by Phil Collen
After the opening band, Queensrÿche, finished up, we would drop the curtains to hide the stage. Then we had these big things that look like laundry baskets to help cart off Queensrÿche’s gear. What we would do shortly before it was time for Def Leppard to take the stage was to put the guys in these baskets, cover them up, and then secretly wheel them to the stage. They would literally be within touching distance of thousands of fans as we wheeled them out, but nobody was the wiser. They thought we were just moving gear back and forth!
So we’d wheel them out before the show, get them settled underneath the stage, and from there they would just wait until their cue to come out and play. Then of course, after the show was done, they had to wait there until the arena emptied out, because there was nowhere for them to go.
If we did it today, I’m sure there would be some elaborate tunnel or passage that would allow them to move back and forth as they wanted before the show. But in the late 1980s it was a much more primitive system, even though it looked very high-tech. But for the most part, we never had too many issues or technical screwups. I do remember one night at the Nassau Coliseum, before the band came out, when the air-conditioning system under the stage got hold of one of the huge drapes we used and sucked it in. So we recruited the audience to get the curtain pulled out from the AC system, and they actually were very helpful, yanking it loose like [in] a huge tug-of-war.
As ingenious as the whole thing was, there were also many booby traps on that thing, with all of the lasers and trapdoors and ramps and things. And slopes that were sometimes dangerous for the boys. I think everyone slid off that stage at least once. But not like Steve. He actually fell off one night just before the lasers came on, and then we couldn’t find him. He had disappeared in the crowd and we had to fish him out. Joe and Phil may have been the only two to not have serious accidents on that stage. But it was still all pretty wonderful and very memorable.
We had seen a small-scale version of the stage while touring Europe, but nothing could prepare us for seeing the real thing the first time, in Glens Falls, New York. For all of us, it felt like entering a giant spaceship, which is also what it looked like. The five of us wandered inside and outside of it, exploring it like excited kids in a cave. It was massive. Huge challenges came with such an untested concept, and I’m sure other bands might have said, “Forget it, this is never going to work.” As “high-tech” as it was at the time, though, it was actually sort of primitive when you got right down to it. But we worked out the glitches and made it happen. That’s how we handled everything.
We kicked off the U.S. tour and premiered our spectacular new stage in Glens Falls on October 1, 1987. There were problems: given the size and strange design of it, it took the crew all night to load out. The next night, for our show in Albany, it took the crew a ridiculous amount of time to load in, which made us think we might have bitten off more than we could chew. But the crew got the hang of it all and in the end it proved to be the most remarkable and innovative design that had ever been taken on the road. And, most important, fans would love it because there was no bad seat in the house.
We all had up to six different microphones placed in various locations on the stage. We always had that team-effort attitude, supporting Joe as front man and working together to put on a unified performance. On this new stage, we were all free to run around and live out our wildest rock star fantasies if we wanted to. But that’s not how we were—we were like a football (soccer) team. You know when you watch a really good team, like Barcelona? It’s about how they cover the field, about great passing and creating space. That was our strategy on the stage. We worked as a team to provide full coverage of the field, or in this case, our massive and beautiful new stage in the round. And it was a workout: I can remember coming offstage after performing a three-hour set and feeling like I was eighty years old—and I was only thirty.
The fans loved the spectacle. The only hiccup was, with the album not exactly burning up the charts (nor the singles), we were not getting huge crowds. It felt a bit silly mounting that huge stage to a half-full arena. And it seemed that even MTV couldn’t save us.
With all the amazing concert performances and an incredible album, we couldn’t understand why we still failed to ignite. We toured through the end of 1987 and into early 1988: It was grueling night after night, but still the crowds were not what we had hoped. After the release of our third single, “Hysteria,” in March, we returned to Europe to tour. To our surprise, it was our most successful European tour to date. It was a real reversal to have such great reception in Europe, where people once bemoaned our American success, compared to the tepid reception in America, where folks had adored us.
It was on this European leg of the Hysteria tour that I got to know Scott Smith, the bass player from the band Loverboy, when they opened for us. We hit it off almost instantly and became really good friends. He was a bit older than me, and his band had been around longer, so he would always give me advice on things like management, money, and other parts of the business. You don’t get many lasting relationships out on the road, but Scott and I would remain close through the years.
We would be out on tour for over a year promoting the album. Remember, there was no such thing as social media, so there were a lot of personal appearances and interviews on top of performing practically every night. This was the first tour during which I had not touched a drink. It felt really weird; the best way I can describe it is that it felt a little out of context to still be jumping around in a rock band. I’d always associated the drinking, as everyone else had, with the whole rock star thing. I was the only guy in the group who was completely sober. There were people who would say, “Just have one drink,” and I would have to tell them, “No. If I start, I can’t stop.” A glass of wine would turn into a bottle of wine, and that would be a bottle of Jack Daniel’s by the end of the week. But I didn’t fall off the wagon once. It was never tempting, because when I made that decision I stuck to it. But while I avoided alcohol, I watched Steve’s drinking get worse by the day. We started talking about the alcohol as a problem, which Steve definitely acknowledged. But it’s easier said than done to just stop.
While we continued to tour Europe, a funny thing was happening back in America. “Sugar” was suddenly blowing up the airwaves across the country. Apparently, radio stations in Florida started getting lots of requests from strippers who were dancing in a frenzy around poles to “Sugar,” their newest stripper anthem. The song was starting to catch on like wildfire and spread to the point that it catapulted the Hysteria album to number one on the Billboard charts. Amazing. Up until then, the album had sold about three million copies, not even enough to cover the cost of making it. So we took advantage of it. We cut a new video using concert footage from our Denver show; it was big, bold, and stylish, like it should have been the first time we did it. That concert video shot to the top of MTV’s Dial MTV show and sat there for eighty-five straight days, tying the longest run ever. The song went to No. 1 in Canada, No. 2 in America, and No. 18 on the British singles chart. Most important, it reinvigorated the album. After a tour of Asia in May, we returned to the States to tour from the rest of May into August.
Our triumphant return was humbling: we had been here before, so we appreciated all the new attention we were getting, but we also realized how fickle human nature can be, so while everyone was blowing smoke up our asses, we took mental note to stay cool. But we did cheer when Tony DiCioccio, our former tour accountant from Q Prime Management, told us the U.S. promoters were seriously interested in doing another multinight, multicity U.S. tour to carry on through September. They felt it would be hugely successful with our newfound base. We said okay. We were in. I mean, who could say no to that?
As it turned out, they were right. The tour was huge. Fucking monstrous. Everywhere. We played the Rupp Arena in Lexington, Kentucky. Back in 1987 we had a very vibrant 3,000 people show up, but a dismally empty 20,000 seats. In 1988, the very same venue was
sold-out. It was back to pop star status. The same would be true at the Tacoma Dome in Washington State. We went from 11,000 people in 1987 to 30,000 sold-out seats in 1988. Once near-empty arenas across the country were now selling out in a matter of minutes.
We had thought that because of how the record sounded, and not just because of how much work we put into it, it would explode. The first single, “Animal,” gave us our first top-ten hit in England; Hysteria, the album, went straight to number one. We thought the album would have the same effect in America. It didn’t. Hysteria failed to ignite. We were doing okay numbers in America, but it didn’t do what Pyromania had been doing.
Once again, we learned to take everything with a pinch of salt. At the beginning of the Hysteria tour cycle, people’s attitudes toward us as a band and toward the album were very cynical and disrespectful. We were well aware that we were not being doted on for the lyrical content of our music. We always felt it important to create escapism through our music. That’s why you don’t see our lyrics being married at all to political messages and whatnot. The music we make is Star Wars for the ears and sonically pleasing. Now that this thing was going through the roof, it was clear that some of the same people’s current attitude, which appeared to be supportive, felt extremely fake to us. You can always rely on humans to be typical and disappointing. The band appreciated the album for what it was and all the hard work we had put in. It absolutely reminded us how shallow the entertainment industry is. But, if they liked you—even if it was only for the time being—they liked you.
We were playing in Chicago and Robert Plant showed up backstage to pay us a visit. Everybody in Def Leppard is a huge Led Zeppelin fan. I kept thinking back to when I saw Zeppelin as a kid back in the mid-1970s and couldn’t believe that Robert Plant actually wanted to come see our show. But it got better. When he heard about the way we got wheeled out there every night, he got all excited and asked if he could be a part of the clandestine operation that took place before the show. It’s amazing how primitive the whole “getting to the stage” thing was. But that is theater for you. Smoke and mirrors has always been a major part of its entertainment. Plant asked if he could actually be one of the guys who wheeled the laundry hampers to the stage. Cool. Robert Plant, one of the most recognizable rock-and-roll icons on earth, put on a disguise, with a bandana around his head, some dark shades, and a leather jacket. I remember he looked a bit like a pirate. Me and Sav said, “Fuck! Robert Plant’s pushing us out!” as we were crouched in the bottom of the hamper. Sav and I would share a cart, as would Joe and Steve. Rick would’ve already gone to the stage, because he would go sometimes to warm up, playing under the stage along with whatever band was opening up for us. Then he would wait for us to join him. Rick would wear a disguise along with a fake arm holding a beer. At one of the gigs he had on a baseball cap, a jacket, glasses, and this arm. Steve went up to him, patted him on the back, and said to him, “Have a good show Rick!” while sticking a sign on his back that read I Am Rick Allen. No one noticed. We played extra hard that night, knowing that Robert Plant was watching us, and it wouldn’t be the last time he came to one of our shows. (Years later, in 1993, he would again join us onstage at a gig, in Copenhagen, to play a medley of some Zeppelin classics.)
Just after the New Year, in January 1989, “Rocket” became the seventh single from Hysteria to be released in the States. And it made it into the top fifteen on the Billboard charts. It was a nice cap to a hard-won album release. It had been a slog, the recording of it, touring it, and promoting it. But we’d sweated blood over it and had spent close to $5 million to get it done, so it would need to be successful. We thought it was the best thing we had ever done and the best thing we had ever heard. It was a combination of all the rock influences we had ever heard, culminating into a palatable, accessible monster. We kept going until it was a success. We knew it would be. We just had to convince everyone else. And we did: Hysteria would go on to dominate many album charts around the world for three years. It wound up spending ninety-six weeks in the U.S. Top 40 and to date has sold more than 20 million copies.
In a sense, the end of the Hysteria tour signaled the end of an era for Def Leppard. We didn’t know it yet, but Hysteria was the last album the band ever did where all five guys were single. It was that last stage of an era when we were all free of any real responsibilities beyond just being together and making music. After that, for whatever reason, everything changed. When you’re in your early twenties, if you’re driven and have a goal in mind, everything becomes secondary—relationships, family, everything, even if you don’t like to admit it. Once you achieve that goal, you take your foot off the gas and it’s very hard to get back to that place, especially when you’re in your thirties. Your focus changes, because you’ve achieved the objective, and what you did naturally becomes contrived. Now you have the focus of a thirty-year-old man, and although you have experience, you don’t have that twenty-year-old reckless, driven abandon that got you to this point. This happens to a lot of people in the entertainment industry. As you get older, you start thinking about other things. In a nutshell, in our youth we’re selfish and not aware of anything else. As we get older, our narcissism gets diluted (at least it’s supposed to), almost as if we’re moving to a higher astral plane. So at the end of the Hysteria tour, our lives began to open up.
We had still been on tour when I first met Jacqueline Long. I met her at Great Woods amphitheater in Mansfield, Massachusetts, just outside Boston. Jacki was a model and lived in New York City but had been at a show with two of her girlfriends. I thought she was lovely and got her phone number. In typical Phil Collen fashion, I failed to mention all of this to my girlfriend Liz. Needless to say, the shit hit the fan when Liz found out. We broke up, and Jacki and I started seeing each other.
When we finally finished the tour, I was straddling between London and New York, and I still had my place in Paris; I felt a little confused about where I actually lived. But since I was spending a lot more time with Jacki, I decided to move in with her. Her tiny apartment in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood couldn’t fit any of my shit—guitars and stuff. So we went house hunting and found a badass loft near the corner of West Broadway and Houston. This place was amazing, not to mention Sting lived in the loft directly above me. The ceilings were really high and the large windows ran the length of the loft’s redbrick walls. It was perfect, the quintessential industrial SoHo loft, and a real sanctuary in the middle of a chaotic city.
Just as we were moving in, we found out Jacki was pregnant. We had already decided to get married, but this sped things up just a bit. Jacki and I were married in the summer of 1989. Our son, Rory James Collen, was born on January 4, 1990. Up until that point in life, I had never even held a child. I had been in London prior to that, writing some songs, but Jacki said the doctor informed her that I should probably “come home now.” So I jumped on the Concorde and flew from London to New York posthaste only to sit for another two weeks waiting for Rory to make an appearance.
Coming off the Hysteria world tour, we knew we did not want to take another four years to release our next album. So we barely took a break and soon met up with Mike Shipley, who had mixed Hysteria, done many a Def Leppard session, and worked with Mutt on many projects as producer and engineer, along with Pete Woodroffe, his assistant. We started recording the demos that we had been writing with Mutt. Mike would send Mutt the recordings as we got them done.
As always, Amsterdam was a fascinating place. I had at least three different apartments over the course of my stay there, all in or around the red-light district, so I saw it all. It is a maze of old, narrow streets that boast endless storefronts with girls selling their “wares.” Most are seated in various stages of undress. Men and women travel from all over the world just to stand in front of the windows and stare. It’s as much a tourist attraction as it is a sex mecca. Amsterdam is also famous for its coffee shops that offer up cannabis, sinsemilla, and other THC-containing products, al
l legal in Holland. I would walk every morning and every night through the streets just to take it all in.
Looking back, it was probably not the best environment for Steve. As we got down to work writing the album, it became clear to all of us that that he was worse than ever. There was more responsibility as we got older and more successful, and we were all starting families. My sobriety was still incredibly important to me, and I would not jeopardize it. But for Steve it all just kept getting worse.
Things had changed for me when I met Jacki. I used to hang with Steve all the time. But once I began spending my time with her, I lost track of what he was doing and who he was doing it with. It wasn’t that I considered myself his keeper, but he was certainly my closest friend and I loved him. When I was around him there was less chance of him spinning off the rails, especially with me being stone cold sober. There are functioning alcoholics, which I think Steve had been for a long time. But he was now entering a phase that seemed much more dark and dangerous. He was no longer himself.
In a way, Steve didn’t have that much choice in the matter. He was surrounded by drink most of his life. Steve’s dad was a taxi driver, and I think Steve was always trying to prove that he was worthy of his rock star status. In England, and I’m sure everywhere else in the world, excessive drinking often gets covered up, even with serious alcoholics. The attitude is often, “Oh, he just likes a drink,” brushing aside the problem. It is hard to come away from that environment unscathed. In addition, it wasn’t enough that he had become an extremely successful musician in one of the most famous bands on the planet. There was still this thing about the culture he came from. Steve had to prove his manhood to his dad all the time, that he had the values of a Sheffield steelworker underneath his golden splendor.
One morning Steve called me at about eight and asked if he could come over to my apartment. “I’ve got something to show you,” he said.
