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Def Leppard Tour History Fan Archive.
Ex Managers Peter Mensch/Cliff Burnstein Talk Def Leppard In Rare Interview

Wednesday, 30th March 2016





Q Prime 1993.
Screenshot by dltourhistory

Def Leppard's ex-managers Peter Mensch and Cliff Burnstein have given a rare interview to Billboard and discussed the band.

In part one of a rare interview they talk about how they started working together and eventually became managers for Def Leppard and Metallica.

Def Leppard were signed to what would become Q Prime management in 1979 after Peter Mensch helped to book them on a tour with AC/DC whilst he was still their manager.

During the AC/DC Highway To hell UK tour in November 1979 Peter was approached, firstly by Rick Allen, in the hopes he would take over from MSB (Pete Martin and Frank Stuart-Brown).

After a bitter legal process Peter and Cliff became the band's managers up until August 2005 when Def Leppard left Q Prime after 25 years.

At the time Q Prime posted this message on their website - "After 25 years we say goodbye to Def Leppard. We'll miss you and wish you only the best.".

In 1992 both managers appeared in the promo video for 'Stand Up (Kick Love Into Motion)' filmed in New York City. They have also appeared in various documentaries including Rock Of Ages - The Def Leppard Story (1989), Behind The Music (1998) and Classic Albums Hysteria (2002).

The above shot is taken from a UK BBC TV documentary filmed on 5th June 1993 when Metallica played an outdoor show in Milton Keynes, England. Def Leppard played their Don Valley Stadium show in Sheffield the day after.

Peter Mensch joined twitter in early 2009 and shown below is his only tweet referencing Def Leppard from 2011.

Billboard - Peter Mensch/Cliff Burnstein Interview Quotes

How long did you have just one act? You started with Def Leppard, right?

Peter - "Yeah, we had Def Leppard in 1982 but at some time..."

Cliff - "We could've just said, “Hey, we can make it on Def Leppard alone.” But we would have had to be psychic to know that they would take three years to make an album [1987’s Hysteria], that the drummer [Rick Allen] would lose his arm [in 1984] and that eventually one of the key members would die [Steve Clark, in 1990]. So if you knew all that, then you definitely wouldn't wanna manage only one act.

Peter - "Remember, we didn't start from the bottom. When Def Leppard went on tour with Billy Squier [in 1983], they blew him off the stage every night: It wasn't like they’d spent seven years [toiling] in the clubs. We got these acts at the right time -- and boom. Krebs and Leber were sort of hands-off with Def Leppard, Scorpions, AC/DC and a guy named Michael Schenker -- I brought Cliff in and those were the four acts that we had."

Why did Def Leppard get big so fast?

Cliff - "When we left Leber Krebs, even though their second album was not as successful as the first, it was starting to blow up in America a year after it came out because Polygram [Records] had just made their deal with MTV -- they had been holdouts. And they didn't have any videos to give MTV -- all they had were these live videos that we shot of Def Leppard. We didn't have MTV in New York [for its first months, the channel wasn’t available in New York City], so we didn't f---in' know what was going on [with it in the rest of the country]. And all the sudden the record started selling -- apparently with nothing going on. It was because [MTV] were playing “Bringin' on the Heartbreak.” That was the thing we knew going into our management business."

Peter - "Well, that and having Mutt Lange produce their next record."

Cliff - "We knew when we heard “Photograph,” even though the record wasn't gonna come out for another five or six months, we knew we had a smash."

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