Tag: It Don’t Matter

Def Leppard – ‘When the Walls Came Tumbling Down (April 26, 1980)’ (2020) – Album Review (The Def Leppard Collection Series)

Published on by 2loud2oldmusic96 Comments

Def Leppard never wanted to release live albums. At least that is what I remember them saying years and years ago. Was it something like “a band only releases live albums when they’ve run out of ideas”. Don’t quote me on that, that is something I swear I heard them say a very long time ago. And for 31 years, Def Leppard never officially released a live album. A live video, yes. But never an album until around 2011 with ‘Mirrorball’. And it would be another 9 years before we ever got a live show from their Early Years! But thanks to the box set ‘The Early Years’, we finally had a live show from 1980. It doesn’t get much earlier than that for them. It was recorded at New Theatre in Oxford on April 26, 1980. The show is completely unedited and as is (so they say) and I would believe it.

But it wasn’t my first early show of Def Leppard. I have a bootleg from a show at BBC’s Paris Theatre, London, England, 22nd August 1979 and some recorded at the Reading Festival, Reading, England, 24th August 1980 and it was called “Live at the Top”. That was my first taste of early Lep and what a taste it was. This show is even better and sees a hungry, raw Def Leppard giving it their all. There are four historical pieces on here as we get a liver version of Good Morning Freedom which the band had never released, an early version of Lady Strange from an album that hadn’t come out yet and two songs that would wind up completely different when they were finally released on two different albums. The show was first released in that box set, then they decided to release a vinyl of the show as well which I have both versions as you can see in the last picture.

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Def Leppard – ‘On Through The Night’ (1980) – Album Review (the Def Leppard Collection Series)

Published on by 2loud2oldmusic92 Comments

The Def Leppard E.P. from 1979, sold really well and saw the band’s popularity rise heavily in their home country of the U.K. The Union Jack was their friend, but that was soon about to change. With the release of their debut album, shouts were coming from the media that Def Leppard were sell-outs and trying to pander to the American public especially with a song called “Hello America” and the fact that they toured way more in the U.S. then they did anywhere else. As a result of those shouts, they were abused and heckled and bombarded with bottles of piss at the Reading Festival, but to be fair a lot of bands were abused during that festival.

Def Leppard were one of the first bands on this ride called the New Wave of British Heavy Metal which included the likes of Iron Maiden, Saxon, Tigers of Pan Tang and many more. Their sound was more raw, definitely more heavy and yet a little more polished then some of the other bands. There was no denying that this young gang of boys with an average age of 18, were ready to rock America and the World. The band consisted of singer Joe Elliott, guitarists Steve Clark and Pete Willis, bassist Rick Savage and the Thunder God himself, Rick Allen who was the tender age of 16 when the album came out.

The album was produced by Colonel Tom Allen who you might know from producing acts like Judas Priest and engineer on albums from Black Sabbath. He helped craft a really solid and exciting debut album which saw the light of day March 14, 1980. The album saw three singles with only 2 charting in the UK, but the album did sell over a million copies over time thanks to their big albums ‘Pyromania’ and ‘Hysteria’ I am sure. Through the success of the album and the touring, they band caught the eye of producer, Robert John “Mutt” Lange. The man saw something special and these young lads and would change their world forever.

I remember growing up and seeing this album in my brothers collection and I remember him seeing them live and telling me how great they were. So I grabbed this album and listened to it a lot. I had a strange fascination with it using it for two projects in school. One was a paper in English which I talked about the song “Wasted”. That paper sucked and I was lucky to walk away with a “C” when it probably deserved and “F”. The second was for Art Class when I drew the album cover. I still have the original album on vinyl and the cover is all marked up since I drew lines on it to help with my actual drawing. It is rough. Not the drawing, it looks great and is below…

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