Classic Albums: Def Leppard – Hysteria
Picture: B-
Sound: B- Extras: C+ Main Program: B-
Let’s face it, Pyromania was a great album and many
wanted Def Leppard to somehow be the next Led Zeppelin beyond the spelling
styles of their names. That album was
pure and authentic Rock at its best in that great music year of 1982. After much disaster, trouble, expense and
false starts, their follow-up arrived a long five years later. Hysteria may have been a larger
commercial success, but it never did match up to the quality of their 1982
gem. I wondered why, and now that I
have seen the Classic Albums installment on the making of the album, I
know why.
For one thing, the band had disaster it just could not
avoid, so that was beyond their control.
They also wanted a new producer and got Jim Steinman in place of Robert
“Mutt” Lange, which turned out to be an expensive disaster. They needed a new producer, but made what
may have been a major artistic error in getting Lange back. As talented as he is, they should have
followed their original instincts, as the resulting album burned them out more
artistically than they seem to realize.
While Animal and the title song were good, hits like Love
Bites, Armageddon It and especially Pour Some Sugar On Me
pushed them into self-satire and at the edge of cliché enough that they
crossed-over into dreaded Bon Jovi territory.
No wonder John Kerry lost the Presidency.
Some of the non-hits work nicely, but the album lost the
band’s sense of self and the credible corner of authenticity their previous
work spoke so well of in prior studio albums.
Any darkness or mystery was still replaced with too much boy/girl
wonderment, also pointing to the Pop direction that Lange was both going too
much into and would help take Country into.
Rocket and Armageddon It are products of The Cold War
which date the album further, but the stories of how the former was made is
somewhat interesting. They made a bunch
of money to pay for their expensive project, but lost too much of their soul in
the process. After the 1992 studio
release Adrenalize, which did not fare as well as the previous studio
albums commercially, they stopped making studio projects. Several hits sets have come out to
capitalize on the desire of new material, but twelve years later as of this
posting and they are practically a non-entity.
True greatness slipping from their hands, they get to retire by default
with their money and occasionally tour.
This album was the beginning of a slow decline and a comeback seems
unlikely. Another bad sign, one of
their last hits was from the Arnold Schwarzenegger bomb Last Action Hero,
an omen of doom if there ever was one.
The anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image is just fine
for what is here, including the usual mix of old and new footage, but 1987 was
still not that long ago and this looks fine.
The audio is once again Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo with Pro Logic
surrounds, which will not equal the out-of-print Mobile Fidelity 24K Gold CD of
the album, or any upcoming DVD-Audio or Super Audio CD Universal Music may
issue, but it is sufficient for this program.
Extras include eleven extra interview/analysis segments on the album
that further confirm what did and did not go correctly, but some new
performances are here as well. It’s not
like they lost their talent all of the sudden, just their way. This is a triumph that would be empty and
that makes for one of the most ironically sad installments of this show to
date.
- Nicholas Sheffo
