Def Leppard News - 21 Years Ago Def Leppard's When Love And Hate Collide At #2 In The UK

21 Years Ago Def Leppard's When Love And Hate Collide At #2 In The UK

Friday, 21st October 2016

Def Leppard's classic single When Love & Hate Collide reached Number 2 in the UK charts 21 years ago on this day in 1995.

In doing so it became the band's biggest ever UK hit single and the best selling.

The song was released on 2nd October ahead of the Vault Greatest Hits 1980-1995 album.

Its success resulted in two appearances on the legendary music show Top Of The Pops.

The song was prevented from reaching Number One by Simply Red's hit Fairground. A song that was in the midst of a four week run at Number One.

The song spent one week at Number 2 on 15th October. In all it had a five week run in the Top 10 having entered at Number 7.

The first six weeks of its 10 week run on the Top 100 chart were spent inside the Top 10. 8 of the 10 weeks were in the Top 40 meaning it easily out performed 'Let's Get Rocked'. The previous biggest hit the band had enjoyed in the UK (Number 2 in 1992). 'Animal' was their only other Top 10 hit reaching Number 6 in 1987.

Later in the same month the song would reach Number One in Ireland.

The song was written by Joe Elliott and Rick Savage for the Adrenalize album. They demoed the song at Sav's house in Ireland during 1990. This demo recording was released as part of the UK 2CD single set. It featured the last ever recorded guitar solo by the late Steve Clark.

Mutt Lange's ex-wife Stevie Lange sang background vocals on the chorus. Her original vocals from that demo were used on the finished version recorded in 1995 when the band took a break from making Slang to finish off this song and promote 'Vault' with a two month acoustic promo tour.

Watch a rare TV performance of the song from Japanese TV in November 1995.

Simply Red were at Number One on this day with their single 'Fairground'.

Other rock artists in the chart this week were Bon Jovi (22) and Red Hot Chili Peppers (29).

A Mutt Lange co-written/produced song called 'Can I Touch You...There?' was at Number 34 for Michael Bolton.

UK Singles Chart - 21st October 1995

01 - Simply Red - Fairground
02 - Def Leppard - When Love & Hate Collide - (Peak Position)
03 - Smokie (ft. Roy Chubby Brown) - Who the F**k Is Alice?
04 - Shaggy - Boombastic
05 - Eternal - Power Of A Woman

Def Leppard 1995.
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Joe Elliott - October 1995 Interview Quotes

"When Love & Hate Collide is kind of like our encore, our "Thank you and goodnight" to that sound. It's perfect for the Greatest Hits album which is older material. It's a brand new recording but it was written in 1990. It lost the toss with 'Have You You Ever Needed Someone So Bad' because we didn't want two ballads on Adrenalize."

"We were going to save it for the next record not knowing that by the time we got started on the next record we wouldn't want to do that kind of song. It was a moment in time, a great idea, we had the song ready to go for the Greatest Hits album and it tied up a lot of loose ends."