Review: British rockers Def Leppard enthral, and entertain adoring Adelaide audience
IT would be impossible to overstate just how big Def Leppard’s Hysteria was in 1987 — but even now, in 2018, the British rockers’ signature album still enthrals an adoring Adelaide crowd.
IT would be impossible to overstate just how big Def Leppard’s Hysteria was in 1987.
The fourth album from the British rockers sold more than 25 million copies, and spawned seven hit singles, including massive tracks like Pour Some Sugar On Me, Animal and Rocket.
Indeed, producer Mutt Lange set out with the express aim of making a hard rock version of Michael Jackson’s Thriller.
In other words, a record where every single track was a potential hit song. He pretty much succeeded.
So if you’re going to play a whole album live, from start to finish, then you could do a lot worse than choosing Hysteria.
Confession. First up we missed German rockers The Scorpions.
This wasn’t strictly our fault, because apparently if you want to get a tram to the Entertainment Centre now you have to collect ten golden coins, find a key, defeat a boss and free the princess. At least that’s what it felt like.
Also, literally nobody wants to catch a tram from Hindmarsh to the Botanic Garden at 11 o’clock at night.
Anyway, the general consensus was that they were very good.
So good in fact that one lucky punter who managed to get the band to sign his torso at the airport and rushed straight to the tattoo parlour to get the signatures inked forever.
Committed.
Anyway, Def Leppard. Their look often saw the band lumped in with 1980s hair metal, but they were leagues ahead of most poodle rock bands.
They managed to mix English glam rock with a touch of New Wave of British Heavy Metal and, yes, a pinch of hair metal to create a sound that was — is — uniquely theirs.
Their records were immaculately produced (some would argue they were overproduced, but hey — it was the eighties) and they could write a hook.
They could seriously write a hook.
All of this was evident from the first songs of last night’s show — Women, Rocket and Animal. Many of Def Leppard’s contemporaries would have killed to write one song as good as any of these, and they’re just the opening tracks on Hysteria.
The mandatory ballad Love Bites follows, then the big one — Pour Some Sugar On Me. They lyrics make virtually no sense (“Do you take sugar? One lump or TWO?!) but the lyrics are hardly the point.
The packed Ent Cent goes nuts.
Armageddon It (another hit) is next, followed by a brief screen tribute to late guitarist Steve Clark.
Gods of War, Don’t Shoot Shot Gun, Run Riot, Hysteria, Excitable and Love and Affection round out act one.
Frontman Joe Elliott is a bundle of energy, but never sounds breathless. His voice really is distinctive, and it seems to have lost none of its shine over the decades.
The shirtless Phil Collen and the shirted Vivian Campbell effortlessly trade licks, both taking up the mantle of lead guitarist depending on the song, and Rick Savage underpins it all with his bass and earns extra points for still looking like an eighties glam god.
But it’s drummer Rick Allen, who famously lost an arm in a car accident in 1984 and continued playing with the band on a specially modified kit, who really grabs the audience’s affection.
To see him in action is quite amazing.
Part two consisted of a short set of newer and older tracks, including a cracking cover of Sweet’s Piece of the Action (which appeared on Retro Active), Rock of Ages and 1992 hit Let’s Get Rocked.
There’s a scene in the great Mickey Rourke film The Wrestler where Rourkey and Marisa Tomei drink beers in a bar and reminisce about how great the eighties were and how grunge came along in the nineties and made everyone sad. “Guns ’n’ Roses!” they shout.
“Crue! DEF LEP!”
They may have been onto something. Eighties music, whether it be rock or pop, was nothing if not fun and last night was a blast.
Let’s get the rock outta here!