking videos of all time—a slew of them for Bowie, as well as videos for Boomtown Rats, Blondie, and many others. When we arrived at Battersea to film “Photograph,” we were very impressed with the set that Mallet had created for us. It was very dramatic, with mesh flooring and lights shooting up through the floor and all of these primal cages with girls in torn stockings and ripped tops. Might seem pretty cheesy today, but back then it was one of the coolest things we’d been involved with.
For “Photograph,” we hired a Marilyn Monroe look-alike to create a bit of the story line, as if the song was about her. Interestingly, there are two versions of this video. A censored version includes a brief knife scene at the beginning; in the alternate version, the knife scene is replaced with the stationary black cat. The whole “passion killer” lyrical bit allowed Mallet to create a little scenario as if there’d been a murder committed. Just a little bit of plot to keep things interesting. We got banned from British TV, which was amazing, because you could shoot people on camera but God forbid there was a switchblade. The song was cranked out over and over through giant speakers, and we simply lip-synched along, striking poses throughout.
The song “Rock of Ages” begins with a cartoonish voice that says something like “Gunter glieben glausen gloeben,” and as soon as we heard that the camera started to roll. Just to clarify some age-old trivia here—that’s Mutt Lange doing a mock German/Swedish accent instead of saying “One, Two, Three, Four.” The words mean absolutely nothing. For all you devil worshippers out there, I’m sure I just destroyed a theory.
As far as our fashion instincts in the videos go, it was really just grab bag. In one video shot Joe has on one of his mum’s scarves. We all borrowed whatever we could.
One interesting detail in both of those videos we were to shoot was the clothes emblazoned with the Union Jack that Joe and Rick wore.
I wore a blue silk shirt and these really tight white pants for the “Rock of Ages” shoot. I had a full camera shot of me shaking my ass at about twenty-eight seconds into the video. This obviously made an impression, because I was parodied in the cult classic film This Is Spinal Tap on the song “Big Bottom.” Immortalized.
A few weeks before the video shoots, when we were rehearsing for the upcoming tour, Joe and Rick had stopped on Kensington High Street, where Joe picked up a Union Jack T-shirt and Rick got some shorts. This was just at one of those touristy stalls where they sell those things. The Union Jack had become semi-emblematic for bands such as the Who and the Sex Pistols.
But in recent years, it had become fairly quiet as an iconic rock-and-roll emblem. Well, that was about to change and we hadn’t even planned it out. These videos were my first interactions with Def Leppard in any kind of performance. Even though we weren’t really playing, it did give us a chance to start getting our performance chops together and figure out where we stood and how we would be in front of people. And when I look back at those videos today, I see us pioneering something. As dated as the videos may look now, something new and exciting was definitely being created.
Once kids saw that emblem in the videos, it caught on and eventually we started producing hundreds of thousands of Union Jack items to satisfy the merch demand. It was a total fluke.
We were like the latest wave of the British Invasion, Part 2. The result of Joe and Rick’s decision to shop novelty is still associated with us to this day.
I give Mutt credit even when it came to our videos. This is a guy who really brought rock to the masses. He understood what it took to have this form of music cross over to a much broader audience. That’s a real magic of his. Later on he would do it with country music. But he certainly did it with Def Leppard. And when he started making us sound different from Motörhead, Iron Maiden, and Judas Priest, it made us feel like we also wanted to look different from them. Those were our contemporaries back then, and they really all looked kind of the same. It was all very black leather and very macho and with spiky bracelets, studs, and the like. So here we’ve got this sort of hybrid album that has the potential to cross over into the pop world, and so we consciously decided to look different, too. We didn’t look all tough and macho. We just looked more in line with Duran Duran than Iron Maiden and it really made a difference, making our image a lot more desirable and palatable. It may not seem like that big a deal today, but those videos separated us from the rest of the pack coming out of England.
On January 20, 1983, Pyromania was officially released. The initial critical response suggested that we had something special on our hands. This was, in part, how Rolling Stone writer David Fricke reviewed the album:
Just when it seemed like synthesizers had taken over the airwaves, along comes Def Leppard with Pyromania, a heavy-metal album full of brawling guitars and boasting state-of-the-radio production. Steve Clark and new member Phil Collen’s fat fuzz riffs and power chords are more emotionally charged than most of the synthesized disco that passes for “modern music,” and Robert John “Mutt” Lange’s work behind the board brings singer Joe Elliott’s screaming vocals into focus. But this young band (the average age is twenty-one) demonstrates surprising sophistication [and] manipulates old heavy-metal tricks into tight, invigorating songs while holding epic pretensions in check. Both “Comin’ Under Fire” and “Photograph” combine the kaboom of AC/DC with slick choruses and brassy vocal harmonies that sound like a gassed-up Boston.
Not bad at all. All of the cards seem to be in place. The album was on its way, the videos were shot and in the can, and now all we had to do was get on the road.
The plan was to spend all of February through mid-March touring Europe. We would be playing throughout England, France, Switzerland, Belgium, Ireland, and Scotland. Then, in mid-March, we would head to the States for an opening slot on the Billy Squier tour. The year before, Squier had put out the monster album Emotions in Motion, on the title track of which he shared vocals with Queen’s Freddie Mercury and Roger Taylor. But it was the single “Everybody Wants You” that had really given Squier arena rock status, and so we were happy with the invitation to play the shows.
MALVIN MORTIMER: A few months earlier Pete Willis had been let go because of his persistent drinking and Phil Collen had been chosen as his replacement, Joe had been a fan of the band Girl (I am sure that Rick Savage had agreed with Joe, so Phil was in). In the following months I saw pictures of Phil, in full girlie makeup (which he applied himself) and I thought that he looked better than a lot of actual girls of that era!
They rehearsed for the Pyromania tour and the first show was early February 1983 at the Marquee in Wardour Street, Soho, in London’s West End. A small venue (capacity 1,000) but a prestigious venue in those days.
I was stationed at stage right, taking care of Steve and Sav. Not much room. Phil had lots of room on stage left and he ruled the space afforded to him.
In the dressing room, a tiny space, not suited for any band that would fill the place, I watched Phil Collen for the first time, looking at himself in a cracked mirror, throwing his body poses, and honing his chops. I remember thinking that this guy is nothing like I have ever seen in preparation prior to a show. He shaped and postured and made faces to himself, not caring who might have been watching. He just practiced his skill, just like an athlete, training and perfecting his ability to appeal to his potential fans. At that point, I realized that he was just like top-class athletes prior to running the hundred yards or vaulting the horse in order to make it a perfect ten!
The show went really well.
After that, I soon observed him practicing his guitar while sitting on the toilet. Whenever he went for a crap, he took a guitar with him. He could be heard from outside chopping and shredding on an electric guitar, taking way more time than the average guy taking a shit.
As Malvin recounts, before anything got under way Def Leppard booked a warm-up show of sorts at my old stomping ground, the Marquee Club in London. This was to be my first live appearance with the band, and I couldn’t think of a better venue. We would be premiering some tracks off Pyromania, but most important, we’d be giving the fans a look at this new version of Def Leppard.
There had been a lot of chatter in the press when I joined the band, and I was anxious to answer any concerns people might have about me being too flamboyant or too glam. Fans and critics can get so used to a lineup that whenever there is some monumental shift, it’s up to the new guy to really prove he belongs. So it’s that much more important for a band to play live. No matter how much you play in the studio or how much you rehearse, there’s nothing like getting in front of people. One person in a room can make a difference because all of a sudden you start playing to that person. That’s what performers do. So I was very anxious and excited to get things under way. The band was in a great mood that night and the club was packed. Not just with fans but with a lot of musicians who were curious about the new look of the band and the sound of the new record. There was a lot of anticipation about Def Leppard at this moment.
Once we hit the stage, I felt like I’d been playing with these guys my whole life. The chemistry, the timing, and the camaraderie were so natural and effortless. Especially between Steve and me onstage, there seemed to be something really magical. By this point I think we had truly started to bond as a live band, and it showed onstage. This was an amazing way to kick off.
It was a lot of fun ending with “Travelin’ Band.” That classic Creedence Clearwater Revival song became part of our repertoire for the whole tour, and we extended the tune into a vamped-up nine-minute jam that featured some wild solos and even bits of other songs like Zeppelin’s “Rock and Roll.” Years later Joe and I heard a Def Leppard bootleg and had completely forgotten that Brian Robertson of Thin Lizzy had joined us onstage for the encore shindig. That night, we broke through all the expectations about me and about the band’s new material. Everyone was impressed, as critic Justine Cole reflected in Sounds:
New material from “Pyromania” came over well, the highlights being “Rock of Ages”—an absolute stormer of a number . . . Phil Collen, whose gutsy style proves that he’s more than just a pretty boy as many had feared. Leppard 1983-style are flash, brash and have all the pride of their leonine namesakes. Quite simply, Def Leppard have come of age and look set to confound their critics with no small degree of style.
Dave Ling at Classic Rock reported:
Those who feared that new recruit Phil Collen, formerly of mascara-glad glamsters Girl, would be a pretty boy fill-in for the shandied-up ex-guitarist Pete Willis were in for a pleasant surprise. Got up in natty looking string vest, Collen let rip with gritty lead runs and stinging solos, quickly winning the crowd over and forming an effective partnership with the grinning Steve “Steamin’ ” Clark.
And so we were off. We had been released from the cage, fired from the gun, however you want to look at it. The next era of Def Leppard had begun. We felt strong and confident. The roller-coaster ride, the Def Leppard juggernaut, had officially taken off.
Pyromania was strong out of the gate. It hit No. 16 on the Billboard album chart in just a month. Two weeks later it was in the top ten. Sales were strong in America, and the reviews continued to pour in.
“Hit Parader readers will recognize this as the real
thing. Def Leppard’s Pyromania is a tribute to what a producer’s art heavy metal has become. Mutt (AC/DC, Foreigner) Lange provides young Leppard with layers upon layers of sound until solid waves drown out all but the jagged edges of Phil Collen, Steve Clark and ex-member Pete Willis on guitar and Joe Elliott’s high-pitched vocals.”
Given how well our debut club show was received, and how well our album was reviewed and was selling in the States, what followed soon after was a bit of a letdown. It was as if people were unaware we had even released a record. Two days after the gig at the Marquee Club, we crammed into our band bus and headed to Ireland, where we played another warm-up gig at the TV Club in Dublin. It was poorly attended. Then on February 12, the Pyromania tour officially began at Belfast’s Ulster Hall, in Northern Ireland. Again, the place was probably half-empty. What the fuck?
The other thing that was pretty obvious was that we would be given a hard time by the British press about “selling out” to America. This is where I developed an opinion that I still maintain to this day. That is that you should play where people want to see you. With the release of Pyromania, the way that we sounded was ravenously devoured in the United States. So it seemed like a no-brainer that most of the time would be spent where this album was being played continuously on the radio and on MTV. To this day, we are larger in America than we have ever been in our home country. If we were the biggest band in Lithuania, then I would suggest we spend more time there.
So we continued the tour going through Europe. Although we were playing small and not overly attended venues, it was thrilling to be a part of this band performing the mainly unheard-of Pyromania to these audiences. You could easily tour through places in Europe back then. For some reason, today it’s dried up. But back then there was a thriving rock scene for us.
Though we all shared one bus with our managers and crew members, when it came to staying in hotels, the rooming situations broke down like this: Joe and Sav were roommates; Rick Allen roomed with his brother, Robert, who was also the road manager; and Steve Clark and I shared a room.
