Thus, the heart of the song is its melodic development, the way Joe Elliott’s vocal builds from the breathy, low-key opening verse to the soaring, full-throated harmonies of the chorus. He was listed as Executive Producer and helped out via phone as well as contributing some backing vocals. If anything, the opposite is true — the band’s music seems so effortlessly accessible that most listeners probably don’t even notice the incredible amount of craft that goes into each release. From the first, this was a band that gloried in the power of heavy metal’s musical gestures — the towering majesty of a power riff, the momentary freedom of a guitar break, the exhilaration of a singer’s scream — and as the group has grown, its ability to manipulate that vocabulary has expanded to the point that its songs have become mini-masterpieces of aural impact. Engineer [Additional], Programmed By, Sequenced By – Pete "Proto-type Genius, Technical Wizard, Boffin From Hell, All-Round Grafter And Nice Chap (Give Him A Job, Trev!

Keen to reassure fans they were back for good, Def Leppard recruited versatile former Dio/ Whitesnake guitarist Vivian Campbell to partner Phil Collen, and set out on an 18-month world tour, kicking off in the wake of the band’s much-acclaimed appearance at the star-studded Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert at London’s Wembley Stadium, in April ’92. The album was recorded following the tragic death of guitarist Steve Clark--with Phil Collen recording all guitar parts--and dedicated to his memory. It's like with Pink Floyd: to me, Adrenalize was our Wish You Were Here and Hysteria was our Dark Side of the Moon.

And there are hooks of every sort on Adrenalize, from broad strokes like the gloriously harmonized chorus of “Heaven Is” to ear-catching details like the little yodel Elliott slips into “Personal Property. I was sitting there with him [Clark] when he played along to the original parts,” he later told Classic Rock’s Geoff Barton. Perhaps inevitably, however, Leppard were at their most ambitious on “White Lightning”: an epic, seven-minute salute to their fallen comrade, on which Phil Collen summoned up some astounding lead playing. Def Leppard remain one of only five rock groups who can claim two separate original 10 million plus selling albums in the US, the others are The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and Van Halen. Yet the Leps work these gimmicks in so gracefully that they never interrupt the music’s flow, acting not as unnecessary contrivances but simply as another level of hook.

Having sold over 65 million albums worldwide since their debut release in 1980 and proved themselves one of rock music’s hardest working and consistently powerful live bands (playing to over 50 million fans in the last 15 years alone), this timely deluxe expanded edition is a must for any discerning music fan.of the Billboard chart for five weeks keeping Bruce Springsteen's Human Touch off the top spot, and spent 65 weeks on the charts in total. That’s not to say the album is any softer than its predecessors — certainly the crunchy guitars of “Tear It Down” or “Make Love Like a Man” are proof to the contrary — just that it’s not as noisily aggressive. The Sheffield quintet showed true Yorkshire grit en route to realizing Hysteria, with drummer Rick Allen overcoming a near-fatal car crash that left him without his left arm.