DEF LEPPARD On The Recording Of The PYROMANIA Album (Video/Transcript)

Thursday, 26th September 2024

Def Leppard 2024

Def Leppard were recently interviewed about the making of the classic Pyromania album for its 40th anniversary.

The 40th anniversary 'Pyromania 40 Super Deluxe Edition' was released on Friday 26th April 2024 via Universal Music Recordings.

The release followed a year of band celebrations on social media using the #pyromania40 hashtag and video teasers.

The recently completed Summer Stadium Tour also saw the band play 8 of the albums tracks live throughout the tour including the live debut of 'Comin' Under Fire'.

Pyromania 40th Anniversary Video

All five band members have been interviewed by Sweetwater to discuss the making of the album.

Vivian who joined the band nine years after the album's release also reflected on the impact of the album in 1983 and its sound.

Joe, Sav, Phil and Rick all talked about writing and recording the classic album in 1982 with Mutt Lange.

Rick also recalls the story of how he clashed with Mutt while recording cymbal parts for the album as previously detailed in the 'Animal Instinct' biography.

Read the full transcript below and view the 8 minute video.

Visit the Tour News section. For more news on future tour plans.

Visit the Album News section for more news on new music (based on band member quotes).

Def Leppard 2024.

Pyromania 40th Anniversary Video - September 2024 Interview Quotes - (Transcribed by dltourhistory)

Vivian Campbell

"When Pyromania came along, it moved the goalposts for the hard rock genre."

"All of a sudden, things were possible to think outside the box."

Rick Allen

"When the success in the States started to happen, then I realized that this was something that nobody had done before."

Joe Elliott

"When we first went in the studio, we really didn't know how that record was going to turn out, but we had a game plan."

"The game plan always was to make this album that was a massive step forward from the previous record."

"We didn't want to make High 'n' Dry II."

"High 'n' Dry was an incredible step forward from on through the night."

"Pyromania had to be the same leap."

"It had to be, oh this is a band on the up and up, it's not making the same record twice."

Rick Savage

"Before we even met up to record the album, even before pre-production, we got a message from Mutt and he said, don't be overly concerned in trying to write songs."

"He said, just get guitar parts, just guitar ideas, riffs, even vocal ideas are cool, but don't get sort of hooked on, 'Okay I've got the start of the song, I've got to finish it."

"Don't worry about that, just make recordings, even if it's a five second guitar part."

Pyromania 40 Photos

Screenshots by dltourhistory.

Rick Allen

"I got the fact that Mutt heard something in his head that none of us could hear."

"He was just going for something that was unique, I think something that would really crossover and become more commercial, something that was more for the masses."

Phil Collen

"When I stepped in there was magic happening, Mutt Lange, just classic, I'd never seen anything or anything like it."

"Multiple 24 track machines running, I had a vocal one, I had a guitar one, I had a drum one, I had a backing vocal, I mean it was like crazy."

Vivian Campbell

"I was with Dio in the early 80s, Around the time Pyromania came out."

"It was a game changing album, not just the quality of the songs, and obviously Leppard were a young band in ascendancy at that time, and it was the advent of MTV as well."

"So video was a very, very large component, but at first it was kind of a little bit shocking because you hear electronic drums combined with acoustic drums, and it's a strange sort of sound and the layered vocals, it was definitely not the typical hard rock record."

"It announced a sea change in how people approached hard rock."

Joe Elliott

"The first two records were essentially like hard rock albums where the singer gets to sing over a guitar riff the same way that Ian Gillan did or Robert Plant, where there isn't really much movement for the singer to go anywhere because the guitar's covering everything."

"What we did on Pyromania was Mutt would suggest, I don't want any guitars at all in the verse and I want you guys to come in so that there's more impact when they do come in on the bridge, which were these incredible stereo bits, it meant something, and then they drop out again and then they build up for the chorus and then his guitar's galore in the chorus."

"It was that dynamic, so this is what we'd been missing in our heads."

"Me and Sav were always huge fans of that kind of thing, so it was always going to be a blend of this new gear for us, a new way of thinking."

Rick Savage

"We spent near enough to three weeks before we even went near the recording studio, just literally forming the songs, getting the songs kind of right."

"Because you can waste a lot of time in the studio trying this, trying that, putting that riff with that and it's like, ah, it doesn't quite work."

"When we went into Battery Studios to start recording Pyromania, 60 to 70% of the guitar parts were pretty much as they ended up being."

Rick Allen

"Recording the cymbals was actually pretty challenging because it took me back to my early days of playing drums where I was learning to read music."

"What Mutt had me do was sit there with manuscript and write in all the cymbal parts and then have to go in and play them."

"Me and Mutt, we clashed a little bit on some of the passes that we did."

"He'd be listening and listening and listening and I'd be sitting out in the live room waiting for them to go next take or whatever."

"I remember saying something like, you know, like, Mutt, do you want me to have a listen to it?."

"I remember him saying something like, and it was really, it deflated me a little bit, but he said, 'when I want your opinion, I'll ask you for it.'."

Phil Collen

"I think what's kept us really humble was the fact that the way we recorded it, you didn't have to get above yourself."

"Just the way that Mutt would work, it would keep you humble."

"It was like, you think you're cool and everything, but you're not really."

Vivian Campbell

"Pyromania in particular just showed the rest of us in the musical community that you didn't have to follow a tried and true formula."

"You could take influences from Michael Jackson, you could take influences from top ten, you could sing in a way that wasn't just the lead singer singing, you could stack up these harmony vocals in a way that had never been done in hard rock before."

"You can layer the guitars and you can do things with the drums that are not necessarily natural or acoustic."

"You can blend these different elements of the drums that we'd been hearing in new wave music, you know, where they were playing like those, whatever they're called."

"I'm not necessarily advocating for those, but the instrumentation didn't have to be essentially 100% organic."

"Anything would go, essentially, you know, there was a new set of rules after Pyromania came along."

Rick Allen

"When the whole record was done and I listened back to it, I went, oh, now I get it."

"You listen to that record now and it still stands out."

Rick Savage

"I knew, and I think we all knew right there and then, we've created something unique here within our field."

"It felt, it sounded, it just had the vibe of a record that had never been done before, which is exactly what we were trying to do."

"You've not heard of a record like this."

Joe Elliott

"When we started out, we were all probably head scratching a bit like, what does he want?."

"It's really exciting, but it's like walking off a plank blindfold."

"Are you going to land in sharks or are you going to land in champagne, you know?."

"And that's what it was."

"We didn't really know what we were going to end up with, but it was really exciting."

"This journey that we were taking for the nine months that we made that record."

"And then when it started to make sense at the end, it was just this huge, big relief of like, oh my God, it actually worked."

Def Leppard 2024.

Def Leppard / Latest Release

Just Like '73 (Feat. Tom Morello) - (Digital Single)
Pyromania 40 Box Set - (Album - April 2024)

Def Leppard / Latest Tour

Def Leppard The Summer Stadium Tour 2024

Def Leppard - Discography
Previous News - 24th September 2024
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