The band was now five albums in but it had been 12 years total. Not a great track record. They wanted to not have 4 years or more between albums again so it was decided to release a compilation album to hold fans over until the next release. But this wasn’t any ordinary greatest hits compilation, nope…that would’ve been too easy. The band decided to pull together a bunch of rare tracks and B-sides and put them together on one release…but still…not so simple as they re-recorded parts, remixed others and gave us a solid collection of songs from their career over the span of 1984 up to 1993. It also gives us some of the last recordings of the late, great Steve Clark.
The album would be called ‘Retro Active’ and released on October 5, 1993. It would spawn three singles including “Two Steps Behind”, “Miss You In A Heartbeat” and The Sweet cover for “Action”. Both “Two Steps Behind” and “Miss You In A Heartbeat” would go Top 40 and the album would go on to sell over 1,000,000 copies in the U.S. alone. Heck, even the opening track, “Desert Storm” would hit the U.S. Mainstream Rock Chart at #12 without even being released technically as a single.
One really cool aspect of the album is the cover which was designed by Hugh Syme and Nels Israelson. The image is a photographed of a woman sitting in front of a vanity mirror. However, she is positioned just so, along with other items, so that when you moved the album further away from you it turned in to a skull. A really cool concept
The album opens up with an outtake from the ‘Hysteria’ album called “Desert Song”. It was originally recorded as an instrumental and is the last song released by the band to feature Steve Clark on guitar. In fact, it is noted as the only song in the catalog to feature both Steve and his replacement Vivian Campbell who did some background vocals on the song. I know I said it was originally an instrumental and it was, but lyrics were written when the pulled the song back out after forgetting about it for years. The song is about Mick Ronson who was dying of cancer around this time. It is a killer opening track, hard hitting and a really cool Clark tone to it which is so missed. The bass work is great on this as well as the guitars. To me, the song sounds more like it would’ve fit on ‘Slang’ then on ‘Hysteria’. A truly fantastic track.
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.
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.
I do love bootlegs. They are a chance to hear a band’s live shows that were never released, a radio broadcast, old forgotten demos or whatever it may be. Bands hate them because they don’t get paid, however, diehard fans want them as they want to consume everything from their favorite bands. I own quite a few bootlegs for Def Leppard on CD, vinyl and DVD so we will go through a bunch, but first we will start with this one. It was released in 2013 and what is cool about this one it is a collection of various demos and rare albums from Def Leppard.
The first 3 songs, which were recorded a Fairview Studios in Hull, England back in November 1978, were actually released by the band. The songs “Ride Into the Sun”, “Getcha Rocks Off” and “The Overture” are taken from the band’s debut E.P. called ‘The Def Leppard E.P.’. We discussed that album in full detail on the first post in this series so we won’t repeat that story here. Back in 2013 when this bootleg was released, those three songs were extremely hard to find. There were only 1,000 copies or so of the first E.P. The band has since released them as a Record Store Day Release on a 12″ Single rather than the 7″ E.P. originally (The Def Leppard E.P. (1979/2017)). They have also re-released in the Box Set called The Early Years ’79-’81 (2020). Check those out as well.
The next batch of demos, songs 4-10, were recorded back at Fairview Studios during the Summer of 1979. These songs were never released, then in 1984, the bootleg called ‘First Strike’ was released without the permission of the band or management. Def Leppard sued to get the production stopped and they won. They even were paid royalties on what was sold. You can still find these on Discogs or ebay, but be prepared to pay through the roof on them as they are very rare. Someday I’ll get one.
What was great about these songs is that “Heat Street” and “See the Light” I don’t think I have seen the light of day yet, while “Glad I’m Alive” was on The Early Years Box Set. The other 4 songs were re-recorded for the debut album ‘On Through the Night’ which we will get to later. These demos were recorded live and are raw and fantastic.
It all started way back in 1976 when Rick Savage, Tony Kenning and Pete Doubleday started a band called Atomic Mass. Savage & Doubleday were on guitar and Kenning on drums. They brought in Andy Nicholas on bass and lead vocals were handled by Nick Mackley. Andy would leave and Rick moved to bass while Pete Willis was brought in on guitar. The singer left to be replaced by multiple singers who came and went. It was a revolving door of musicians.
Finally, things started to take shape. Joe Elliott came in and auditioned at only 18, but to play guitar not sing. He had met Pete on a bus back in November 1977. While auditioning, I guess his guitar playing was only so-so as they felt he was better as the lead singer. Then finally the last missing piece was added in January 1978 with the late-great Steve Clark on guitar. At this point, there was still no Rick Allen.
Now, they needed a new band name and Joe suggested they go by Deaf Leopard. Thanks to Tony, they changed the spelling to be more in the style of Led Zeppelin and Tony thought it would look less punk.
The band went to record the E.P. Fairview Studios in Hull, England way back in November of 1978 and it was self-produced. However, right before the recording, Tony Kenning quit and they used drummer Frank Noon from a band that called themselves “The Next Band”. Shortly thereafter, the band hired a 15 year old kid to be the drummer named Rick Allen. The E.P. only included three songs and was recorded by a band that was quite different than the band you know and love today.
2 Loud 2 Old Music 