Def Leppard - Rock Brigade It Could Be You I loved Def Leppard… the early Def Leppard, to be precise, those from the first two albums, especially the first one with the massive truck and the huge guitar on top… Rocbrigheid, itcudbiiu, and the rest. That genuine sound of five young guys from the late seventies blending hard, glam, heavy…
Then there was Pyromania, especially Hysteria… I have to blame an ex-girlfriend for this one though…
After that, I don’t really know much… I lost interest in hair metal or pop metal, whatever you want to call it.
Above all, a lot of respect for them… as people.
On the night of January 7, 1991, Steve Clark, one of the two guitarists, was found dead by his girlfriend after yet another drunken night. He was 30 years old…
Clark was an alcoholic, and his bandmates always tried to help him cut back on drinking, at least the excessive kind. But when you're an alcoholic, you don't just have two beers… or even four…
They never thought about firing him, let alone them…
At 11, he started studying classical guitar, but two years later at a friend's house, “I heard Jimmy Page playing the riff from How Many More Times… I tossed the classical guitar aside and said ‘I’m going to play rock!’”
Success was waiting for him… but so was instability…
Oh, a small detail: in the documentary ‘Hysteria: The Def Leppard story’, you can see Steve throwing up in the bathroom… that level of pre-show anxiety never left him.
“I had the room next to Steve… unfortunately, I could hear the pain he was going through. One night before the start of a tour, he was trying to smash his knuckles on the sink to avoid having to play because he was scared to death before going on stage.”
“Don’t worry, I’m fine, he’d say… he had bruises all over.” He was so sweet, always apologizing for how he was…
Ah, he was a great rocker…
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