This section looks at the final 'Pyromania' tour show in Bangkok. The tour ended after 12 months on the road and over 180 shows played.
"The show in Bangkok was amazing."
Def Leppard played the final show of the Pyromania world tour on this day in 1984 in Bangkok, Thailand.
The show took place in front of 6,000 fans at the Indoor Stadium Huamark.
It was the last show to be played before Rick Allen's 31st December 1984 car accident.
The following day the band flew to Dublin, Ireland to start work on the Hysteria album.
The tour lasted for one year and was the first to feature 'new' guitarist Phil Collen.
The year long world had started with a UK/European leg in February/March 1983 before moving on to North America until late September.
A second run of European/UK shows took the tour up to late December 1983.
They visited Japan, Australia and finally Thailand for the very first time in January/February 1984.
At the time the Pyromania tour was the longest the band had ever done with over 180 shows played in 12 months.
This venue would be played again for the first show of the Slang tour in May 1996. The first full electric Def Leppard show since this one with Rick Allen playing acoustic drums.
By t2bb
Check out a great gallery of 40 large photos posted on Flickr by t2bb.
View all 40 photos at - flickr.com
1987 Animal Instinct - Biography Quotes
"There were probably only six or seven people in all of Thailand who'd ever bought a Def Leppard record, at least a legal one anyway (cheap pirate cassette copies of the top albums are the big-sellers in the Far East). Nevertheless, 6,000 folks turned up for the grand end-of-tour finale in Bangkok on February 7th, an impressive turnout made sweeter by the fact that Hall and Oates were also playing in town."
"Bangkok was very strange for me," says Joe. "We were in this nice hotel, like Fantasy Island, with fifteen foot high walls around it. And on the other side was this severe poverty. Sav and I went for a walk and all these fifteen and sixteen-year-old kids came up to us going, "Hey, you want my sister?". We said no thanks, mate, kept on walking and all of a sudden these kids started throwing stones at us. One kid threw a house brick right between us. I guess they didn't like the fact that we had nice clothes, obviously had money and had turned down their sisters."
"I did get to see a guy riding an elephant in down town Bangkok, though. I was eating in this restaurant and spotted this fellow on top of an elephant through the window. I had to run out and take a picture of him. I thought, 'I'm never gonna see anything like that again in my entire life'. And the actual gig was good too."
Pyromania Tour 1984
The band had taken a Christmas and New Year break after playing over 170 shows from February to December 1983 throughout the UK, Europe, USA and Canada.
The 1984 tour leg began with three shows in Japan. Two in Tokyo and one in Osaka.
This was followed by one festival show and two small headline shows in Australia.
Following a torrential downpour at the Narara Festival in Somersby (near Sydney) they played shows in Melbourne and Sydney.
The final show then took place in Bangkok almost one year to the day since the first warm-up show in London.
All shows marked the band's first visits to these countries and they would eventually return starting with Australia in July 1992 on the 'Adrenalize' tour.
Bangkok 1984
1984 Def Leppard Tour Diary Quotes
"Bangkok proved to be the highlight of the tour. The promoters Blank International, were young people determined to bring rock music to Bangkok and, boy, did they take care of business."
"We got to use our entire lighting rig (well, 3/4 of it), play on a big stage, (a normal size one-but after Australia anything looked big), and in front of 7000+ people."
"What was great there is the number of kids from the USA at the gig which made it feel almost like home and certainly was a contrast to the rather sedate Thai audience."
"The Thais were great, though, and several of us did a bit of sight-seeing which included a trip upriver similar to the one taken by Martin Sheen in "Apocalypse Now"."
"River houses, local fisherman and the total jungle look made that trip one to remember."
"Next year, we hope to memorialise this bit of the tour along with other notable events in the life of 'Pyromania' in our tour program which will feature photos and bits from these places."
"Various band, management and crew have taken some fascinating pix which we want to get to flavor our program."
"We may even send them out to the fan club. Watch this space."
"The show in Bangkok was amazing and it was with severe misgivings that we left the sweat of Bangkok for the extreme cold of Dublin."
Joe Elliott 1983 Interview Quotes
"On Pyromania, Mutt was able to give us his undivided attention. We did a lot of the songs live in the studio, and we kept the overdubs to a bare minimum. What you hear on the record is exactly what we played."
"This album really shows what we're capable of doing. It's a very solid rock and roll LP, but we've been able to incorporate a lot of melody into each song...a little melody isn't going to hurt anybody."
'Pyromania' Album Title Origin - Joe Elliott 1992 Quotes
"Pyromania got titled Pyromania because a guy called Craig Thomson, who was an engineer on it accused us of being PYROMANIACS because we were having such a bad time trying to get the Marshalls to sound good on the Pyromania album."
"At one stage Steve and Mutt suggested we should take them into the garden and burn them. Craig piped up in a brilliant broad Scottish accent."
"Arck you're awl just a bunch of Pyromaniacs! - and hence it became Pyromania. That is where that album name came from, pure accident. That is outside input of a sort but on a definite inside trait and definitely not 'I've got an idea for the album' sort of thing."
Joe Elliott - 'Pyromania' Postcards from 'Work It Out' Single 1996
"Goodbye Pete Willis, hello Phil Collen."
"We decided to try and do something that no other rock band had tried before - blueprint "Sgt. Pepper" (but a bit heavier)."
"A period of time when we allowed our Pop sensibility to come to the fore...and guess what? Our first major success...huge in the U.S....but nowhere else."
1987 Animal Instinct Biography Quotes
"With Pyromania, the Def Leppard Admiration Society increased its membership by the multi-millions. By September 1983, Pyromania had sold four million copies, becoming the biggest-selling non-soundtrack LP in their record companies history."
"Notably, cassette sales of the album were outstripping record sales three-to-two. Fans were obviously buying Pyromania tapes to play on their car stereos, confirming that the album was great teenage cruising music."
Watch all the Pyromania album promo videos on this YouTube Playlist
related pages/releases
explore def leppard tour history
