Everything old is new again. At least that's what the members of Def Leppard are hoping as they ready the release of Euphoria, the band's first album since 1996's critically lauded but publicly ignored Slang. Avoiding the big vocal harmonies, bombastic drums and shredding guitars that turned Eighties albums Pyromania and Hysteria into multi-platinum successes, Def Leppard experimented with a more contemporary style on Slang, but left reactionary fans high 'n' dry and failed to win any converts.

"We could have made Sgt. Pepper's or Dark Side of the Moon and it wouldn't have made a difference," says guitarist Phil Collen. "We should have gone on vacation the whole of the Nineties." Now, with the new millennium approaching and cock rock on the rise again, Def Leppard is embracing the past and returning to the pop-metal style that sold forty-three million records.

"People are sick of the decade of misery," Collen opines. Specifically, he says, folks are tired of bands that are "all pissed off, with all this angst. 'We hate everyone.' Well, we don't. We love our parents. We love what we do. Why not share it with everyone?" On Euphoria, he says, "we went out of our way to sound like Def Leppard," reverting to tried-and-true methods of layered recording, tracking parts separately and assembling them in the mix.

The band lived and worked at vocalist Joe Elliott's Dublin home studio with Slang co-producer/engineer Pete Woodroffe, though longtime cohort Robert John "Mutt" Lange (Pyromania, Hysteria) was there in spirit if not the flesh. Though unable to produce the album, Lange wrote three songs (including the first single "Promises") with Collen, offered advice by phone and then in person for four days on a stopover en route to Sweden. "It was like doing a seminar," says drummer Rick Allen of brainstorming with Lange for the first time in eight years. "The songs that he collaborated on, it gave us something to aim for. It raised the bar, raised the standard."

Allen, who lost his left arm in a 1984 car accident, feels that Def Leppard looks "like a bunch of choirboys" compared to other subjects featured on VH-1's Behind the Music rockumentaries, but does confess that "every single person in this band has wanted to quit at one time or another." What stopped them? "Realizing you can't do anything else," laughs Allen. "And realizing that it would be like leaving a family. No matter how hard you try you just can't."

After a series of promotional appearances, including in-stores at Wal-Marts in San Antonio, Texas, on June 8 and Kansas City, Mo., on June 9, and a Howard Stern radio broadcast on June 11, Def Leppard will rehearse for a summer tour of State Fairs that kicks off July 16 and runs through Sept. 11. A full-production tour will commence in the fall, its size and scope to be determined by the success of Euphoria.

Matching the twelve-million of Hysteria, which landed Def Leppard in the elite Diamond Award club (for RIAA certification of ten million records sold in the U.S.), won't be easy, but Def Leppard may benefit from the current trend toward shiny, happy music -- even if it's boy bands that are doing the reaping. In any case, Allen doesn't think of Euphoria as a comeback record, "just a really good Def Leppard record."

GERRI MILLER
(June 3, 1999)