![]() ![]() It has plenty of balls, lots of charm and a packet of irresistible melodies. The keyboards in the bridge sound a bit twee, but Photograph has still worn really well. The formula rock hit hadn’t yet been discovered. What’s interesting is that while Photograph is clearly radio and MTV- friendly metal, it doesn’t in any way sound like most of the identikit stuff that clogged up US airwaves later in the decade. The enormous hit that took Leppard out of the metal ballpark, then turned them into bona fide globe-straddling rock superstars. Pyromania is the third studio album by English rock band Def Leppard, released on 20 January 1983 through Vertigo Records in UK and Europe and through Mercur. Billy’s Got A Gun is interesting, because in many ways it crystallises Pyromania, an album that took an age-old formula and reworked it so it became something shiny and new. The band turned to Nigel Green, who had engineered the Lange-produced Def Leppard records, but the sessions resulted in songs that hewed too close to Pyromania. Again, there’s a bit of that old UFO influence here, as Joe Elliott channels Phil Mogg’s knack for telling gritty stories about inner city violence. The band go for atmosphere on the album closer as Leppard stretch out and come up with a big number that clocks in at just shy of six minutes. The lyrics are a bit ‘nyeh’, (“play the game, surrender to me” etc.) but the song is one of the best examples of Leppard’s ability to shift gears and move from soft to hard and back again on a number of occasions – and all in the space of a single song. Not a track that immediately springs to mind when you think of Pyromania, but this is, in fact, a much-underrated tune. A clever arrangement is also the order of the day, which is surely down to the hand of Mutt. When Def Leppard ‘s Hysteria came out 30 years ago, it made itself known as a massive achievement, its wall-to-wall sonics and skyscraping harmonies sounding like a turbo-charged version of the. ![]() The pre-chorus, in particular, the ‘oh, I just gotta know…’ bit, makes this a real earworm. The riffs are tough, but it’s clear that the band worked double hard on creating catchy melodies here from first note to last. More mid-paced driving music that was gobbled up by American radio stations. “Women to the left and women to the right,” he notes, as the band make no bones about the fact that they can rock hard – when they want to. ![]() But then the mood changes, the AC/DC riffs are dusted off and Elliott even starts doing a bit of a Beano. Pyromania starts with what could almost be described as prog pop, if you can imagine such a thing. phonographic copyright () by: Phonogram Ltd. It’s not bad, just a little bit ordinary. lead vocals: Joe Elliott ( lead singer of Def Leppard) performer: Def Leppard. Shame the tune itself is a bit of a let-down. But what’s surprising is that the lyric deals – albeit obliquely – with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, as Elliott recounts a tale of a returning soldier who can’t leave the battlefield behind. The helicopter sounds at the beginning give us a hint of where we’re going, to a song that deals with war and, presumably, Vietnam. ![]()
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