Def Leppard

Released: September 11, 1992

Featuring: Hothouse Flowers

Songwriter: Joe Elliott

Producer: Mike Shipley Def Leppard

I am bad, I am evil
I am winter, I am pain
I'll mess up your life
I'll beat up your wife
I'll lose all your friends
And I'll win in the end

So you play the joker
And I'll play the clown
And I'll laugh while you're up there
And I'll laugh when you're down
Though your screams break the silence
Oh, they won't make a sound
Na na na na na na na na

I will rise, I will take you
I will break you, never let you go
I'll shoot through your veins
I'll drive you insane
I'll poison your breath
And I'll love you to death

So you be the joker
And I'll be the clown
And you'll laugh when you're up there
But you'll cry when you're down
Though your screams break the silence
Oh, they won't make a sound
Na na na na na na na na
Na na na na na na na na

In 1977, Rick Savage, Tony Kenning, and Pete Willis were students at a secondary school in Sheffield, England. They had a band called Atomic Mass. Lead singer Joe Elliott joined later that year, and suggested a new band name. Within 10 years, that name, Def Leppard, became one of the most recognised in English rock music. To date, they have released more than 40 singles.

Def Leppard was a definitive part of the new wave of British heavy metal bands in the late 1970s. Their first three albums had tremendous momentum, each outselling the one before. Then, after the release of Pyromania in 1983, drummer Rick Allen lost his arm in a car accident. The band stuck by him through his recovery and retraining.

When Def Leppard came back, they came back hard. Their fourth album, 1987’s Hysteria, was a hard rock masterpiece that took the world by storm. By then the music video had matured as a film style, and Hysteria’s singles and videos had enough pop, sex, colour, and glam to put it over the top. Hysteria was one of the biggest-selling albums of the 1980s.

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