Tag: Vault: Def Leppard Greatest Hits 1980-1995

Def Leppard – “When Love & Hate Collide” (1995) – CD Promo Single (The Def Leppard Collection Series)

Published on by 2loud2oldmusic8 Comments

For the band’s first greatest hits compilation called ‘Vault: Def Leppard Greatest Hits 1980-1995’ there was actually two new songs, but only one official single. The single was for the song “When Love & Hate Collide” and was released on on October 2, 1995 where is one of their highest charting songs in the UK for the band going to #2. In the US it didn’t crack the Top 40 on the Billboard Hot 100, but did make the Adult Top 40 going to #39…just barely making it. It was the only new song on the album…well the Japanese version of the album at least. That song was “Can’t Keep Away From the Flame” which we will get to shortly.

The CD I have here is actually the Promo CD that was released by Mercury. It was released in a grey generic record company cardboard sleeve and actually contained both new songs from the album with “When Love & Hate Collide” and “Can’t Keep Away From the Flame”. From what I can gather is this was a US promo and not available anywhere else. Pretty cool.

“When Love & Hate Collide” was written by Joe Elliott and Rick Savage and was demoed back during ‘Adrenalize’, but lost out to “Have You Ever Needed Someone So Bad”. The song had a slightly heavier production for that album rather then the stripped down version here. It was written while Steve Clark was in rehab and the guitar solo on the song is the last recorded guitar solo by Steve who died in 1991.

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Def Leppard – ‘Vault: Def Leppard Greatest Hits 1980-1995’ (1995) – Album Review (The Def Leppard Collection Series)

Published on by 2loud2oldmusic15 Comments

After five albums and another long delay between records, the band and label decided it was time to release a greatest hits package even though they were in the process of working on their nexxt album, ‘Slang’. This would also wrap-up the era pre-Vivian Campbell. From here on it was a different band and a new era. The greatest hits compilation is called “Vault: Def Leppard Greatest Hits 1980-1985 and was released in the UK on October 23, 1995 and finally in the US a week later on October 31, 1995. And has done pretty good over time going 5X platinum in the US and platinum and gold in numerous other countries as well. Grunge might be king at the time, but Leppard still sold some records.

A cool thing the band did to promote the album was play 3 acoustic shows on the same day…the catch was that it was on 3 different continents. The shows were in Tangiers, Morocco in Africa, London, England, UK in Europe, and Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada in North America. The feat also made the Guinness Book of World Records. Pretty crazy.

The album also had two different covers. This one you see above and there is one with an eye on it and the picture of the vault in the eye. I need to find that one. If that wasn’t enough, there were three versions of the album. Although most of the songs were the same, North America had “Miss You In A Heartbeat (Acoustic), while Europe had “Action”, “Make Love Like a Man” and “Heaven Is” and Japan had “Rock! Rock! Till You Drop” and a new track “Can’t Keep Away From the Flame”. A real fan would have all three versions…oops, guess I’m not a real fan. Okay, let’s get in to the songs, that is enough chit chat.

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