Def Leppard Hysteria - making of

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Def Leppard’s Hysteria – making of

February 1984: After wrapping up their successful Pyromania tour in Bangkok, Def Leppard set up shop to Dublin for tax reasons, where they started writing and pre-production for what became Hysteria. Over the next six months, they each demoed multiple riffs and ideas onto 4-track cassette recorders from which they’d assemble proper songs – these included “Animal”, “Armageddon It”, “Don’t Shoot Shotgun”, “Excitable” among a few. Producer Mutt Lange, who worked on the band’s last two albums, also joined in for some of the writing, but later informed them he couldn’t produce it due to burnout from prior projects.

11 August – late October 1984: The infamous recording sessions with producer Jim Steinman and engineer Neil Dorfsman at Wisseloord Studios (Hilversum, Netherlands). It has been well documented that Steinman’s standards were not as high as the band’s. Joe: “[Steinman] wouldn’t adapt and we wouldn’t compromise, and that’s what happened. So we parted company.” The eight backing tracks completed during these sessions were scrapped entirely.

November 1984 – June 1985: The band continue recording on their own at Wisseloord Studios, alongside engineer Nigel Green. This time, they were recording guitar parts and vocals to a LinnDrum drum machine click track, giving them flexibility to change and add sections of a song as they went along. They worked on 10 song titles – “Women”, “Animal”, “Gods Of War”, “Armageddon It”, “Don’t Shoot Shotgun”, “Run Riot”, “Excitable”, “Love Bites” plus “Fractured Love” and “Ring of Fire”. However, without Mutt’s leadership, the sessions were painfully slow and unfocused, trying out each other’s ideas in the studio. Nigel: “We plodded on for quite a while but in the final analysis it was Mutt they really needed.”

31 December 1984: Rick Allen tragically lost his left arm from a car accident, when it flipped off a country road. As devastating as it was for the band, they stood by Rick’s eventual decision to return to the drums, and Rick had built for him a custom Simmons drum kit with Shark foot pedals to trigger his left-handed parts. He eventually returned to Holland on 22 February to rejoin everyone else, having the fourth studio at Wisseloord to himself to practice on his new kit.

Mid-June - late July 1985: Sessions at Studio Des Dames in Paris for six weeks, where lead vocals for “Animal” and “Run Riot” were completed. Mutt Lange finally joined the sessions after a much-needed rest, overseeing the vocal sessions. Meanwhile, the rest of the band (plus Jeff Rich) rehearsed in Paris for possible shows… Sadly, those plans was out the window once Mutt Lange gave them a reality check on the standard of the material so far & decided it needed more work – they hadn’t made as much of a leap from Pyromania as they’d hoped, and the songs were starting to sound dated.

August 1985 – July 1986: Recording at Windmill Lane Studio 2 in Dublin with Mutt Lange fully involved as producer - this was when the album really began to take shape. They basically redid the album from scratch, spending a lot of time with Mutt re-working and updating the songs.[1] “Animal”, for instance, had the backing track redone underneath the lead vocal recorded in Paris. Most of the guitars were cut there (as per Phil in a 1987 interview), plus lead and backing vocals. They wrote a few new songs: “Rocket”, “Hysteria” and “Love And Affection”.

August 1986: For relief from the studio, the band partook in the Monsters Of Rock mini-tour through UK & Europe. Joe does additional vocal work at Wisseloord Studios during a week’s break.

September 1986 – January 1987: Final phase of recording at Wisseloord Studios –mostly lead vocals from Joe and adding bass & drums to the existing tracks. Drums were programmed like on the previous album, with Rick Allen playing the songs through on his Simmons kit, feeding into the Fairlight CMI computer – the beats would be quantised and sequenced on the Fairlight, so they could be edited later. The bass parts were also programmed on the Fairlight, sequencing Rick Savage’s guide bass parts so they can lock in with the drums.

“Pour Some Sugar On Me” would be the last song written, around late 1986 or early 1987.

Wasn’t without a couple of hiccups… Joe caught mumps in late November, returning 2 weeks later. The day he’d arrived, Mutt had his own car accident on his way to the studio, landing in hospital for a few weeks with leg injuries.

Late January 1987: Eight days of final vocal overdubs on “Pour Some Sugar On Me” and “Armageddon It” at Windmill Lane Studio 2. Joe: "Armageddon It was the last one. Mutt and I were only ones in the studio. And as soon as I finished doing the last bit of that song, […] it was like 'Oh we're finished, man. This is great.' We shook hands, sat down, looked at each other and we both let out a big sigh."

February – June(?) 1987: Mixing stage at Mutt Lange’s private studio in Surrey, involving Mutt, plus mix engineers Mike Shipley followed by Nigel Green. They had one or two 24-track reels, one 32-track digital reel and a Fairlight CMI run live in the mix, feeding into an SSL console. The Fairlight provided the sound effects, bass and drum parts so they could be edited on the fly and sounds could be refined.

Source

Animal Instinct by David Fricke

International Musician & Recording World, October 1987

Various