This section looks at the 'Love Bites' UK single release. The fifth single to be released from the 'Hysteria' album in the UK.
"Watch out, love bites."
Def Leppard released their classic Love Bites single on this day in 1988 in the UK.
The fifth single to be released from the 'Hysteria' album in the UK.
It was released on 4th July 1988 reaching Number 11 and spent five weeks on the UK chart.
The release date coincided with US Independence Day and the song would go on to become their one and only Number One single in the USA.
In the UK it was advertised as the "Final single from the Hysteria album".
For this reason the special 12" collectors edition of the single featured four extra card sleeves. Together with 'Love Bites' and the first four UK 12" single covers, these extra four pieces made up the full 'Hysteria' album cover.
This was the only way to use the single covers to make up the full album. Only five 7" covers could be used in the UK and six in the USA/Canada.
'Rocket' would go on to be the sixth single from the album in the UK. It featured a unique cover that wasn't one of the nine segments of the main album cover design.
Read some quotes about the song below.
Def Leppard Love Bites - Band Quotes
Phil Collen
"That was written by Mutt. When he first showed it to us, it sounded a bit country-and western. Mutt has always been a big fan of country music. He recently produced his wife's album (Shania Twain's multiplatinum "The Woman in Me"), and it's one of the biggest-selling country releases. For "Love Bites," we just added Def Leppard guitars to it. There was a harmony guitar thing that me and Steve did where we orchestrated the chords. Steve and I jammed the song out with a drum box, and recorded it. The backing track was recorded live, and it ended up on the record. The song went on to become our first and only number-one U.S. Single."
Phil Collen
"It made my Mum cry. That's how I knew it was special. It was actually a country and western song when Mutt Lange played his demo to Steve Clark and I. He always loved the Eagles. We goofed around with it quite a lot to Lepparddise it. But it's essence was kept."
Joe Elliott
"It was our first ever number one single anywhere in the world. I wasn’t overly keen on it at first. In it’s original demo form it didn’t sound anything like us. I was in my hotel room in Holland working on ‘Rocket’. So I had very little to do with it other than we took the chorus line of the title from another song we’d written called ‘Love Bites’ (That one later became ‘I Wanna Be Your Hero’ on the ‘Retro-Active’ album). Another example of never throwing away an idea!."
Joe Elliott
"It was a play on words. When somebody chews on your neck, you get a bruise. We're aware of the fact that in Britain, love bites, you guys call them hickeys. We call them love bites. The idea of it was that it's like, love bites, love bleeds. It was a case of taking it and just showing how the English language is an awkward beast. Many words mean many different things."
Joe Elliott
"It was something that Mutt and Steve and Phil worked on, I had really hardly any contribution to the song at all. The only contribution that I can ever acknowledge to was that the chorus was pulled off another song and I kinda help write the other chorus. It’s the only number one single we’ve ever had in America, it was our first number one single that we've ever had so I mean that kinda made it a little more pleasant for me but at the time it was like ‘I don’t wanna do this song cause I can't!’. But Mutt doesn’t let you get like that and I’m glad he doesn't he said ‘Look you can do anything you want, if you just maybe don't get it first time you don’t get it first time."
Billboard 1000 No. 1's - Joe Elliott/Phil Collen Interview Quote
Phil Collen
"It was a very interesting thing cause that was a studio song. We'd never actually played it live. And it went to number one and we'd never played it as a band. So we had to put the tour on hold and rehearse it frantically so we could sing and play it at the same time cause it's quite involved as well."
Joe Elliott
"I remember it nearly not getting to number one. I remember being told we probably wouldn't get to number one because Red, Red Wine I think it was by UB40 was gonna pip us."
Phil Collen
"Wow. I know Bobby McFerrin was the other side of it."
Love Bites 1988
Joe Elliott
"And we were at the age as well where we thought it was about bloody time. You know because everybody says overnight success but it was actually seven years since we formed when Pyromania broke. So it was seven years before we hit real success in the States and it was ten years before we hit it in England. And it's strange because we'd been to number one on the album and it had been back and forth. For six weeks we'd been swapping places with Van Halen and Guns N' Roses all summer. So we kinda felt comfortable with that. I wouldn't say we were taking it for granted. But now we wanted a No. 1 single because we'd never had one. So it was like 'come on! come on!' When we got there, it was, as you can imagine, a 'yes!' moment."
Phil Collen
"I think cause we were an absolute hybrid of a hard rock band and pop music. You know you could sing along to these songs but they still had a rock edge. It wasn't say like Boston which was great. It had all these lovely harmonies and everything but they weren't as hard rocking as we were so that was the weird one. We kinda sounded a bit like AC/DC. It had a bit more of that edge but we kinda fit image wise more with something like Duran Duran. So it wore lots of different hats at the same time. So that was very exciting for us cause we always wanted to appeal to lots of different age groups, lots of different genres. We didn't just want to be a rock band you know it was something a bit more special - we felt. And I think it really was as well."
Def Leppard Love Bites - VH1 Love Songs 2002 Quotes
Phil Collen
"I think the fact that it started as a country song in the first place as well kind of separated it from all the rock power ballads. It actually kinda sounded like The Eagles and we kinda rocked it up."
"I mean I played it to my Mum and she started bawling her eyeballs out. So we actually, we knew then it kinda, it had something special about it."
Joe Elliott
"Love Songs touch on human emotion. I mean that just never tires. It changes everyday and there's always something that happens that people all over the world can relate to. Especially if you can put it in a decent lyric."
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