In 1988, Def Leppard was flying high. They were at the top of their game, MTV was blasting all their videos all day long. Now was a perfect time to compile all their music videos together in one place and sell it to the buying hungry public on VHS. The video was called ‘Historia’ and it was released on July 5, 1988 and went on to sell over 200,000 copies in the U.S. alone making it a double platinum release. Back in the day, I bought this up on VHS the day it came out. Ran home, popped it in and sat back and enjoyed all the videos of the band from the ‘On Through the Night’ album up to ‘Hysteria’. It was 17 videos of pure Leppard magic. Oops, it was 18 videos actually on the VHS tape because “Love Bites” was added as a bonus and not listed.
Then in 2001, in the DVD era, Def Leppard released ‘Historia’ again except this time as a 2 video set and released with ‘In the Round, In Your Face’ live concert. And if that wasn’t enough, they updated with 5 more videos from the album ‘Slang’ and ‘Euphoria’. And of course, I went and bought this as well. The bad news is, I don’t have the VHS tape anymore as I didn’t think I’d need it anymore which I don’t, but would still be cool to have in the collection though.
The video kicks off with the some old timey style silent film like music and a some openings notes about the videos. Then it goes in to the only video from ‘On Through the Night’ with the video for “Hello America”. It was full of special video effects and why was the drum set out front??? Man, they all looked so young. Really great to see this early promotional video from Top of the Pops. Then we get three more promotional videos all from ‘High & Dry’. We get “Let It Go”, “High & Dry” and “Bringin’ On the Heartbreak (Version 1 with Pete Willis)”. All three were shot on the same day and done with live performances. I remember when I first saw these videos I thought they were the coolest as they looked so cool up there on the stage rocking out. And we get the first glimpse of the Union Jack shorts Rick Allen would help make famous.
In 2018, the Def Leppard camp released their first of what should become a 4 Volume Collection. This first one was simply called “The Collection, Volume One”. It was released on June 1, 2018 and contained the first four albums on vinyl (or CD depending which you bought). You also received ‘Live at the L.A. Forum” (which we’ve reviewed) and a 7″ Single of the debut Def Leppard E.P. Another bonus album in this collection is a compilation of Rare releases called ‘Rarities – Volume One’. Some were single versions of album songs or remixes and some were B-Sides of single releases. I have everyone of these in CD version, but did not have on vinyl so this set made me very happy.
The collection of songs ranges back to the beginning in 1979 with the band’s first two singles and goes all the way up to the B-Sides from the band’s Diamond released album in 1987 called ‘Hysteria’. It is a great selection of songs and to have them all on one LP is really cool and something that will get played quite frequently as I love all these songs. Let’s get in to the meat of it and talk about the music as that is why we are here.
To celebrate the 40th Anniversary of the bands debut album, Def Leppard put together quite an impressive box set. Released on March 20, 2020, “The Early Years 79-81” box set was full of goodies. Not only did we get the first two albums, ‘On Through the Night’ and ‘High ‘N’ Dry’, but we got the live album ‘When the Walls Come Tumbling Down’ which we have alread talked about. The fourth disc, “Too Many Jitterbugs’ title is actually a line from the song “Glad I’m Alive”, was chock full of Rare songs and B-Sides as well as Single Edits and remixes. For someone new collecting Lep stuff, this is a great disc. For someone like myself, I had most everything already in some form, but not quite everything which is why this is so great.
The set kicks off with the three songs from The Def Leppard E.P. which are “Ride Into the Sun”, “Getcha Rocks Off” and “The Overture”. The first track is “Ride Into the Sun”. The song is very different than the two other versions of the song released later that are more familiar to most fans. The first version was a B-Side on the “Hysteria” single and the last version was on the album ‘Retroactive’. The B-Side version was my favorite until I heard the original which is now my favorite version of this song. It is the true intention of the song and it has a better sound and feel. The guitar and drum work are awesome and Joe sounded so young and fresh. The guitar solo was better and an overall more satisfying experience. It is the more rock version of the song and pure Def Leppard at their best.
Track two on Side One is “Getcha Rocks Off”. This track was re-recorded for their first full length album “On Through the Night”, but the title was changed to just “Rocks Off”. I think this song sounds better as well over the re-recorded version. It doesn’t have the fake crowd noise or the weird guitar sounds that are thrown in needlessly. The E.P. version is also a more hard rock sounding song.
“The Overture” is an epic song at over 7 minutes long. It was also re-recorded for the ‘On Through The Night Album’ like “Getcha Rocks Off”. Again, due to how amazing this record sounds, I prefer this song over the version on “On Through the Night”. What I love about the song is the changing tempos, the great double guitars of Steve & Pete. The song takes you on a great musical journey.
“Wasted”, but this single is different than the album version which is odd. It had never been released on an album until the release of The Collection, Volume 1 (2018). it sounds more raw and like an early demo of the studio track or something. It is still great though. The same with “Hello America” as it is a single version that isn’t the album version either. I’m not sure the reason behind this, but I like different versions so I’m all good.
After that we get a previously unreleased version of “Rock Brigade”. The song is a very early version of the song which lacks the punch of the guitars on the “On Through the Night’ version and the drums don’t sound like Rick Allen’s and for that it the lesser track. But you can hear the promise of what was to come. Then the coolest song they’ve never released on a studio album, “Glad I’m Alive”. It is a fast paced, groove-tastic piece of brilliant rock that is such a shame they never did anything with this as it is perfection. It is also the namesake for this album. “Good Morning Freedom” is a B-Side to “Hello America” and opens with some great drumming from young Rick Allen. His drumming throughout is fantastically slamming. Another rocker and another gem from this band. It is more razor sharp guitars cutting through those Elliott vocals.
The rest of the album are single edits and remixes. We get the single edit for the opening track for ‘High ‘N’ Dry’ called “Let It Go” which chops 30 seconds off the album version. It cuts out a lot of the guitar wankering which is what makes the original so bad ass. Then we get a single edit for “Switch 625” and the only I can see that is different is it removed some of the fade that comes off of “Bringing on the Heartbreak”.
The next two tracks are the single edit for “Bringin’ On the Heartbreak” which knocks off about 40 seconds from the original and again, doesn’t make it better. It also has a cleaner ending rather than the fade in to “Switch 625”. The next track is the original version of “Me And My Wine” and it is the version that is the B-Side to “Bringin’ On the Heartbreak”. It has more punch and more of a rawness to it than the later remix version. I like it a lot! A punk attitude with dash of hard rock.
The final two tracks are the Remixes of “Bringin’ On the Heartbreak” and “Me and My Wine” that were on the 1984 re-issue of the ‘High & Dry’ album. The remixes were done with added synthesizers and piano overdubs to make it sound more like what was done on ‘Pyromania’. which was out at the time of the re-issue. The remix doesn’t make them better, but they are already great songs so fine, whatever they felt was necessary. It did cause the album to sell a lot more copies so all good.
And that wraps this one up. Being a compilation of tracks, I wouldn’t delete anything on this one. A lot of great tracks with only a couple I didn’t already have in the collection. It is a lot like the bootleg I have “First Strike” which we already reviewed, but better sounding. It is nice having the songs all on one disc rather than spread out on singles or E.P.’s so for that it is worth buying. My Overall Score is a 5.0 out of 5.0 Stars as you can’t go wrong with The Early years of Def Leppard.
2 Loud 2 Old Music 