What is it with 1983? Oh yeah: I was twenty. Well, here we are again with another album that, at the time, was pretty damn influential on my music tastes. Now, I know there are the purists among you out there laughing and shaking your head and saying “AOR, man! AOR!” and it's true that this album did chart higher than any of their others and push the band in a more radio-friendly direction, to the point where they really lost touch with their metal roots completely as time went on. But I bet most of you have this in your collection, don't you?
Pyromania --- Def Leppard --- 1983 (Vertigo)
The first album to feature Phil Collen (no, NOT Collins!) on guitar, and the Sheffield band's third album in total, this certainly raised a band who were well known but hardly superstars to the level of world acclaim. The album hit number two, their highest ever, and gave them a number one single.
Pyromania does walk a line between harder heavy metal and softer AOR/pop-rock, but it's fair to say there's enough in there to satisfy all but the pickiest of metalheads. It opens on “Rock! Rock! (Till you drop)” with a big heavy guitar riff and then you can hear the more commercial chords slipping in for a moment, but when Joe Elliot growls in with the vocal you are in no doubt that he's in a metal mood. The crystal-clear production of supremo Robert John “Mutt” Lange is evident here from the off, and every track is pristine and perfect in terms of production.
This does not however take away from the raw metal sound of the songs (well, most of them) and Collen does much to stake his claim as the “new guy”, while with Steve Clark and Pete Willis they're now a triple guitar assault, and it shows. The first indication that they may at this point have one eye on America comes with the first single, “Photograph”. I mean, it's heavy enough and one of my favourites on the album, but it's definitely got that made-for-the-charts structure, right down to the “Whoa-oh”s in the leadup to the chorus, the chorus itself, and the slightly toned down guitars. Even Elliott dials it down a notch, making his voice more a screech than a growl. It's no surprise to find that Lange has a hand in the writing of much of the material here, doing what he did for Heart and would later do for The Cars. The man knows how to write a catchy tune, that's for sure.
And it was a success. “Photograph” went to number one (in the Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks) although oddly was largely ignored in the UK, not even breaking into the top forty. “Stagefright” returns to the pure rock and metal of their earlier albums like
Hysteria, while still throwing in a chorus commercial enough to keep the radio happy. Really nice solo, though who's playing it I could not tell you as we have three candidates to choose from . There's a kind of Bon Jovi/cowboy feel to “Too late for love”, and you can tell it was written to be a single, and so it was. It's pretty formulaic but it's reasonable fun. There are some good performances on it, and as it qualifies (barely) as the ballad on the album, (sort of; see further) at least we don't have to suffer another. But there is good news.
The absolute standout of the album comes next, in the six-minute “Die hard the hunter”. If you bought the album and thought it was crap up to then (and much of it is) then this one track would probably allow you to justify shelling out for the thing. A big, bombastic number, it opens with the sound of helicopters, machine-gun fire, air-raid sirens and bombs going off before a dark guitar, introduces a pretty good sort of phased vocal, with some great harmonies, but just when you think “Oh crap! Another ballad!” it stops for a moment as the title is sung and then percussion pounds in with the three guitars amping everything up, the pace picks up and it begins to swagger. It marches along with purpose and menace, and a great solo in the fourth minute. The song is about a soldier returning from an unnamed war (Vietnam maybe) who has PTSD and sees enemies everywhere. When Elliott sings
”YOu got no enemy, no front line/ The only battle's in the back of your mind” I'd say there are a lot of Iraqi and Afghan vets who understand.
Maybe it's a shade simplistic, but for me it's far and away the best track on the album. It shows what Def Leppard could do when they really tried, and if they had written more songs like this then maybe they wouldn't be as reviled as they are today. The same basic guitar line introduces “Foolin'”, the other ballad, with some good vocal harmonies and a menacing guitar. This is considered a ballad, but for me it doesn't fit the criteria. It gets too fast and powerful for the chorus, which is in itself very lacklustre. Another standout is “Rock of ages”, which returns to the pure rock ethos, grinding out the chorus with fervour and it has to be fair a hook to die for, not surprising to see that it was also released as a single and pretty much followed the success of “Photograph”, if not the other two singles.
The riff, to be entirely fair, is pretty much ripped off from that other single too, and Elliott's attempt to kind of rap actually works, and he manages to slip in the album title as well as many other rock cliches, such as “I love rock and roll”, “Long live rock and roll” “We got the power, got the glory” and “Better to burn out than fade away”. For all that, it's catchy as fu
ck and as I say one of the best tracks on the album. It just sounds like the guys had a lot of fun recording it, and of course would be a staple of their live set for a long time to come. The striking of a match accompanied by Elliott's nasty little laugh at the end is a good touch. As ever though, there's a tipping point, a moment at which the album starts to slide, and for me this is it.
I never really remember the last three tracks. I can tell you all about any of the other songs prior, but “Comin' under fire” does nothing for me with its AOR-like vocal harmonies and its rather simple melody, to say nothing of harking both back to “Die hard the hunter” and forward to “Billy's got a gun”. Decent solo, but once the song has played I'm sure that again I will forget it. The almost Queen-like harmonies at the end are a joke. “Action! Not words” is worse though. At least a little thought was put into the song before it, but this? It just sounds like they cherry-picked from all their favourite rock songs, jammed them all together, threw a title on it and walked off. I mean,
”I'll be the hero, you be the star/ With your wine and your caviar”? Really? Anyone knows you drink champagne with caviar! Philistine! Seriously though, a lyric like that did not give the song much of a chance, did it?
I always feel it's important for an album to end well, as the final track is the one you end up humming as you put the album away, switch off your media player, go to the next selection, or whichever way you listen to music, and to be fair, “Billy's got a gun” has a stride and an arrogance to it that is somehow endearing. There's a drama and a pathos in it that makes it stand out a little from the last two songs, and yeah, now that I listen to it --- I haven't heard this album in yonks --- it's a pretty decent closer.
TRACKLISTING AND RATINGS
1. Rock! Rock! (Till you drop)
2. Photograph
3. Stagefright
4. Too late for love
5. Die hard the hunter
6. Foolin'
7. Rock of ages
8. Comin' under fire
9. Action! Not words
10. Billy's got a gun
If you want to hear real Def Leppard, I guess listen to “On through the night” or “High and dry”, but this was my first experience of the band at a time when I was sort of transitioning through heavy metal towards progressive rock and more standard rock, and I was quite impressed with it. Listening to it now, with the benefit both of age and of the knowledge of how the band changed direction, I can see it's very much a flawed album. However there's still enough there to keep me happy, and some of these songs stand as real classics, even if the album could not make such a claim.