Def Leppard 'Pyromania' - Happy 35th anniversary !!!

Today's the 35th anniversary to a landmark album.
The first Def Leppard album to sell more than 10 million copies in the US

Share your feelings, memories, etc

Happy anniversary !!!

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10155750052135660

 

I already did over in another thread....

There will never be another like it...

Perfection!

 

Last good album they did.

 

I’d say the last great album although they’ve had some good ones that followed.

 

Slick ballads and recycled "great" stuff, mostly. First two albums are my favorite, they were hungry punks...

 

I agree with you on the first 2 albums. High and Dry is actually my favorite of theirs.

 

Would love an "official" release of "First Strike".

 

I love Pyromania, in my opinion it is DL's best album and one of the best records of the 1980s, a decade of great records. Compared to their own Hysteria, it is just way more listenable at 45 minutes compared to the latter's stamina-challenging CD-era 63 minutes.

Sure, all the songs are catchy as hell, sound like hits, and several were, but it was more than that. Compared to other LPs of its time, it didn't sound like anything else. Elliot's vocals sounded like AC/DC, the guitars kind of did but were affectless, dry, like the Cars, no boogie-woogie RnB. The production values were high-tech Foreigner or Journey. The drums had the big thud of Mack/Queen/Billy Squier.

Pyromania also sounded different in terms of its lyrical tone to me, it sounded more like the guys i hanged out with. It sounded like an "80s" record at a time when the 80s were still struggling to differentiate itself culturally from the 70s. I think one reason it succeeded in this is that the guys were basically the age of their audience. This wasn't historically true: I was 18 when Pyromania came out, and all the other bands that were my favorites at the time consisted of musicians from another generation, in their 30s and even pushing 40. Before DL, Van Halen was the closest and their guys were still 10 years older than me. But the guys in DL were like my slightly older brothers, I related more.

It also made a huge statement for heavy rock at a time when the synth-pop British and Australian blitz was revolutionizing pop music. 1970s bands were being out-flanked by the new androgyenous glam stuff coming from Britain, the Men at Work, Duran Duran and Culture Club stuff. Those bands "got" MTV in a way the older bands didn't. But Def Leppard did. And they understood the new studio technology as well. Pyromania didn't sound like "dinosaur" music, it was up to the minute production-wise, but was hard rock too. For better or worse, it set the table for all the Quiet Riots and Motley Crues and Bon Jovis that came after. Hugely influential record all around.

 

Although I don't love the album or the band as much as you do, I do agree with almost everything you said. It dis sound very cutting edge and fresh at the time but I think Mutt Lange is mostly to credit for that. He was a commercial genius.

 

It's not a nice thing to say but if I were Shania Twain I might have looked the other way on his tomcatting if it meant I would get one more album's worth of his services.

 

As evidenced in the 'first five' thread, Pyromania was one of those foundation albums for me. I bought is during my 80s cassette days when I was 13. I listened to it non-stop. There's no filler on this record at all. The rockers rock and the ballads are not overblown like they became on Hysteria. My one regret is that I did not see them live until 1988.

 

Best album they ever made; Hysteria is overlong, overblown, over-produced, over-bombastic and ****e, in comparison!

 

FWIW, if I had Shania Twain inhabiting my house, I'd feel zero need to be "tomcatting", LOL.

 

The Def Leppard EP is available online as of last Friday.

 

Perfect record.

I bought it upon release.

It was cool to be a Def Leppard fan.

When I first owned the album it was a HARD rock masterpiece.

35 yrs later, Pyromania seems to be remembered as a pop rock hit fest.

Either way, still dig the band and this record.

 

Comin' Under Fire and Foolin' are so damn cool tracks.

 

35 years?? YIKES!!

I have good memories of this album. I was 13 and it seemed like every song was getting airplay after Photograph broke the album, which I still feel is one of the best singles from the 80's. It's almost a perfect song to me. Maybe it is.

I remember playing this album in my bedroom for a friend of mine and him commenting on how the opening guitar to Photograph sounded low. I didn't exactly have a hi-fi system back then and yeah, it did always sound low on that stereo.

I still listen to the album on occasion. What separates good albums from great albums are usually the deeper cuts and Pyromania contained Die Hard the Hunter, Billy's Got a Gun, Comin' Under Fire, etc in addition to the big hits.

If I have one critique of the album it's the unnatural drum sounds that can be attributed to Mutt's production and the fact that I think at least some of the drums were electronic. After this I went and got High and Dry and then waited with anticipation for Hysteria to be released, which took four years. That's where they lost me and my friends at the time and somehow that album has gone on to be considered another classic and I don't get why.

Oh well, that's a conversation for another day. If someone asks you what 1983 was like, play Pyromania for them. It's a snapshot of days gone by.

 

"HYSTERIA" was a Masterpiece also.

7 singles off a Rock N Roll record in the top 40

Over 28 million copies sold

You might not like it, but a whole lot of people did including me

If "Excitable" was traded out for "Tear It Down" it would have been perfection like "Pyromania".

 

Ahhhhhh the Pyro!! Big memories 1983--1984. I fired the original lp up last night in honor of the 35th anniversary of its original release. Thoroughly cleaned this 1983 vinyl screams with vengeance.

 

agreed

P.S. Hysteria is a fine 50% album, the other 50% are fillers.

 

I didn't like it either! There's a decent, concise 9 or 10 track album in there somewhere!

 

This makes me feel old

 

Hard rock and sludgy sounding at times as up to the minute recording technology as Pyro was it did then and still possesses a darkness about it. Analogue beauty.

 

If I had to keep one album from the 80s this would be it.
For both sentimental and quality reasons.
It laid the foundation for all the sub genre Pop Metal that followed, even for their Hysteria.
Those three glorious videos Photograph, Rock of Ages and Foolin' are forever etched in Mtv lore.
Some great, great albums from the 80s.
Born in the USA, Sports, Thriller, Hysteria, Purple Rain, 1984,
Appetite For Destruction,
Back in Black, Joshua Tree, Synchronicity, Can't Slow Down, Let's Dance, Eliminator, Tug of War ect but for me Pyromania is the album of the 80s.

 

Pyro= pure 80's analogue magic.