27 years ago today...

[CowboyFromHell]

Hysteria was released. Seems to be the point in history that many of you decided you no longer like DL. For those of you that stayed on-board, what's your fav post-Pyromania tune?

[straycat]

Liked them but was never really into them at all.

[Hellbat]

I actually preferred their pre-pyromania material. More straight up hard rock along the lines of AC/DC.

[Mudlark]

I think 'Women'... the first single off Hysteria is my fav post-Pyro tune.

[toejam]

I actually preferred their pre-pyromania material. More straight up hard rock along the lines of AC/DC.

Same here. I actually like Pyromania a lot, but preferred the older stuff. And Hysteria was the last one I actually bought by them (on vinyl). I liked Hysteria, but not enough to really continue following them.

[Force]

I don't have one fave post Pyro song but Retroactive has some awesome re-recordings on it, there's been a few great songs amongst the less impressive list since then.

As for Hysteria, there's not a weak moment anywhere, just like the albums before it. I'll throw in Armageddon It, Animal, Don't Shoot Shotgun & Run Riot.

[pianoguyy]

This was the last album I cared about from them. And I didn't even care all that much about any of them.
Each album has a song or two, but that's about it.

[markD]

eh, by the time hysteria came out I was into real metal. I looked at def leppard as being a bunch of sissies. still think of them that way.

ironic part?

my main gigging guitar for many years was a PC-1. I died a little inside when the sales guy told me it was the sig model for the def leppard guy. but, the guitar was cool and I paid $100 (plus my custom ESP) for it. still enjoy it as much as I hate DL: A LOT!!!!

[Razor]

Cool as hell, my 18 year old is in the family room watching "Live in the Round" as I type this. Little dude has good taste in music! While I prefer their older stuff (On Through The Night, High 'N' Dry and of course Pyromania), I still think Hysteria is a great album. The sad thing is that band died when Clarkie died. They haven't put out a decent album since Adrenalize IMHO which Clarkie helped write a lot of. His songwriting is sorely missed by me anyway...

Women was my favorite post-Pyromania tune, with Gods of War a close second.

[Snoogans]

The only time I've seen DL was on the Hysteria tour. I have to say - they were amazing that night!
Ol' Steve Clarke really was a master of the "Rockstar Swagger", and Phil Collen was a much better player than I had previously realised.
Best song? Probably Gods Of War.

[Larz]

No post Pyro fave here, just lost the interest and moved in other directions.

Hysteria swapped places back and forth with Appetite For Destruction as the Billboard No. 1 for a few weeks that year

[atomic charvel guy]

I always liked this one- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eqkNuCjiHw

[atomic charvel guy]

I always liked this one- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eqkNuCjiHw

oddly there's a bunch of tunes I like, but not enough to buy the albums.

[Number Of The Priest]

This album is almost as old as I am. Didn't get into Def Leppard until about the year 2002 or so, around the time the album called "X" was released, which was their album that had a very heavy pop flavor to it. From there, I devoured the entire catalog up to that point.

Hysteria is a fantastic example of extremely polished production on steroids (perhaps excessively overproduced for some people's tastes). You can hear EVERYTHING going on with every track and every note, and there is surgical precision on the album. Mutt Lange was meticulous and made the band do some bizarre playing techniques and instrumentation just to obtain certain tonal flavors. For example, the song Hysteria's bridge, with the D chords going to C and G (the lyrical part that goes "I gotta know tonight, if you're alone tonight"), he made Phil and Steve play one note of the D chord on one string, start a new track, play the next string, and repeat until the all four strings of the D chord were recorded as four separate tracks. Then Mutt would mix the four tracks together to reform the D chord, but it sounded more like a keyboard playing a D chord instead of a guitar-strummed D. Who on earth even comes up with these ideas? To me, that is truly thinking creatively in the studio.

It is my opinion that Joe's vocals were their most powerful around this time up to the Retro Active release. For whoever mentioned AC/DC above, listen to track 5 on Retro Active, called She's Too Tough, which I think are Joe's highest, screechiest, AC/DC style vocals in the entire Def Leppard catalog. There is no way he could sing that harshly again on the Slang album going forward. That's OK with me though, because I grew to appreciate Slang in its own way after giving it some time.

Def Leppard was the first band I heard to have an AOR flavor. I blame them for sending me down that road towards Bon Jovi, then to even more purely-AOR bands with melodic multi-harmony vocals/guitars, hugely gated reverbed snare drums, and the "fill the stadium with stunningly beautiful women" attitude and sound. Don't worry though, just an hour before this, I was blasting Reign in Blood.

Funny how Def Leppard were initially categorized as NWOBHM when really only two of their songs are flavored with any hint of the stereotypical NWOBHM sound. Wasted was the one and only, truest NWOBHM-sounding song in the entire Def Leppard catalog, Answer to the Master was a distant second, and everything else in the whole catalog didn't even come close to sound like NWOBHM. You can tell even from the other songs from On Through the Night that the band was already headed in that "dreaded" Hysteria direction that seems to divide people so much. Just listen to Hello America with those harmonized vocals and radio-friendly hooks that would become more and more prominent with each album release.

[Bert]

Saw them on the Hysteria tour, and I liked the album for what it is, though not as much as their earlier stuff. Didn't get into anything from them after that point though.