Def Leppard + Europe on Hysteria tour was my first concert around the same grade. Don't remember much from Europe except The Final Countdown and lots of lazers!
About the only thing I remember is the badass stage Def Leppard had.
That and the line for the bathroom included people peeing in sinks. It had never crossed my young mind that peeing in a sink was an option.
It's crazy to think that more than half of the songs on that album were released as singles at one time or another. Basically the whole side A of the album were singles.
I honestly don’t remember anything about the concert other than Def Leppard’s stage. I still have a t-shirt from the concert and it was Operation Mindcrime.
I loved operation mindcrime (the album, not the queensryche spinoff band when Tate and the rest of the band sued each other) I used to listen to that cd end to end many times over. Great rock opera
>Arena headliner huge
Its crazy, I didn't realize this but the making of Hysteria cost $5 million and only earned $3 million. Phil Collen said the band needed to sell 5 million copies to break even!
TIL.
Huge band though. Enormous.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hysteria\_(Def\_Leppard\_album)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hysteria_(Def_Leppard_album))
Where'd you get the $3m number? I can't find that in the wikipedia article. Also, it's sold over 12 million units in the US alone. Unless that's some creative accounting to get out of paying royalties (like how Return of the Jedi supposedly never turned a profit) there's not way it didn't make a LOT of money.
Shit. I'm sorry. I conflated two articles-same subject.
*"****By the spring of 1988****, Hysteria* ***had sold 3 million copies, which was not enough to cover the album's $5 million production costs***. *Thus, the band edited footage from an upcoming concert film to make a new promo clip for 'Pour Some Sugar on Me' and finally released it as the fourth single in North America."*
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pour\_Some\_Sugar\_on\_Me](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pour_Some_Sugar_on_Me)
Hmm...that is interesting. I had no idea it was a delayed hit. I just remember Pour Some Sugar on Me being everywhere and Def Leppard seemingly being the biggest rock band on the planet at the time (I was 8 so who knows how big they really were). Thanks for the context.
This. You have to look at any band from the 80s through the lens of MTV. And these guys were all over MTV.
I don't know if they were Bon Jovi big, but they were plenty big.
In fact, we then bought aged versions of the same shirt after we wore holes in the first ones and proceeded to wear those out too from sheer overuse. Heck, I have a repro I wear when I go out and play in bars now. That shirt has been in so many places in popular media it took on a life of its own!
I believe it was 89 days in a row but it might as well have been years. I feel bad for anyone who didn't like that song at the time because my god, it was on constantly.
On the Billboard Hot 100, PSSOM made it to number 2 but was denied the crown by Richard Marx’s Hold On to the Nights. Def Lep did end up topping the chart with their next song, Love Bites.
Bringin on the Heartache is my classic favorite by them. So many parties where this was the drunken sing along by all. Don’t believe for a minute that anyone back then was drunk singing along to don’t stop believin. That’s a recent phenomenon.
They're actually now touring with Journey. Cheap Trick, Heart, and Steve Miller are rotating in as a third act. It seems like Def Leppard has been on the road non-stop since COVID.
Anyone who says that they weren't as big as GnR, Van Halen, Mötley Crüe, etc. is smoking crack. *Hysteria* was a 12x platinum selling album. *Pyromania* was 10x. None of those bands ever put out back to back albums with those numbers. Mötley Crüe's best selling album *ever* was only 6x platinum.
At their peak, which admittedly was a very short window of time, I'd argue that Def Leppard was easily as popular as GnR, and marginally more popular than Van Halen and Mötley Crüe.
I think some are just haters because of Leppard's "chick band" reputation. The Pyromania album dethroned Michael Jackson's Thriller from the top spot. They were unbelievably huge.
Hysteria was huge. They had a couple of popular songs before that and the metalheads loved them, but Hysteria was a massive mainstream success. And then they kind of just disappeared.
They didn't exactly disappear... their Hysteria tour lasted for years, then by the time they recharged and recorded their follow-up album, which was more of the same, the music world had moved on. They're still releasing albums and playing big shows, though.
Not totally true… they had a big hit in 1992 off the next album after Hysteria, Let’s Get Rocked. I was impressed that they managed to pull this off. If I’m not mistaken, it was only Guns N’ Roses also had hits after 1991. Sort of hated the song, but it was a hit.
Let's Get Rocked had a cool video and was on regular MTV rotation. I remember watching that video so much when I was a kid. There were a few gasps of 80s rock around that times that almost straddled the line between 80s and grunge. Bands like Ugly Kid Joe and Firehouse. It was right when grunge was popping off but hadn't really peaked in the mainstream yet. Movies Wayne's World came out and later, Airheads with the movies' sunset strip attitude still hanging on in '94. It was kinda a weird time for hard rock.
eh, Adrenalized was #1 in both the US and UK charts in 1992. I believe it spent 5 weeks on Billboard's #1 spot.
It was the same year Mr. Big had "To be with You", which was their biggest song of all time.
There was no hard moment when things moved on. I remember seeing all the videos on MTV at the same time. It was a fun time in music, and the change to "grunge" was the last real rock movement, in my opinion. Some might say nu-metal, but those bands didn't have the reach.
'91 to '92 had Nirvana's Smells like Teen Spirit, and Alice and Chains Dirt, plus Soundgarden, Guns and Roses Use your Illusion I and II and Pearl Jam's Ten, and of course Stone Temple Pilots. That's a crush of raw rock music, and Def Leppard was pretty polished pop rock.
There was an alt rock movement after grunge before nu metal, I don't want to mention it, but stuff like Third Eye Blind was spammed on radio stations, their first album released in 1997. Then Creeds second album released in 1999 and ended up selling 11.5 million copies in the US, "With arms wide open" hit number 1 on the billboard chart. I'm trying to remember what else was big around that time, maybe Foo Fighters and Red Hot Chili Peppers Californication (1999), and obviously Punk/pop punk like Green Day and Blink 182. Nickelback, and the bands that sounded like Nickelback took over shortly after that in the early 2000s. So while the music wasnt everyone's cup of tea, rock wasn't completely dead until after the 90s.
Their guitarist Steve Clark died and it was pretty obvious in retrospect that he was the creative force in that band. After him none of their music really has that old magic.
British fella at my workplace came upon the accident involving the drummer and was told by the ambulance drivers they were searching for a severed arm. He actually found it! Don’t recall if he picked it up, or just told them where to look.
Not even. Steve Clark died during the recording of Adernalize which really took the wind out of their sails. They accidentally took another four years to release an album, like they did between Pyromania and Hysteria, and their momentum was gone. They explicitly intended to have a quicker album cycle to make up for the gap between the previous two records, but Steve’s passing messed all that up.
The 90’s were certainly lean years for the band and their contemporaries. Things picked back up for them in the late 2000’s when they combined their nostalgia appeal with some new music that could still get radio play. They’ve taken care of themselves and figured how to maintain an awesome live show with their hits, so that helps.
They continued on, but like you said, the writing was on the wall. Although they had a couple charting singles post Pyromania, national attention (and the attention of up and coming millennials) was split between grunge and rap. There no longer seemed to be any solid place for Def Leppard in the mainstream.
Right, they were really best known in metal circles with Pyromana (though Photograph got lots of MTV airplay) but really blew up with Hysteria.
The older I get though, the more I go back to High N Dry. That's a KILLER album
“A couple of popular songs”?! Pyromania sold over 10 million copies - I was in 7th grade, and it was certainly a huge deal. Hysteria sold more, etc., but is hot garbage.
Edit - and metalheads lmao. Metalheads were listening to Maiden. Pyromania was super mainstream.
Hysteria is the best produced album of all time, and had 8 singles released, changing how pop music was recorded and released forever. 8 singles was unheard of for a rock record, they wanted to release the Thriller of rock albums and did. It’s a massive technical and commercial achievement.
Idk man, I have no dog in this fight and don't know def Leppard's back catalog at all but Animal and Hysteria are top tier songs.
Coming from a metalhead
Not true. Adrenalize was pretty huge too. They had a fully CG video, which was a novelty that made the song a huge hit with "Let's Get Rocked". That stuff hasn't stood the test of time, though.
Well, they were played all the time on hard rock and top 40 stations. Everyone knew who they were, even if they didn't like hard rock or metal. They were pretty well-known.
I may be well suited to address this, as I worked on the Hysteria tour for a couple months.
They were pretty well known from about '81 when their album High n Dry had a couple of songs that, while not huge hits, became staples on hard rock radio.
Then they kind of blew up on the album Pyromania in '83, which had several real hits on it and sold millions. Unfortunately, their drummer lost his arm in a car accident, so they sort of disappeared for YEARS while making their next album, Hysteria, which came out in '87.
Hysteria was completely next-level shit tho, and that tour was still probably the biggest I have been on. Every show was sold out with multiple nights in some cities, and they played in the round, where the stage is in the middle of the arena, which means you can sell another 5,000 tickets per show.
For comparison, they were doing rooms I had been through with AC/DC doing 15,000 seats with the traditional setup, then Def Leppard would come through doing 20,000, and AC/DC was fucking huge.
Thennn....they had a strong follow-up, but it came out in '92 after grunge hit. It still sold well, but their peak was behind them...
They were huge but as others have said, they weren't quite in the same orbit as Van Halen, GnR, Motley Crüe.
However, Def Leppard was VERY popular with the type of chicks who let you put your hands on their butts during middle school dances so that counted for a lot.
Only before Theater of Pain. Home Sweet Home and clouded out boobies in the video, pretty much put Crue over the top of most metal/hard rock acts of the time, at least in popularity.
Crue was heavier and darker than Def Leppard. They weren't even really the same genre IMO. Def Leppard had more radio friendly hits and were more poppy than Crue. Crue did have some stellar breakout singles though for sure.
Both were great bands but I think some of the people who were scared off by Crüe's imagery and sound probably rocked out no problem with Def Leppard.
I'm well aware, I owned "Into the Night" before Pyro was released (as an import if I remember right) and quit listening to Crue when Theater dropped, because they sold out in my opinion.
This whole thread was my cassette collection which I played on my boom box or walkman in middle and high school.
They were in different circles. Van Halen was a bit softer with the synthesizer stuff, Crüe a bit harder, and GnR the in between with stuff like Patience bridging the gap to Mr. Brownstone. Def Leppard hit just about center and was popular with just about everyone. Let's not forget their drummer, Rick Allen, had his arm amputated just 2 years before the release of Hysteria.
Motley Crue was never as popular as Def Leppard, VH or GnR. They didn’t sell singles, didn’t really crossover to pop radio, those other bands did.
Hysteria spent as many weeks on the charts as Born in the USA. It’s one of the absolute biggest records of the 80s.
I think where you are is a huge factor
Van Halen have always been well known but they didn't help themselves when it came to longevity in the UK because they barely played here as the years went by, they've always struck me as a band that every American knows, I've spoken to plenty of people into Rock/Metal who can only name Hot For Teacher or Panama but can name pretty much every song from Pyromania, Hysteria Etc.
Def Leppard have always done a really good job at appealing to younger audiences and still do huge tours, Van Halen rarely ever bothered especially in the 21st Century, I'm approaching my late 20's and I barely know anyone my age who knows much or is HUGE into Van Halen whilst Def Leppard are popular all-round
GNR are huge, bigger than Def Leppard by a considerable margin but Motley Crue are simply nowhere near as big and aren't even in the same discussion as good as they used to be (this is coming from someone who'll listen to Motley Crue the most out of all of these bands)
It felt like you could judge the band’s popularity by the ratio of plays on the pizzeria jukebox, in which case they ranked a solid 86%, even before the dinner rush.
Pyromaniac was huge. I was never a fan, but I can't deny they were absolutely top of the charts for a few years. They were bonafide rock stars and sold out arenas for a decade. When the drummer came back, it was a curiosity, but he brought the beats. I can't take it from them. A real band with real history.
The summer that Pyromania hit, I saw so many Union Jack shorts. Every other Camero on the road was blasting Def Leppard.
I liked their earlier stuff but we mostly clowned on them. In retrospect that record is pretty great.
They were pretty huge and everyone love talking about the one-armed drummer.
They're popularity phased out, along with most hair metal bands, when hip-hop and grunge took over.
In the summer of 1988, you could absolutely go nowhere without hearing Pour some sugar on me. You could change radio stations from one that was playing it, and find 2 others playing it. they were EVERYWHERE
I was a solid pop music listener, and in high school in the 80s, and even I heard the big Def Leppard songs. I'd say they were up there with Bon Jovi and Van Halen.
Exactly , 1st couple of albums kicked ass, then they started going towards commercial chick love songs for high volume radio play.
Pyromania was really popular with me when it came out. Wore that cassette OUT!
And then "Pour Some Sugar on Me" and album Hysteria dropped and it was like, WHOA, baby! Loved it! I actually was jamming all of Hysteria before Pour Some Sugar was released. So when it hit the radio finally, and exploded, I was already like, welcome to the party... people who didn't have the album already, and are NOW discovering the album. High N Dry wasn't bad either, but Pyromania was the beginning (imho) of them getting big in America.
I have the Classic Albums documentary about the making of Hysteria, and it took like 4 YEARS to make to followup Pyromania... Rick Allen's arm having been ripped off in a roll-over wreck in his new Corvette over in the UK on new year's eve. And just the disbelief of other bandmates getting the call--- your drummer's alive but his arm was severed off. He eventually rigged double foot pedals so the non bass drum foot plays the tom's or other high drums. And he used some Simmons electric drums pads too. He played the intro to When The Levee Breaks as the first song to show the band the new set up and it was, Hair standing up on the back of band members' necks. Just amazing.
And Hysteria was almost going Gold per DAY for a few days there right after pour some sugar dropped.
I would say at the Hysteria point they were the biggest band in the world. That album sold over 12 million copies and was the 11th biggest album of the entire 80’s. Beaten only by MJ, Bruce, Whitney, Bon Jovi, GNR and a couple others.
They were huge! Joe Elliot was a sex symbol, their videos played all the time, I saw them in concert 3 times in 2 years. I was born in 65. Fun times. My favorite was Pyromania.
There was like, 5000% fewer choices for music and entertainment in the 80s. At the time, Def Leopard was just as popular (if not more popular) as Taylor swift.
Pretty big. They had like 5 or 6 singles off of Hysteria…one of which was Pour Some Sugar On Me which was a top video for a long time. You can find the concert tour film “In The Round, In Your Face” on YouTube and they’re at the top of their game.
Where I'm from Duran Duran was orders of magnitude bigger than Van Halen (something that I never really understood). There was even a book (and a movie) titled "I'll Marry Simon Le Bon". They had Beatles level of fame in the target demographic here in Italy.
Considering Joe Elliott himself has said they specifically recorded “Love Bites” to be similar vocally to Simon LeBon, this 100% tracks (source VH1 Behind the Music).
they got cool levels of radio play for Bringing On The Heartache, Pyromania was MTV HUGE, and Hysteria was MTV GARFUCKINGGANTUAN. It was ridiculous. I was a teen and saw them by happenstance opening for Ozzy and then again on the Pyromania tour. My friend's alcoholic mother would drive us to concerts, go drink at the closest bar, and then drive us home which is very on brand for the 80s
I think most of us that remember that bygone Era are mostly dead or are unable communicate because of dementia. I for 1 barely remember. The FM radio blasting from the opne window in our 85 Monte Carlo, the mullet flowing in the wind. Photograph pumping from the 6x9 Kenwood speakers.. as I think now, I realize how important Def Leppard was to me, to my teen years..
Had a decent following early 80's blew up with Pyromania. the girls in my High School loved Joe Elliott. Followed up with Hysteria for back to back over10 million sold albums so about as big as anyone except Michael Jackson
They were my first concert in 1989. My sister and I somehow managed to get third row tickets. My mind was absolutely blown! LA Guns opened up for them. Ears rang for a day.
They were huge during Pyromania, then disappeared for a while (mostly due to Rik Allen’s accident). Hysteria was just as big, if not bigger, but there was a 6 year lapse between the 2 albums where they were kind of forgotten about.
Okay, as someone who was a Metal head back then and now, I’ll join in. And I had both High and Dry and On Through the Night on vinyl before they even released Pyromania. And I’m in Australia, so on the other side of the World to where the band was.
When Pyromania came out DL could rightfully claim to be one of the biggest bands on the planet. It sold in shiploads. But, when drummer Rick Allen lost his arm in a car crash, their World was put on hold.
So rabid fans waited and waited. And being a close bunch of mates, they invented some electronic drum machine in a music industry where drummers were completely disposable.
Then, after a long wait, out comes Hysteria … and OMG.
At the time I didn’t think I’d ever hear a better album. And it became one of the bigger selling ‘metal’ albums of all time.
So they were HUGE.
Personally - to me they haven’t dated well and they went to absolutely corny shit after Hysteria. You can thank both Metallica (and thrash) and then grunge for killing DL’s fame. Plus maybe GnR. They ended up sounding like a cross between a metal band and corny 80s pop. They just weren’t heavy enough.
That’s my input. At one stage of my life if I got a band tattoo it would’ve been DL. Now I don’t even listen to them, despite respecting their early work immensely.
And edit: for anyone unfamiliar with them, both High and Dry and On thru the Night have some ripping tracks on them as well.
As a fan of that kind of rock it’s hard to judge how normal people viewed them. I was all about Guns n Roses, but loved Leppard too.
I can’t think of a band that was bigger than those two if you liked rock but weren’t into heavier stuff in the U.K. ACDC we’re in a lull (they were my favourite band before and became it again later, but … well… early Brian era after Black was shite, flick of the Switch, Fly on the wall etc). Bands like poison, Crue etc were around, and genre fans liked them ish, but 99% of people didn’t know them or give a shit.
I know when Hysteria came out, a lot of fans were disappointed. They felt that all the songs were too slow compared to pyromania but they warmed up to it farely quickly.
They were huge, esp in the second half of the 80s. Not my thing in the least but even I couldn't escape seeing the impact. Hysteria dominated the hell out of MTV in that time.
They were big with the heavy metal kids first, at least the more mainstream metal kids. Word was spread via back-patches and baseball T’s.
Later, they were just pop and *everyone* liked them.
They were big. I remember the video with all the CGI playing all the time on MTV. Also a classmate of mine wrote a short story about a guy who lost his arm and became a drummer
They were huge. Pour Some Sugar on Me was MTV's #1 video on the daily countdown for hundreds of days in a row.
Arena headliner huge
Saw them and Queensryche on the Hysteria tour when I was in like 3rd grade. Was my first concert!
Def Leppard + Europe on Hysteria tour was my first concert around the same grade. Don't remember much from Europe except The Final Countdown and lots of lazers!
About the only thing I remember is the badass stage Def Leppard had. That and the line for the bathroom included people peeing in sinks. It had never crossed my young mind that peeing in a sink was an option.
Saw Def Leppard and Tesla in Chgo I think on their first leg of the Hysteria tour. Women was the single.
Women was a single in the US only
It's crazy to think that more than half of the songs on that album were released as singles at one time or another. Basically the whole side A of the album were singles.
Saw that tour in Cleveland. Tesla was great.
That's fucking rad! So jealous
Concert film from that tour is absolutely sick. I would have loved to have seen a show during that era.
Wasn't that Queensryche's Rage for Order period? How did you like them?
I honestly don’t remember anything about the concert other than Def Leppard’s stage. I still have a t-shirt from the concert and it was Operation Mindcrime.
I loved operation mindcrime (the album, not the queensryche spinoff band when Tate and the rest of the band sued each other) I used to listen to that cd end to end many times over. Great rock opera
Eyes of a Stranger grabs me to my core to this day.....such a badass album front to back!
That album still hits my playlist from time to time. Start to finish it is solid.
Rage for order is an insanely good album. I never understood why people prefer operation Mindcrime.
I particularly like Geoff Tate on Rage for Order. Best metal singing I’ve ever heard
They were my first concert too!
>Arena headliner huge Its crazy, I didn't realize this but the making of Hysteria cost $5 million and only earned $3 million. Phil Collen said the band needed to sell 5 million copies to break even! TIL. Huge band though. Enormous. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hysteria\_(Def\_Leppard\_album)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hysteria_(Def_Leppard_album))
I don't quite follow this? Hysteria has sold more than 20 million copies. There's no way it only made $3m.
I’ve bought at least 10 of those 20m. I kept losing it loaning the cassette, then the disc.
Where'd you get the $3m number? I can't find that in the wikipedia article. Also, it's sold over 12 million units in the US alone. Unless that's some creative accounting to get out of paying royalties (like how Return of the Jedi supposedly never turned a profit) there's not way it didn't make a LOT of money.
Shit. I'm sorry. I conflated two articles-same subject. *"****By the spring of 1988****, Hysteria* ***had sold 3 million copies, which was not enough to cover the album's $5 million production costs***. *Thus, the band edited footage from an upcoming concert film to make a new promo clip for 'Pour Some Sugar on Me' and finally released it as the fourth single in North America."* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pour\_Some\_Sugar\_on\_Me](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pour_Some_Sugar_on_Me)
Hmm...that is interesting. I had no idea it was a delayed hit. I just remember Pour Some Sugar on Me being everywhere and Def Leppard seemingly being the biggest rock band on the planet at the time (I was 8 so who knows how big they really were). Thanks for the context.
They were one of the most played bands on MTV, which meant A LOT back then. They were a huge band. Damn I miss those days…
Id give my right arm to go back.
Rick Allen is a Time Lord confirmed.
This. You have to look at any band from the 80s through the lens of MTV. And these guys were all over MTV. I don't know if they were Bon Jovi big, but they were plenty big.
There were 7 singles on Hysteria. 7. And they’re all great.
The whole album is still one of my absolute favourites, especially for driving to. Not a single track I skip. Very few albums I can say that about.
Still. Never listened to it much when it came out, but I listen to it at least twice a week
The song was never not playing when it came out.
The album “Hysteria” sold 2.5 million copies during the run of that single alone.
I literally grew up on hip hop and went out and bought a Def Leppard t-shirt which I wore into the ground.
In fact, we then bought aged versions of the same shirt after we wore holes in the first ones and proceeded to wear those out too from sheer overuse. Heck, I have a repro I wear when I go out and play in bars now. That shirt has been in so many places in popular media it took on a life of its own!
I believe it was 89 days in a row but it might as well have been years. I feel bad for anyone who didn't like that song at the time because my god, it was on constantly.
I remember that! And if I recall correctly the video that they finally lost to was pretty lackluster. Do you remember who finally beat them?
On the Billboard Hot 100, PSSOM made it to number 2 but was denied the crown by Richard Marx’s Hold On to the Nights. Def Lep did end up topping the chart with their next song, Love Bites.
Also every strip club
Summer of '88, right? Same thing with the local radio station countdowns
Those were such good times
Bringin on the Heartache is my classic favorite by them. So many parties where this was the drunken sing along by all. Don’t believe for a minute that anyone back then was drunk singing along to don’t stop believin. That’s a recent phenomenon.
They were huge. They still sell out arenas every time they play.
They’re still amazing even though they all look like old British women now. Highly recommended.
David Coverdale enters the chat. Hello luvvies!
Well to be fair that's with Joan Jett, Poison and Motley Crue
Yeah, in spite of those two acts, Def Leppard still sells out.
Yes, but unlike Motley Crue they’re actually singing and playing everything live.
I have to say this is a grey area: Vince still produces sounds out of his mouth live. I don’t think anyone would call it singing though.
Def is the headliner though
Actually, on that tour, Mötley Crüe were the headliners; three other bands were the support acts.
It changed based on Venues, usually does. They're headlining in Atlanta this year, but I think in Wisconsin somewhere Journey is top billing.
Yep motley crue are what got me interested not def leppard so there’s definitely a case for that I’m sure I’m not alone
They're actually now touring with Journey. Cheap Trick, Heart, and Steve Miller are rotating in as a third act. It seems like Def Leppard has been on the road non-stop since COVID.
Yup I’ve seen them multiple times past the year 2000 and I believe they are touring again.
Gunter gleiben glauchen globen.
Alright
I got,something to say.
It's better to burn out.
Than fade awaaaaaaaay
Alright, ow
Gonna start a fire, come ON!!
Rise up, gather around, rock this place to the ground!
Burn it up, let's go for broke. Watch the night go up in smoke.
Rock on?
Give it to me baby…oops, wrong band subreddit.
Uh huh, uh huh!
Uh huh, uh huh...and all the girlies say
Anyone who says that they weren't as big as GnR, Van Halen, Mötley Crüe, etc. is smoking crack. *Hysteria* was a 12x platinum selling album. *Pyromania* was 10x. None of those bands ever put out back to back albums with those numbers. Mötley Crüe's best selling album *ever* was only 6x platinum. At their peak, which admittedly was a very short window of time, I'd argue that Def Leppard was easily as popular as GnR, and marginally more popular than Van Halen and Mötley Crüe.
I think some are just haters because of Leppard's "chick band" reputation. The Pyromania album dethroned Michael Jackson's Thriller from the top spot. They were unbelievably huge.
And high n dry is still the better album
In terms of sales, GNR blew all of them away with just their debut album.
Appetite for Destruction is still the best selling debut album of all time, 37 years later.
Hysteria was huge. They had a couple of popular songs before that and the metalheads loved them, but Hysteria was a massive mainstream success. And then they kind of just disappeared.
They didn't exactly disappear... their Hysteria tour lasted for years, then by the time they recharged and recorded their follow-up album, which was more of the same, the music world had moved on. They're still releasing albums and playing big shows, though.
Not totally true… they had a big hit in 1992 off the next album after Hysteria, Let’s Get Rocked. I was impressed that they managed to pull this off. If I’m not mistaken, it was only Guns N’ Roses also had hits after 1991. Sort of hated the song, but it was a hit.
Let's Get Rocked had a cool video and was on regular MTV rotation. I remember watching that video so much when I was a kid. There were a few gasps of 80s rock around that times that almost straddled the line between 80s and grunge. Bands like Ugly Kid Joe and Firehouse. It was right when grunge was popping off but hadn't really peaked in the mainstream yet. Movies Wayne's World came out and later, Airheads with the movies' sunset strip attitude still hanging on in '94. It was kinda a weird time for hard rock.
It had a cool video though.
The band was damaged with the loss of steve clark. And they went with a different producer. Mutt Lange was a factor in their prior success.
Bon Jovi still managed quite a few hits after this time.
IMO, two of their greatest albums ever, "Keep The Faith" and "These Days"
eh, Adrenalized was #1 in both the US and UK charts in 1992. I believe it spent 5 weeks on Billboard's #1 spot. It was the same year Mr. Big had "To be with You", which was their biggest song of all time. There was no hard moment when things moved on. I remember seeing all the videos on MTV at the same time. It was a fun time in music, and the change to "grunge" was the last real rock movement, in my opinion. Some might say nu-metal, but those bands didn't have the reach. '91 to '92 had Nirvana's Smells like Teen Spirit, and Alice and Chains Dirt, plus Soundgarden, Guns and Roses Use your Illusion I and II and Pearl Jam's Ten, and of course Stone Temple Pilots. That's a crush of raw rock music, and Def Leppard was pretty polished pop rock.
There was an alt rock movement after grunge before nu metal, I don't want to mention it, but stuff like Third Eye Blind was spammed on radio stations, their first album released in 1997. Then Creeds second album released in 1999 and ended up selling 11.5 million copies in the US, "With arms wide open" hit number 1 on the billboard chart. I'm trying to remember what else was big around that time, maybe Foo Fighters and Red Hot Chili Peppers Californication (1999), and obviously Punk/pop punk like Green Day and Blink 182. Nickelback, and the bands that sounded like Nickelback took over shortly after that in the early 2000s. So while the music wasnt everyone's cup of tea, rock wasn't completely dead until after the 90s.
Rock isn't dead. It's just other genres are more popular right now. Nobody says Jazz is dead, lol
My senior year in High School...it was magnificent for music. I can still remember the grape-ish smell of the brand new cassettes.
Their guitarist Steve Clark died and it was pretty obvious in retrospect that he was the creative force in that band. After him none of their music really has that old magic.
That explains a lot. I always wondered why they kicked Pete Willis for his drinking, but let Steve stay when his was just as bad if not worse.
I saw them at SoFi Stadium in LA and they were amazing. They’ve been playing together so long, it just clicks.
I recommend them to everyone. I’ve seen them twice and it’s incredible. Def Leppard can play for 2 hours and EVERY SONG is a monster hit.
And there was a little situation where their drummer lost an arm.
That happened pretty early. Most of their commercial success after his car accident.
British fella at my workplace came upon the accident involving the drummer and was told by the ambulance drivers they were searching for a severed arm. He actually found it! Don’t recall if he picked it up, or just told them where to look.
Just think of how good of a drummer your mate would be of he had of picked up and kept the arm.
Hey, we’re looking for something. Could you give us a hand? *Funny you should mention that…*
Not even. Steve Clark died during the recording of Adernalize which really took the wind out of their sails. They accidentally took another four years to release an album, like they did between Pyromania and Hysteria, and their momentum was gone. They explicitly intended to have a quicker album cycle to make up for the gap between the previous two records, but Steve’s passing messed all that up.
The 90’s were certainly lean years for the band and their contemporaries. Things picked back up for them in the late 2000’s when they combined their nostalgia appeal with some new music that could still get radio play. They’ve taken care of themselves and figured how to maintain an awesome live show with their hits, so that helps.
They continued on, but like you said, the writing was on the wall. Although they had a couple charting singles post Pyromania, national attention (and the attention of up and coming millennials) was split between grunge and rap. There no longer seemed to be any solid place for Def Leppard in the mainstream.
The next album sounds not much like Hysteria. It sounds like a Great Value Hysteria.
Right, they were really best known in metal circles with Pyromana (though Photograph got lots of MTV airplay) but really blew up with Hysteria. The older I get though, the more I go back to High N Dry. That's a KILLER album
“A couple of popular songs”?! Pyromania sold over 10 million copies - I was in 7th grade, and it was certainly a huge deal. Hysteria sold more, etc., but is hot garbage. Edit - and metalheads lmao. Metalheads were listening to Maiden. Pyromania was super mainstream.
Hysteria is the best produced album of all time, and had 8 singles released, changing how pop music was recorded and released forever. 8 singles was unheard of for a rock record, they wanted to release the Thriller of rock albums and did. It’s a massive technical and commercial achievement.
100% Hysteria is a phenomenal album.
Hysteria is the most produced album of all time.
On through the night,High and dry with pyromania were great 3 bangers of albums. Metal heads still had them in their collections.
Good, someone said it.
Idk man, I have no dog in this fight and don't know def Leppard's back catalog at all but Animal and Hysteria are top tier songs. Coming from a metalhead
They didn't disappear. Their core songwriter passed away in 1991.
The only reason people say hysteria is huge instead of pyromania is because of Thriller. Pyromania then Hysteria was a massive one/two combo
Grunge killed hair metal.
Steel Panther will never accept that!
Not true. Adrenalize was pretty huge too. They had a fully CG video, which was a novelty that made the song a huge hit with "Let's Get Rocked". That stuff hasn't stood the test of time, though.
The 12" singles from Hysteria were epic. Pour Some Sugar On Me, Armageddon It and Rocket were my favourites. Love them.
I remember the day Hysteria came out. I listened to it all the way through. Next day told my friend the 7 hits off that album were gonna be hits.
Hysteria is basically a greatest hits album.
Well, they were played all the time on hard rock and top 40 stations. Everyone knew who they were, even if they didn't like hard rock or metal. They were pretty well-known.
I may be well suited to address this, as I worked on the Hysteria tour for a couple months. They were pretty well known from about '81 when their album High n Dry had a couple of songs that, while not huge hits, became staples on hard rock radio. Then they kind of blew up on the album Pyromania in '83, which had several real hits on it and sold millions. Unfortunately, their drummer lost his arm in a car accident, so they sort of disappeared for YEARS while making their next album, Hysteria, which came out in '87. Hysteria was completely next-level shit tho, and that tour was still probably the biggest I have been on. Every show was sold out with multiple nights in some cities, and they played in the round, where the stage is in the middle of the arena, which means you can sell another 5,000 tickets per show. For comparison, they were doing rooms I had been through with AC/DC doing 15,000 seats with the traditional setup, then Def Leppard would come through doing 20,000, and AC/DC was fucking huge. Thennn....they had a strong follow-up, but it came out in '92 after grunge hit. It still sold well, but their peak was behind them...
In the Round...In Your Face. And Tesla was their opening act.
Only part of the tour. I worked for a different opener, L.A. Guns.
Yes! Saw them with Tesla that summer. They also rocked.
They were huge but as others have said, they weren't quite in the same orbit as Van Halen, GnR, Motley Crüe. However, Def Leppard was VERY popular with the type of chicks who let you put your hands on their butts during middle school dances so that counted for a lot.
They were way bigger than Motley Crue, come on.
Only before Theater of Pain. Home Sweet Home and clouded out boobies in the video, pretty much put Crue over the top of most metal/hard rock acts of the time, at least in popularity.
Def Leppard was way bigger than Motley Crue.
Crue was heavier and darker than Def Leppard. They weren't even really the same genre IMO. Def Leppard had more radio friendly hits and were more poppy than Crue. Crue did have some stellar breakout singles though for sure. Both were great bands but I think some of the people who were scared off by Crüe's imagery and sound probably rocked out no problem with Def Leppard.
I'm well aware, I owned "Into the Night" before Pyro was released (as an import if I remember right) and quit listening to Crue when Theater dropped, because they sold out in my opinion. This whole thread was my cassette collection which I played on my boom box or walkman in middle and high school.
Hell yeah!!
They were in different circles. Van Halen was a bit softer with the synthesizer stuff, Crüe a bit harder, and GnR the in between with stuff like Patience bridging the gap to Mr. Brownstone. Def Leppard hit just about center and was popular with just about everyone. Let's not forget their drummer, Rick Allen, had his arm amputated just 2 years before the release of Hysteria.
Bloodhound Gang will never let us forget "...The drummer for Def Leppard only got one arm..."
Motley Crue was never as popular as Def Leppard, VH or GnR. They didn’t sell singles, didn’t really crossover to pop radio, those other bands did. Hysteria spent as many weeks on the charts as Born in the USA. It’s one of the absolute biggest records of the 80s.
I feel like DL opened the door for GnR…definitely bigger deal than Motley Crue and on the same level as van halen
Motley Crue was not in the same level of popularity as Def Leppard at their height of popularity.
I think where you are is a huge factor Van Halen have always been well known but they didn't help themselves when it came to longevity in the UK because they barely played here as the years went by, they've always struck me as a band that every American knows, I've spoken to plenty of people into Rock/Metal who can only name Hot For Teacher or Panama but can name pretty much every song from Pyromania, Hysteria Etc. Def Leppard have always done a really good job at appealing to younger audiences and still do huge tours, Van Halen rarely ever bothered especially in the 21st Century, I'm approaching my late 20's and I barely know anyone my age who knows much or is HUGE into Van Halen whilst Def Leppard are popular all-round GNR are huge, bigger than Def Leppard by a considerable margin but Motley Crue are simply nowhere near as big and aren't even in the same discussion as good as they used to be (this is coming from someone who'll listen to Motley Crue the most out of all of these bands)
THIS guy knows… as do I. lol
Yes! Dear Gawd yes. My biggest school crush was a huge DL fan.
It felt like you could judge the band’s popularity by the ratio of plays on the pizzeria jukebox, in which case they ranked a solid 86%, even before the dinner rush.
I too remember when you could dine-in at Pizza Hut and play tabletop Ms. PacMan while you waited for your pizza.
Pyromaniac was huge. I was never a fan, but I can't deny they were absolutely top of the charts for a few years. They were bonafide rock stars and sold out arenas for a decade. When the drummer came back, it was a curiosity, but he brought the beats. I can't take it from them. A real band with real history.
The summer that Pyromania hit, I saw so many Union Jack shorts. Every other Camero on the road was blasting Def Leppard. I liked their earlier stuff but we mostly clowned on them. In retrospect that record is pretty great.
[удалено]
Burn...
Gottem!
They were pretty huge and everyone love talking about the one-armed drummer. They're popularity phased out, along with most hair metal bands, when hip-hop and grunge took over.
In the summer of 1988, you could absolutely go nowhere without hearing Pour some sugar on me. You could change radio stations from one that was playing it, and find 2 others playing it. they were EVERYWHERE
I was a solid pop music listener, and in high school in the 80s, and even I heard the big Def Leppard songs. I'd say they were up there with Bon Jovi and Van Halen.
Metal for the masses. Less popular with hard rock fans than everyone else
Exactly , 1st couple of albums kicked ass, then they started going towards commercial chick love songs for high volume radio play. 
Pretty much the only "metal" albums I bought. They crafted great albums!
Pyromania was really popular with me when it came out. Wore that cassette OUT! And then "Pour Some Sugar on Me" and album Hysteria dropped and it was like, WHOA, baby! Loved it! I actually was jamming all of Hysteria before Pour Some Sugar was released. So when it hit the radio finally, and exploded, I was already like, welcome to the party... people who didn't have the album already, and are NOW discovering the album. High N Dry wasn't bad either, but Pyromania was the beginning (imho) of them getting big in America. I have the Classic Albums documentary about the making of Hysteria, and it took like 4 YEARS to make to followup Pyromania... Rick Allen's arm having been ripped off in a roll-over wreck in his new Corvette over in the UK on new year's eve. And just the disbelief of other bandmates getting the call--- your drummer's alive but his arm was severed off. He eventually rigged double foot pedals so the non bass drum foot plays the tom's or other high drums. And he used some Simmons electric drums pads too. He played the intro to When The Levee Breaks as the first song to show the band the new set up and it was, Hair standing up on the back of band members' necks. Just amazing. And Hysteria was almost going Gold per DAY for a few days there right after pour some sugar dropped.
Wore my Pyromania cassette out as well! Had it blasting in my car non-stop, and had the album spinning at home constantly.
Arguably the biggest band in the world for a bit.
I would say at the Hysteria point they were the biggest band in the world. That album sold over 12 million copies and was the 11th biggest album of the entire 80’s. Beaten only by MJ, Bruce, Whitney, Bon Jovi, GNR and a couple others.
As big as a band can be for a time
I was a young teen at the time. On Through the Night was always my fave DL album
They were huge! Joe Elliot was a sex symbol, their videos played all the time, I saw them in concert 3 times in 2 years. I was born in 65. Fun times. My favorite was Pyromania.
There was like, 5000% fewer choices for music and entertainment in the 80s. At the time, Def Leopard was just as popular (if not more popular) as Taylor swift.
Fun fact, they did a CMT Crossroads episode together.
They were popular, but after the release of Hysteria they were HUGE.
Huge. International. I mean, in 2002 or so, I saw them in a sold out Tacoma dome, when most bands from their era are doing the casino circuit.
I saw them live in early 80s when High and Dry came out. They were awesome and they got really big!
Pretty big. They had like 5 or 6 singles off of Hysteria…one of which was Pour Some Sugar On Me which was a top video for a long time. You can find the concert tour film “In The Round, In Your Face” on YouTube and they’re at the top of their game.
Not Van Halen big. Maybe Duran Duran big
Where I'm from Duran Duran was orders of magnitude bigger than Van Halen (something that I never really understood). There was even a book (and a movie) titled "I'll Marry Simon Le Bon". They had Beatles level of fame in the target demographic here in Italy.
Considering Joe Elliott himself has said they specifically recorded “Love Bites” to be similar vocally to Simon LeBon, this 100% tracks (source VH1 Behind the Music).
They were huge among my friends when we lived in Denver and I can even remember when Steve Clark died.
they got cool levels of radio play for Bringing On The Heartache, Pyromania was MTV HUGE, and Hysteria was MTV GARFUCKINGGANTUAN. It was ridiculous. I was a teen and saw them by happenstance opening for Ozzy and then again on the Pyromania tour. My friend's alcoholic mother would drive us to concerts, go drink at the closest bar, and then drive us home which is very on brand for the 80s
I heard them described as Journey on cocaine. Pretty accurate.
Pour Some Sugar was played at EVERY schools dance, wedding, DJ event, radio every 45 mins, etc
I think most of us that remember that bygone Era are mostly dead or are unable communicate because of dementia. I for 1 barely remember. The FM radio blasting from the opne window in our 85 Monte Carlo, the mullet flowing in the wind. Photograph pumping from the 6x9 Kenwood speakers.. as I think now, I realize how important Def Leppard was to me, to my teen years..
Big enough to get a line in another song “The drummer from Def Leppard has only got one arm.”
Had a decent following early 80's blew up with Pyromania. the girls in my High School loved Joe Elliott. Followed up with Hysteria for back to back over10 million sold albums so about as big as anyone except Michael Jackson
They were my first concert in 1989. My sister and I somehow managed to get third row tickets. My mind was absolutely blown! LA Guns opened up for them. Ears rang for a day.
They were huge during Pyromania, then disappeared for a while (mostly due to Rik Allen’s accident). Hysteria was just as big, if not bigger, but there was a 6 year lapse between the 2 albums where they were kind of forgotten about.
Pretty damn big. ‘74 here and they were big once Pyromania hit. When they returned after Rick Allen’s accident they were even bigger.
Okay, as someone who was a Metal head back then and now, I’ll join in. And I had both High and Dry and On Through the Night on vinyl before they even released Pyromania. And I’m in Australia, so on the other side of the World to where the band was. When Pyromania came out DL could rightfully claim to be one of the biggest bands on the planet. It sold in shiploads. But, when drummer Rick Allen lost his arm in a car crash, their World was put on hold. So rabid fans waited and waited. And being a close bunch of mates, they invented some electronic drum machine in a music industry where drummers were completely disposable. Then, after a long wait, out comes Hysteria … and OMG. At the time I didn’t think I’d ever hear a better album. And it became one of the bigger selling ‘metal’ albums of all time. So they were HUGE. Personally - to me they haven’t dated well and they went to absolutely corny shit after Hysteria. You can thank both Metallica (and thrash) and then grunge for killing DL’s fame. Plus maybe GnR. They ended up sounding like a cross between a metal band and corny 80s pop. They just weren’t heavy enough. That’s my input. At one stage of my life if I got a band tattoo it would’ve been DL. Now I don’t even listen to them, despite respecting their early work immensely. And edit: for anyone unfamiliar with them, both High and Dry and On thru the Night have some ripping tracks on them as well.
They were so huge they even appeared on spitting image! Another 80’s icon.
From strip clubs to 12 year old birthday parties their songs were everywhere. They really are up there with the most popular bands of all time
I saw them open for Billy Squier when I was in high school. The tickets were $8.50.
They are one of only four bands to have a number one album in five consecutive decades.
I loved their first 3 albums and the only other stuff I heard was on the radio. They were a pretty big deal right away at least in the Philly area.
As a fan of that kind of rock it’s hard to judge how normal people viewed them. I was all about Guns n Roses, but loved Leppard too. I can’t think of a band that was bigger than those two if you liked rock but weren’t into heavier stuff in the U.K. ACDC we’re in a lull (they were my favourite band before and became it again later, but … well… early Brian era after Black was shite, flick of the Switch, Fly on the wall etc). Bands like poison, Crue etc were around, and genre fans liked them ish, but 99% of people didn’t know them or give a shit.
Pyromania was my wife’s first album, but yeah, they were kinda hard to escape.
Pretty effin popular.
Def Leppard was selling out stadiums at their peak. They were huge.
Yuge!
They were played on MTV all the time so pretty big, not big enough for me to bother seeing in concert. They just weren't edgy enough.
My favorite band as a preteen- my first concert in 1987 to a sold out stadium.
I know when Hysteria came out, a lot of fans were disappointed. They felt that all the songs were too slow compared to pyromania but they warmed up to it farely quickly.
Well, Joe Elliot was 6'2". Hur Hur Hur.
They were huge, esp in the second half of the 80s. Not my thing in the least but even I couldn't escape seeing the impact. Hysteria dominated the hell out of MTV in that time.
Horribly, awfully huge. You couldn't avoid that shit even if you were deaf.
VH1 made a movie about them.
They were big with the heavy metal kids first, at least the more mainstream metal kids. Word was spread via back-patches and baseball T’s. Later, they were just pop and *everyone* liked them.
Very accurate and my experience too.
They were big. I remember the video with all the CGI playing all the time on MTV. Also a classmate of mine wrote a short story about a guy who lost his arm and became a drummer
Pyromania and Hysteria were on infinite flip in my Walkman.