This section looks at the 'Slang' album entering the UK album charts at Number 5. The album entered the charts after its release on 13th May.
"We start the album on the 1st of May."
Def Leppard's sixth studio album Slang entered the UK album chart at Number Five on this day in 1996 in the UK.
The album had been released on 13th May 1996 following on from the title track which had been issued as the lead single on 22nd April.
Read about the making of the Slang Album
The single got to Number 17 on the singles chart on 11th May.
The album entered the chart at Number 5.
The 'Slang' single was at Number 47 on the same day.
This was the band's fifth Top 5 (or 6) album in a row (Retro-Active was #6 in 1993).
It spent 11 weeks in total on the Top 100 chart. Three weeks inside the Top 40.
'Slang' was the second highest new entry on the chart with George Michael's 'Older' album entering at Number 1.
UK Album Chart Top Five - 25th May 1996
- 01 - George Michael - Older (New Entry)
- 02 - Alanis Morissette - Jagged Little Pill
- 03 - Ash - 1977
- 04 - Oasis - (What's The Story) Morning Glory?
- 05 - Def Leppard - Slang (New Entry)
Rick Savage 1996 - "It gave us a bit of time to work on Slang because we were, and still are trying to break away from that image of the '80s that Def Leppard was a huge part of. To us, initially, it seemed like we were dragging up the past again, but then we realized that if we were ever going to put a greatest-hits album out, it would have to be then. It is closing a chapter and making some sort of statement that that was then and this is now."
From December 1995 to February 1996 the band completed work on the album at Bow Lane Studios in Dublin. They finished on 10th February.
Rick Allen returned to using real acoustic drums on the album for the first time since 1981's 'High 'n' Dry'.
Joe Elliott 1996 - "It was nice to see Rick playing real drums again. Eleven years later, he's playing better than he did when he had two arms. It made the rest of us attack our own part of the album with a lot more confidence."
"Slang" reached Number 5 in the UK Top 40 chart. The fourth consecutive studio album to reach the Top 10.
In the USA it entered at Number 14 on the Billboard Top 200 chart which was its peak position and sold a reported 59,500 copies in week one.
The title track had been issued as a single in the UK on 22nd April 1996 and got the Number 17 in the charts. The first of three Top 40 singles in the UK from this album.
The UK version of the album included a Limited Edition 2CD set. The second bonus disc featured a six song 'Acoustic In Singapore' live show record in October 1995.
Below are some quotes about the album from the band and reflections on the album by Vivian 20 years on.
Joe spoke to MTV Europe in late April 1994 (in the run up to the Mick Ronson Memorial show in London) only a few days before the band started work on the album in Spain (on 1st May 1994).
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Joe Elliott - Late April 1994 MTV Europe Quotes
New Album
"With Retro-Active we went out of our way to make sure that that was like an absolute opposite to anything we'd done since at least High 'n' Dry. And we wanna keep going in the same direction. We wanna do something a little bit more hard edged. Still with the emphasis on like you know good songs. We start the album on the 1st of May. So we'll see how long it goes for, how long it takes, but it won't be four years because the kind of record we wanna make doesn't demand that kind of over involved production. We want it to be a lot more basic and that goes hand in hand with being quicker."
No Mutt Lange
"We figured that the kind of record we wanna make and things being the way they are. They're kind of very retro sounding at the moment and back to basics. Making that kind of record, I don't think Mutt would really be too keen on doing it because his thing is always push forward on production. We don't really wanna get too heavily into production this time. We just want an emphasis on the energy and the actual songs that we're gonna do. So we've got nearly two hours worth of material already written. And we're gonna get together on Sunday or Monday and start banging away at it."
May 1996 - Joe Elliott Quotes
"It's the most vibrant and artistically satisfying record we've made. We've co-produced and written this record ourselves."
"The thing we're trying to achieve with this record, is that you didn't put it on and say, 'This is a great production,' which is what people judged Hysteria and maybe Adrenalize on. That was a big thing for us, we wanted people to hear the group rather than hear the production of the record."
"It was like going to Summer School. It was like Boys Together Outrageously. We got on with doing the job. We didn't have to clock-watch. We could look out the window and see the ocean. We weren't stuck in some poxy studio somewhere, and the clock's ticking away and you don't know whether it's raining or snowing or there's a riot going on outside. We were just in our own non-corporate world. We wanted to do a similar thing to what Zeppelin and bands like that did in the '70s, when they went into a house and just created their own environment, and that's exactly what we did. It was so relaxing that it gave us more energy to be as noisy as we were on 'Pearl of Euphoria' or 'Flesh,' and when we did acoustic guitars on 'Where Does Love Go When It Dies,' they were actually recorded outside at midnight with incense, candles, dogs barking, cars going past. It's all on tape."
October 1996 - Phil Collen Quote
"It was the best recording experience ever. "I refuse ever again to sit in a studio, a dungeon, for three years. We want to have fun."
Def Leppard 1996
Joe Elliott - 1996 Band Biography Album Quotes
"The thing we're trying to achieve with this record," says Joe, "is that you didn't put it on and say, 'This is a great production,' which is what people judged Hysteria and maybe Adrenalize on. That was a big thing for us, we wanted people to hear the group rather than hear the production of the record."
"It's amazing, because we got that sound in a house," laughs Joe. "There was no fancy studio, it was just recorded on a little cheap desk in a house in Marbella."
"It was like going to Summer School," recalls Joe. "It was like Boys Together Outrageously. We got on with doing the job. We didn't have to clock-watch. We could look out the window and see the ocean. We weren't stuck in some poxy studio somewhere, and the clock's ticking away and you don't know whether it's raining or snowing or there's a riot going on outside. We were just in our own non-corporate world. We wanted to do a similar thing to what Zeppelin and bands like that did in the '70s, when they went into a house and just created their own environment, and that's exactly what we did. It was so relaxing that it gave us more energy to be as noisy as we were on 'Pearl of Euphoria' or 'Flesh,' and when we did acoustic guitars on 'Where Does Love Go When It Dies,' they were actually recorded outside at midnight with incense, candles, dogs barking, cars going past. It's all on tape."
"The one thing that anybody in a band hopes is that their audience grows with them,"
Slang 1996
Billboard February 2014 - Phil Collen Interview Quote
"It was an essential album for Def Leppard. It was a drastic move, left-field for us. It was experimental. It went against the grain from what we normally were doing at the time. We felt like with 'Adrenalize' it started turning a little bit similar, so it was important to do something different at that point."
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