BACK FROM THE ASHES:

INTERVIEW WITH DEF LEPPARD’S STEVE CLARK.
Metal Machine | 1988. Photos by Ross Halfin

For DEF LEPPARD read “Phoenix”.

Abattle-scarred bird fell towards the earth and landed badly. For three years the forest was silent and the sky was barren. The DEF LEPPARD bird nursed a broken wing and aborted it’s young – they never had a chance.

Support and faith never left the band. “Hysteria” was meant to follow closely at the heels of “Pyromania.” It was to be formed in a consciously melodic vein, tapping into a newly found maturity and the mighty wheels of a new video promotional industry.

Disasters that would have sunk the individual without a trace hit the band from every angle, accidents and injuries, including the one which changed drummer Rick’s life entirely. New trends in the music scene also helped to deliver the final blows.

In retrospect, the decision to scrap two years worth of songs for the album was a positive one. The band accepted the mighty task of re-recording and nurturing new songs. Rick re-learnt how to play the drums and producer Mutt Lange stuck it out with the band to the very end.

The great bird rises once again, with stronger wings and a healthy brood flying in close formation. “Hysteria” version II smashed into the charts at Number 1 and stayed in the Top Ten for 2 months. It has made history.

You have been very active for the past year. It seems like you’re paying back for the time lost off the road.

STEVE CLARK: Oh yeah! We had been off the road for quite a long time and the energy in us is unbelievable. I think it’s just great to be out working again because we had been in the studio for so long. There’s not much to it. It has got the feeling of a little dungeon with no daylight and you have to remember that we had been there for quite long; this album was recorded twice, remember. So the feeling of work other than just being in the studio is great. I like doing interviews, especially now because we have got something to say, whereas before there was nothing much to say. We didn’t know when the album was going to be finished or when we were going to go on tour.

Did you miss the spotlight while you were away?

STEVE: Obviously you miss being in the spotlight. I think that was the part that we all desperately wanted to do, to play live more than anything else. It’s not just the attention, because I can say that [part] we didn’t miss. It is playing. That’s the main thing. You know, we went to see other groups play and I must admit that it did get a bit painful at one point because we all badly wanted to be up there playing ourselves. We didn’t really miss anything else much. We were so wrapped up in the album that it really took 100% concentration to try and keep it going.

Did the album become an obsession to you in a way?

STEVE: No, not an obsession, but after two years and so many false starts, we were so deep into it that the only way to go about it was even deeper, just to get it finished and to make the best possible album.

Were you optimistic about the results of the album?

STEVE: Well, none of us ever thought that it wasn’t going to happen. After the first couple of years, we decided to scrap everything. We literally wiped all the tapes. We were in two minds about what we had done wrong, so we were very

glad when Mutt [Lange, producer] came back on the project. We knew it would be right and we just said “It takes as long as it takes!” There were some very low moments especially with the old bad luck we had with Rick’s accident and Phil and myself had an accident in a car. And the recording of the album was supposed to be finished by last Christmas; and Mutt, our producer, had an accident which delayed it for about another three months. With all of those things happening there were obviously some very low points, but then we just said “Nothing could affect us anymore now. The trivial things that happen to everyone every day and ones that probably make people cry are just like water off a ducks back to us now.” We decided not to worry because you can’t change anything. We just had to make the best of it. So it made us become a lot closer to one another than ever before and we knew there was a newly-found strength in all of us. I think that’s the positive thing that came out of all of the crises we had been through. It definitely made us closer than we would have ever been because we had to depend on each other to get us through that period.

So what was a typical day in your life like during that time?

STEVE: It varied really. Because we actually didn’t record the album together… we all played individually. Maybe I could be playing the guitar for one month or Phil could, and we would go into the studio at about ten in the morning and we’d just stay there ‘till like four in the morning. And that could go on for a month. Then it was whoever was to do their part next, so at some points you could find yourself just not doing anything. But you couldn’t really go anywhere because you’re on a twenty-four hour call. You never knew when you were going to be needed. Sometimes two weeks would pass and you would be sitting in the studio without playing a single note, or at other times you could be working for two or three weeks solid. So there was no routine, but you had no freedom to do anything else. So we definitely lived with the album one way or another from the moment you woke up until you go to sleep.

I don’t know why you scrapped the original recordings, but because of the constant changes in the music scene did you find that these songs were taking on a different shape when you went in a redid them?

STEVE: Well, when we were in Dublin we took six months to write new songs and we came up with ten which were going to be on the Hysteria album. They were great for that time and they sounded good, but two years down the road some of them did sound a bit dated. There had been so many changes in the music business. Groups like Frankie Goes To Hollywood had come (and now gone), and the style in the music was changing. So what we actually did was, we decided to keep about six of the songs for the album. We totally re-wrote them and updated them, but we also kept writing new songs throughout the period we were recording Hysteria. So, we had like seven finished and then somebody would come in and say, “I’ve got a new song”, even though we already had ten to start from. We eventually ended up with nineteen songs altogether and we picked the best twelve for the album and the other seven which were left over, and which were originally going to go on the album, might go on B-sides. So every time we release a single there will be a totally fresh B-side that won’t be on the album.

You mentioned Frankie Goes To Hollywood who really played dance music, but what about the likes of Bon Jovi who I suppose are a bit closer to home as far as sound goes. What did their success mean to you? Did you have to change your strategy again in order to keep the originality of the Def Leppard sound?

STEVE: Definitely a lot of thought went into it because we didn’t want to make Pyromania II. A lot of groups did base their sound on Pyromania, and a lot of them did try to copy that sound. So we were very conscious not to make a Pyromania II, and we wanted to change and write the new album with a bit more maturity, and that’s why there’s a lot of melody and things like that in Hysteria. We were very aware of what was going on at the time, but it didn’t frighten us. We just made the best possible album we could and we think the album is much better than some of the songs on Pyromania. Things have changed over the last three years, for example in Europe you can get twenty-four hour video stations now. When Pyromania was released there wasn’t an outlet like that. People on radio now do play a heavy rock song and one could have a hit single, but it was a very different story when Pyromania was released.

Do you remember the first song you did for this album when you went into the studio with Mutt?

STEVE: I can’t remember. I’ll ask Phil. (pause) He can’t remember either. I tell you things changed so much that none of us can remember. There have been so many songs recorded that have never surfaced.

I can imagine it being a bit like mayhem in the studios?

STEVE: Yes. A lot of things were happening at that time.

The first impression I got on listening to Hysteria is that it is very much of a hard-edged pop album. Is that what you were aiming for?

STEVE: We definitely had that in mind when we were making it. We did want to change our direction a bit, which is something we want to do with every album. Pyromania was different to High ‘n’ Dry and this (Hysteria) is different to Pyromania. We didn’t want to get stuck with an album being on the same level all the time without any dynamics. We wanted to have certain tracks that would appeal to anybody. So some of the ballads shine through better because the heavier songs are more upfront as opposed to being laid back. We think it’s a very varied album and it isn’t tiresome on the ear even though it is quite a long album.

How much did Mutt Lange help in the writing of the songs?

STEVE: When Mutt is in the studio with Def Leppard he almost becomes a member of the group, almost like George Martin was to The Beatles. But all the ideas originally come from the group obviously. But Mutt will re-arrange them in a different way perhaps. It depends on what the song demands. I think the way we work is very good because before Mutt came in we had already been working on the album for two or three years and we were living so close to it that we sometimes couldn’t see things in perspective. So it’s great when someone comes in with fresh ears suggesting ideas which were really obvious ones , but when you are in that situation, you are the last person to realise it because you’re so deeply involved with it.

Were you amazed at how much the band were dependent on Mutt?

STEVE: There wasn’t that dependency because we could have put the album out ourselves after two years. I mean the album did sound reasonable then. When you want to be accurate with something you have to live with it for a long time, and if there is only the slightest bit of doubt in the back of anybody’s mind then obviously it’s not right and you can’t convince them if you are not 100% convinced yourself in the first place. So it wasn’t like there was a dependency on Mutt Lange. It was just to iron out the doubts that we did have here and there, and we were more than happy to go back and re-record the whole thing as boring the process of doing that was. Obviously now we are all glad that we did put the extra time into it.

Why did you decide to put a lot of sound effects on the album? They are generally vocal effects.

STEVE: That was purely because of the type of songs they were. It was the first time that we went in that direction. The titles suggested a lot; things like Rocket is very open to the space programme just through the nature of the title and the way the song was constructed. So we thought that when a song is more in that vein then maximize on it. That makes some of the other straight forward tracks shine through better.

I found the track “Gods Of War” very interesting, with Thatcher on one side and Reagan almost like having a dialogue.

STEVE: There is actually a Russian one as well amidst all of that but it sort of got lost somewhere in there. We are not a political band at all. When we do things like that they are always a bit tongue-in-cheek. We do have opinions but we don’t broadcast them. We are totally middle of the road when it comes to things like that. Gods Of War is an epicy type number and we wanted to make it a big deal towards the end, and if felt good in context but there was no intention to influence anybody. As I say, as much as Thatcher and Reagan being on the song there is actually some Russian ones in there but probably not quite as clear.

There are quite a number of bands out there who have become successful by blatantly plagiarising some things off Pyromania. Do you feel like you want to go out there now and teach them a lesson, like show them who is who?

STEVE: I don’t think that we’ll teach anybody a lesson (laughs). We just do what we know best and I’m sure that will blow a few people away.