This week on The Collection, we are talking Def Leppard and specifically, Def Leppard on Cassette. We go through every single album that has been released on Cassette, what I’m missing and what was never released on cassette. From ‘On Through the Night’ to ‘Drastic Symphonies’ let’s walk through the Def Leppard Cassette Catalog.
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If you read my site, you know Def Leppard is one of my all-time favorite bands, if not the #1 band on my list. And for that, this list was extremely hard for me to do, yet easy as well. I will already go ahead and say it, there is not a horrible album in this bunch only some I like more than others and yet a few that are absolute no-brainers as the top choices. And yes, I am biased.
Speaking of top choices, my Top 5 is my Top 5 because each album is completely different. The band completely changed up the sound and style on each of these albums and when the band does that, for me they hit it out of the park.
From the very beginning in 1980 with their debut and all the way up to today, the band has been mainstay in my musical journey. In 2019, they were inducted in to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and all I can say is it is about damn time!!! They received the highest public vote so I am not the only one that things these guys from England are pretty darn great. And their last studio album was 2023’s ‘Drastic Symphonies’…so they are still going strong…sort of.
So, let’s get to it. Here is my favorite Def Leppard albums from the worst one to the very best. I hope you enjoy it.
WORST – DRASTIC SYMPHONIES (2023)
This album is basically dreadful with some shining moments. There are only 6 tracks worth listening to in my opinion and the rest was waste of time. They did at least experiment with a few tracks, although some were so bad they hurt, at least they tried. The problem was they should’ve “Tried” on all the songs rather then simply add orchestration to a lot of the original tracks. That is laziness. Keep “Turn to Dust”, “Paper Sun”, “Hysteria”, “Too Late For Love” and “King of the World”, skip the rest.
In 2006, Def Leppard released their 9th studio album, ‘Yeah!’. It was a covers album and had 14 tracks on it. The band, however, recorded a ton more songs that were not used. Some wound up on the Japanese Edition as bonus tracks, others as Best Buy bonus tracks, Target and even iTunes. You would literally need to buy 5 versions of the album to get all the tracks. Well, you don’t really need to buy the Japanese edition because the Wal-Mart edition had the two Japanese Bonus Tracks as well as 3 more songs and a selection of interviews with the band. This version has the most bonus tracks of any of the other offers and is a great buy. It would’ve been released on the same day as the album which was May 23, 2006.
The opening track is the only song that breaks the band’s rule about all being British songs. It is cover of the Tom Petty & The Heartbreaker’s “American Girl”. I want to say that all these songs are the demos because they aren’t played with all the band members. This one has Joe on vocals, but it is Vivian Campbell on all instruments except Marc Danzeisen on drums. Additional backing vocals with Jesse Sheely. The song captures the energy of the original, the guitar sound like they should and the harmonies are great. A fun, energetic song and a great choise.
The first interview with the band, “Backstage Interview #1”, sees the band talking about the most recent tour with little snippets from each member. They all say it has been great, but Rick Allen says travel was hard. They also talk about how the audience seems to change with each tour.
If you follow Def Leppard at all, you know they really are a 70’s band. Their influences were definitely 70’s and the whole glam rock scene. You can hear it in their songs as well and their side projects like Cybernauts where it is really obvious they have a passion for that style of music. Def Leppard now felt it was time for a covers album. The label brought it up to them, but Joe Elliott had already wanted to do one so it was an easy decision to agree on. Wow! Has a label and band ever agreed on anything before? This must be a first.
They had a few rules, the songs had to be hits and had to have been released prior to the band signing their record deal. And, the songs had to be British. They didn’t stick with that rule entirely as we will see on the next review, but for this album they did. Each band member brought a list of 20 songs each so they had 100 songs to choose from. I imagine they had some overlap which would easily help narrow the selection if more than one person picked it. And what a wide variety of artists they picked and what a great set of songs. I am not a massive fan of cover albums, but there are a few I have liked and luckily this turned out to be one of them. The album came out on May 23, 2006 and the album did okay. It did chart at #16 on the Billboard 200 and the singles charted on these types of charts I am not familiar with but they can say it charted.
One really cool thing about this record is the packaging. Inside you had individual pictures of each band member recreating an iconic image from a 70’s album. They are as follows:
Rick Savage – Freddie Mercury from the album Queen II
Vivian Campbell – Marc Bolan from T. Rex’s Electric Warrior
Joe Elliott – David Bowie from the rear cover of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars
Rick Allen – Lou Reed, Transformer
Phil Collen – The Stooges, Raw Power
The pictures are down below. I love that you also get the original Def Leppard triangle logo with light shining through it giving the rainbow affect from Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. I love when some thought actually goes in to the packaging and this one is A+ material. Now, does the music match the packaging? Let’s find out.
We are to the final of the Big Collection Series I will be doing. It is DEF LEPPARD!!! This is the last large collection I have…well…in my collection. Will it be the final series? Probably not, but don’t expect any more to go to this size again. There is nothing else left that would even hold a candle to it. The only one’s bigger are Kiss and Jeff Scott Soto and we’ve finished those series. Bon Jovi is close, but we are currently doing that one as well. So, this is it for the Big Guns.
Coming September 7th, 2023, DEF LEPPARD!! We are going to go through the series in chronological order of the material, not necessarily the album release dates. My Buddy Mike Ladano did his Leppard Series that way, and honestly, I liked it. So the years of some of these releases might be more current, but all the songs on it aren’t. There might be some minor exceptions to that rule over time, but my series, my rules. I hope you are ready for it!
What will we be reviewing? I have that mapped out so let’s talk through it.
THE STUDIO ALBUMS:
And I didn’t realize I didn’t have the 2015 self-titled album on vinyl. I think I was waiting for The Collections, Volume 4 to come out, but maybe I need to go ahead and get it.
For this edition of The Original vs. The Cover, we are discussing the song “Hanging on the Telephone” originally performed by the band The Nerves. We are going to do two different covers with the first and most famous being that from Blondie and the other cover is from Def Leppard. The song was written by Jack Lee of the band The Nerves back in the 1976 and was released on their debut E.P. The song never charted and the band was short lived as they didn’t do much after that.
Blondie heard the song while sitting in a taxi in Japan. The song was given to them by Jeffrey Lee Pierce of the band The Gun Club and they popped in to listen to while in that cab. They really liked it and decided to record it. Blondie reached out to Jake Lee for permission to record it and since Jake was facing financial ruin it was a very easy decision. The answer was yes and Jake made a little money that was much needed.
The song is about a man that sounds quite obsessed with the woman he is or was seeing. He keeps calling her and calling her and calling her so he can hear her voice again. The woman’s mother says she can’t see him any more it sounds like and that seems to make him quite angry and he won’t stop trying to get in touch with her. Very stalkerish if you ask me. I think someone might need a restraining order in place. Still no denying it is a fun song.
For this episdoe of The Original vs. The Cover, we are going to discuss the anthem for the outcast, “Smokin’ in the Boy’s Room. The Original is by the band Brownsville Station who were a regional band out of Michigan and this was probably their biggest hit and was off their 1973 album ‘Yeah!’ (I wonder if this title inspired the title to Def Leppard’s Cover’s album. Hmmm). It reached #3 on the Billboard Charts. The Cover as done by Motley Crue was off their album ‘Theatre of Pain’ from 1985. Crue only took the song to #16 on the Billboard Chart, but MTV played the crap out of this song.
The song was written by Michael “Cub” Koda along with Michael Lutz and is about a bunch of outcast school kids who would hideout in the bathroom to not get caught by the principal for smokin’. They get caught and the principal tells them “Smokin’ Ain’t Allowed in School”. The song was inspired by Cub’s experiences as a young pup sneaking smokes that he stole from his parents at the movie theatre.
Whose version is better you might ask yourself so let us explore each song and find out which version is best.
If you read my site, you know Def Leppard is one of my all-time favorite bands, if not the #1 band on my list. And for that, this list was extremely hard for me to do, yet easy as well. I will already go ahead and say it, there is not a horrible album in this bunch only some I like more than others and yet a few that are absolute no-brainers as the top choices. And yes, I am biased.
Speaking of top choices, my Top 5 is my Top 5 because each album is completely different. The band completely changed up the sound and style on each of these albums and when the band does that, for me they hit it out of the park.
From the very beginning in 1980 with their debut and all the way up to today, the band has been mainstay in my musical journey. In 2019, they will be inducted in to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and all I can say is it is about damn time!!! They received the highest public vote so I am not the only one that things these guys from England are pretty darn great.
So, let’s get to it. Here is my favorite Def Leppard albums from the worst one to the very best. I hope you enjoy it.
For this month’s edition of “The Original vs. The Cover”, we are going to take on a third version as we tackle the David Essex song “Rock On”. We will battle it out between David Essex’s original version vs. covers by both Michael Damian and Def Leppard.
The song was written for a movie that David was starring in called “That’ll Be the Day” which also had Ringo Starr and Kieth Moon. The song, however, was not used in the movie. David wrote the song based on his character from the movie and it has a pure old rock & roll rebellious attitude. The song is actually a tip-of-the-hat to the old time rockers as it mentions “Blue Suede Shoes” and “Summertime Blues” as well as it gives a shout-out to an old Hollywood rebel James Dean.
Since we have three versions, we might as well jump right into it.
DAVID ESSEX
David’s version hit #3 on the UK singles chart in 1973 and didn’t do that great in the US, but doesn’t mean we Americans don’t love it. The song is very unique in that there are no instruments that play any chords which means there is No Guitar and No Piano on the song at all. It is all bass, percussion and horns. It is really stripped down.
You can tell a major influence of the song is Jamaican raggae and the whole dub style. The song is driven by the bass line which was done by Herbie Flowers. According to Wikipedia…”(Herbie’s) double-tracked bass guitar was treated with a prominent “slapback” delay effect, creating a complex polyrhythmic backbeat.”
For the third time in as many years, Def Leppard took part on Record Store Day. In 2016, the did a picture disc of the self-titled album and last year they re-released their original EP release on vinyl, The Def Leppard EP. For 2018, we are given another EP, but this time it is 3 songs recorded live at Abbey Road Studios on May 8, 2008.
What does the Def Leppard press release say about this release, well I will tell you…
The retro cover art is similar to the Def Leppard EP and features the large logo from the 1980 ‘On Through The Night’ album and ‘Hello America’ single. Also included is the street sign from the studios in North West London and the same red stamp title seen on ‘The Lost Session’ iTunes EP from January.
The band recorded a session at the legendary London studios on 8th May 2008 when promoting the ‘Songs From The Sparkle Lounge’ album. Using the same room The Beatles used to record most of their biggest albums in the 1960s.
This was filmed for the UK TV show ‘Live From Abbey Road’ which was broadcast on More4 TV on 1st August 2008 and featured three songs – ‘Rocket’, ‘Rock On’ and ‘C’mon C’mon’
2 Loud 2 Old Music 