There was a TV show that talked about all the Classic Albums and Def Leppard were given one of those treatments. It was released on UK TV on May 27, 2002 and didn’t hit the States until August 27th, 2002. It had interviews from pretty much everyone involved. New interviews for the current band members and older ones for Mutt and Steve Clark. The band’s managers were interviewed as well as Ross Halfin, Jeff Rich and Rolling Stone’s David Fricke.
It kicks off with the band talking about moving to Dublin and the first song they started working on which was ‘Animal’. It took them 3 years to complete and get it right. It became the first single in the U.K. and finally gave the band their first hit in their home country.
They were in Dublin with Mutt Lange writing songs, but Mutt couldn’t commit to it as he was busy with another project. So, on to another producer. Jim Steinman was the first producer and Joe said Jim was a songwriter not necessarily a producer. The band did not agree with him ever. Jim wanted to capture the moment while the band was so used to Mutt and they wanted it to be perfect. They ended up paying Jim off for him to leave and they paid him a lot of money.
They then went to Nigel Green who was the engineer for Mutt, but he wasn’t Mutt. But around that time, Rick Allen had his tragic car crash where he lost his arm. They didn’t go in to detail of that until later in the show. This about the time Mutt finally came back in the fold and decided to produce the album. The work could seriously begin.
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