My obsession with Def Leppard began with a fuzzy clip from In The Round In Your Face on a dusty VCR tape from the Cupboard of Forgotten Music Recordings. Saw a clip of Steve Clark playing his Firebird and I was a goner from there, and so began my second love affair with classic rock – nobody thought I could top the Bon Jovi obsession. They were wrong.
Let’s start with the most obvious one; Pour Some Sugar on Me could not have more dumb testosterone in it if it tried. The riff explodes in a fit of “I am man, I have loud guitar, listen to THIS.” This is helped along by the Man Grunt which furnishes the first verse. Everything about it is ridiculous and horny and stupid; it’s punchy and confident and the perfect strutting song, which is probably what enticed Floridian strippers in the late 80s. If I was a stripper, this would definitely be my song choice, which feels like a fitting accolade.
Love Bites is the one ballad on the album and does a good job of interweaving sex and intimacy (no mean feat for an 80s rock band). The lyrics highlight the power of sexuality in love and captures the emotion behind the lust. It’s an incredibly mature approach to a love song and sounds real, raw and emotional. This also comes through in the music – the long chords, slow tempo and minor key stretch out the deep sensuality of the track. The constant vibrato in the chorus played by Phil Collen is actually both him and Steve Clark playing simultaneously, as it was too difficult for one person to play singlehandedly, and the technique worked well to produce a unique, powerful resonance and a hauntingly beautiful song.
Armageddon It is another of those songs that evokes a sense of euphoria, from the verses studded with punchy guitar parts and ultimately building to a chorus which explodes in enough harmonized happiness to envelop even the most miserable of souls.
Think you might lose interest halfway through the B Side? Nope, you get smacked across with face with Run Riot, the most energetic filler I think I’ve ever heard on a record. The electricity of Run Riot is utterly contagious and completely exhausting to listen to, which doesn’t matter because then you have the calming serenity of the title track itself.
The moment the first bar of Hysteria hits, it’s impossible not to melt into a delirious puddle of relaxation. It’s something in the riff, the chord progression, the resonance – it’s so difficult not to fall in love with this song when it’s a song about falling in love. Not just falling in love, going mad with love. “Dream me off my feet” is just a great line and perfectly captures the feeling of dancing through the feeling of loving somebody, but also of completely surrendering to it.
Gods of War has always felt slightly separate from the rest of Hysteria. This album really has it all – strip club vs heartbreak, the restless impatience of youth and nuclear war! All the food groups. Gods of War is certainly topical for the period during which it was written, containing audios of ‘Maggie Thatcher, milk snatcher’ and the sounds of machine gun fire and falling bombs. Nearly a whole minute of anticipation before that bass kicks in, followed by one of the best riffs I reckon Steve Clark ever wrote. The last chorus culminates in a delicious Photograph-esque descending scale sung by Joe Elliott and it’s genuinely hard to quantify the sheer wall of power that is this song. No notes.
Hysteria is painstakingly well produced and worth the four-year hellfest that characterized its’ creation. The band themselves always say there’s something for everyone among the tracks – try to find somebody who doesn’t like even one song on the record. It’ll probably be Pour Some Sugar on Me, but that still counts.