Def Leppard

Released: May 23, 2006

Songwriter: Tom Petty

Producer: Def Leppard

Well she was an American girl
Raised on promises
She couldn't help thinkin'
That there was a little more to life somewhere else

After all it was a great big world
With lots of places to run to
And if she had to die tryin'
She had one little promise she was gonna keep

Oh yeah, all right
Take it easy, baby
Make it last all night
She was an American girl

Well it was kinda cold that night
She stood alone on her balcony
Yeah, she could hear the cars roll by
Out on 441 like waves crashin' on the beach

And for one desperate moment
There he crept back in her memory
God it's so painful when something that's so close
Is still so far out of reach

Oh yeah, all right
Take it easy, baby
Make it last all night
She was an American girl

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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