Def Leppard

Released: May 14, 1996

Songwriter: Joe Elliott Phil Collen Richard Savage Vivian Campbell

Producer: Def Leppard Pete Woodroffe

[Verse]
I've been burning
And dousing the flames
I feel the whiplash
Of the backlash on my face
I melt to sleep at night
But I wake to trip the day
Never for you never for me
Would I kiss your feet of clay
I'm still alive and so should I
Soak up the wave of compromise
Am I the victim of youth
Is this the truthh
Why don't you tell me
Why don't you tell me
There's no conscience
In charity or shame
The voice deceive me
But believe me its the same
I see the black in white
And the color in the gray
Better for me better for you
Going to bleach it all away
I'm still alive and so should I
Soak up the wave of compromise
I see the scars, I hear the lies
So what's the truth
Why don't you tell me

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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