It is like a Greatest Hits package all on its own: Def Leppard‘s July 1987 Hysteria  album, one of the most popular albums ever at an estimated twenty-five million copies, yet as Joe Elliott and Rick Savage remind us, it is a miracle that it ever was finished. You can’t make this stuff up. The epic saga revealed behind “Pour Some Sugar on Me”,”Love Bites”,”Animal”,”Women”,”Armageddon It“, and “Hysteria” on the album’s 30th anniversary. After World War II the worldwide success of The Beatles, Rolling Stones, The Who, The Kinks, Cream, and a bit later Led Zeppelin all had a profoundly positive effect on the British self-esteem. All of these predecessors of Def Leppard were almost entirely influenced musically by the blues, rhythm and blues, and soul music of African-Americans, yet it is most telling that when the Sheffield England quintet compiled an all-covers tribute album a few years ago made up of their most-loved  formative impressions, all but one were by white British musicians….

Read the full band interview and listen to Rick Savage & Joe Elliott discuss the album HERE