![]() But it also begs the question: where are the accompanying visuals? The tour was filmed – “We have lights, we have cameras,” Joe Elliott says during the intro to Women – but there’s no sign of any footage. While a recording that has gathered dust in the vaults for 30 years is never going to challenge Live And Dangerous for the title of Greatest Live Album Ever, it’s still a fine aural snapshot of a band in their imperial prime. In terms of 80s touchstones worth getting nostalgic about, the 12-inch remix is down near the bottom of the list.ĭiscs four and five are more interesting for the Leps diehard, containing an entire live show captured on their groundbreaking In The Round tour. The assorted Nuclear, Lunar and Orgasmic Mixes of the various singles couldn’t be more 1980s if they came hand-delivered by Max Headroom driving a Sinclair C5. Tear It Down, Ring Of Fire, I software uiphraseguid=“de1763ef-2b52-41e4-94d5-92aff078adc4”>SOFTWARE mark” gingersoftware uiphraseguid=“b7fc1316-1b8c-46f9-9bad-a9c5d88443ac” id=“d919cb56-2d17-4304-8de5-6ca304ab03b9”>Wanna Be Your Hero and an updated version of Ride Into The Sun from their very first EP – all perfectly serviceable, though none are good enough to challenge for a place in Hysteria’s first team (a hilariously sloshed version of Engelbert Humperdinck’s Release Me featuring road manager Malvin Mortimer on vocals wouldn’t even be allowed in the dressing room). Two of the discs round-up the various B-sides and remixes from the time. Which is most essential depends on your preference for studio tracks over their live counterparts. The four extra discs in the top-of-the range option pull together all the periphera from the era. Those 12 untouchable tracks perch regally at the centre, with everything else built around it. Wisely, this box set treats Hysteria like the holy relic it is. Add a song and you’re drawing a moustache on the Mona Lisa, take one away and you’re chopping the cock off Michelangelo’s David. Hysteria is a perfect 12-track work of art, end of story. ![]() You could argue that the album wouldn’t be any worse if they’d left it off, but that would be missing the point. Often remembered as the runt of the pack, if it’s remembered at all, it’s actually Hysteria’s most underrated track – a rush of guitar-heavy pop with a light touch that’s absent from the rest of the album. The leering funk of Excitable sounds like a bunch of Northern brickies hitting Studio 54 with a carrier bag full of Boddingtons, and is all the better for it.Īnd then there’s the closing track, Love And Affection. Run Riot is the closest Def Leppard ever came to punk rock – not really very close at all, but still as exhilarating as hell. Gods Of War is apocalyptic Reagan-era cold war paranoia re-imagined as towering pop-metal behemoth. Much of Hysteria’s rocket fuel comes from its first six tracks, but it’s the old side two where the gold can be found today. ![]() Still beats a poke in the eye with a shitty stick, though. They didn’t quite match that, notching up a comparatively trifling four Top 10 hits and two Top 20s (lead-off single Women vanished without trace). Leppard have said they went in wanting to make the hard rock version of Michael Jackson’s Thriller – an album that spawned seven US Top 10 singles. Hysteria aced it in that department too, from the opening space-age glam-rock one-two of Rocket and Women, through the pop-rock nirvana of Animal, to the sort of anthems that are so willfully brainless that only a genius could come up with them – yes, we’re looking at you, Pour Some Sugar On Me and Armageddon It. While both of those things played their part in the album’s success, it would have been nothing if the songs weren’t up to snuff. Hysteria redefined state-of-the-art, from its meticulously sharp production to the monstrous drum sound that inadvertently gave every other 80s band permission to sound like they were triggering explosive charges in a ballroom every time they hit the skins. They eventually emerged from the maelstrom with a stone-cold classic. It was plagued by false starts – a disastrous attempt to record with Jim Steinman fell apart when the band realised he might be a fantastic songwriter, but he was a hopeless producer and personal turmoil, most notably drummer Rick Allen’s car smash in which he lost his arm and nearly lost his life. Hysteria famously took four years to make – no time at all these days, but an eternity back in the greed-is-good 80s.
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