Joe Elliott recalls Mutt Lange suggesting Def Leppard have seven hit singles before ‘Hysteria’ album

Joe Elliott recalls Mutt Lange suggesting Def Leppard have seven hit singles before ‘Hysteria’ album

Def Leppard frontman Joe Elliott was recently interviewed by Forbes to promote the UK rockers’ latest live release — the 2DVD/4CD London To Vegas — which was released via Eagle Rock Entertainment on May 29, 2020.

London To Vegas features Hysteria At The O2 consisting of Def Leppard playing their blockbuster album Hysteria in its entirety at the O2 in London, England in 2018 as well as Hits Vegas consisting of the band playing a wide array of their hit songs and 28 in total during their last two nights of their Las Vegas Residency at the Zappos Theater at Planet Hollywood in 2019.

With respect to working with producer Mutt Lange on the follow up to 1983’s Pyromania, Elliott indicated (with slight edits):

“Mutt Lange was such a ringleader. He was like, ‘This is going to be huge!’ The whole thing about Hysteria was when we sat down to piece it together and write it, we hadn’t seen Mutt for the whole of 1983. Because we made Pyromania with him, finished it in January, went on tour and we were on tour until February of 1984. And that’s the next time we saw Mutt… So there was a lot of catching up over coffee. And he’s like, ‘Well, why can’t we have seven hit singles?’ And we just looked at him like a three-headed monster. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ And half an hour later, he’s convinced you that you can absolutely do it.”

“So we sat down to write songs that were going to be at least given the opportunity to be hits. Because they were those kind of songs. We weren’t going to be writing twelve ‘Kashmirs,’… We were going to be writing twelve songs that were rock songs that infiltrated the pop chart. And then mixed in was a lot of the stuff that influenced us: Slade, Sweet, Roy Wood’s Wizzard, ELO, David Bowie, Marc Bolan – anything that was like guitar rock. Suzi Quatro. That kind of stuff that really was three minutes long with big guitars and huge choruses. Not necessarily metal but certainly hard and heavy rock – but pop rock. We set out to write those kind of songs.”

You can read the rest of the interview with Joe Elliott at Forbes‘ website.