Def Leppard’s hard rock has survived hard times

By Jerry Fink

Thursday, Sept. 3, 2009 | 2 a.m.

Def Leppard has had its share of tragedy — but remains a close-knit family.

The metal band, formed in Sheffield, England, in 1977, continues to rock on.

Drummer Rick Allen lost his left arm in a car crash in 1984. His band mates stuck by him and he learned to play with one arm on a specially designed drum kit.

Guitarist Steve Clark died from a mix of prescription drugs and alcohol in 1991. Vivian Campbell replaced Clark.

“I think it’s working out,” Campbell, a native of Belfast, Ireland, said from Salt Lake City, one of the stops in the 40-city summer tour of Def Leppard.

Campbell seemed a natural fit with his extensive rock background. He’d played with Sweet Savage, Riverdogs, Shadow King, Trinity, Clock, Dio and Whitesnake. And he was friends with Def Leppard’s lead singer, Joe Elliott.

“Joe knew me, the others knew of me,” Campbell says. “They only knew I’d been in a couple of major bands and been fired. Joe convinced them I wasn’t difficult to work with, so I hung out with the band for a few weeks, played with them, went to the movies, played football (soccer) and just hung out.”

They all got along.

“The difference between Def Leppard and the other bands is that Def Leppard really is a band,” Campbell said. “We’re all within a few years of age of each other and we all grew up watching the same television shows and listing to the same radio. We were all exposed to the same culture. We had a common frame of reference.

“With Dio, when I joined the band I was 20 and Ronnie was close to 40 and an American. We had nothing in common. It was an uncomfortable environment. The version of Whitesnake I was in was version 37-B or whatever. There have been literally 49 different people through the ranks of Whitesnake.”

Def Leppard has been a great experience.

“We all still like each other, even share the same dressing room,” Campbell says. “We can talk. We respect each other. We have conversations that go way beyond music. The friendship is apparent when you see us live. We watch out for each other and care about each other.”

Def Leppard has been doing summer tours for the past five years and may take a year or two off at the end of this one to make a new album.

“Back in the days when people bought millions of albums and Def Leppard sold millions of albums, we would take a long time making records because that’s the nature of the beast,” Campbell says. “We could invest the time to make the album — spend a year making it, then promoting it, then a year touring, then take six months or so off to be with our families and to get an idea for the next album. It was a three-year cycle.

“But now the record industry is inverted. We used to go on tour to promote an album; now we do an album to legitimize our tours. All the money today is in touring. Having said that, we still make new albums even though it’s harder and harder to get them to people’s ears.

“I think it’s more important that when we play a new song that people are familiar with it. I think we should probably give away free music with every concert ticket in the future so people will at least have a chance to hear some new songs before they come to the show, and hopefully they recognize and respond to them when we play live.”