A Look Back: Def Leppard’s Masterpiece ‘Slang’
The 1996 album was the band's pinnacle of creativity
Def Leppard’s “Hysteria” is a masterpiece.
Every note.
Every layer.
Every song.
Every second of the album is damn near perfect.
The band set out to create something special with producer Mutt Lange, and it succeeded. “Hysteria” represents the late 80s – and my teenage years – perfectly. The album sold about 25 million copies worldwide for a reason.
I love “Hysteria.” And yet, as special as it is, I believe Def Leppard topped it.
1987’s “Hysteria” is a masterpiece because of its perfection.
1996’s “Slang” is a masterpiece because of its honesty.
A lot happened in the five years between “Hysteria” and its follow-up, 1992’s “Adrenalize.” Def Leppard became the biggest band in the world, then lost guitarist Steve Clark to his addiction demons, felt the pressures of topping a mega-successful album, and faced a seismic shift in the music scene.
By 1992, grunge was beginning to take hold (Nirvana released “Nevermind” in September 1991), and many of Leppard’s peers started to fall out of favor.
“Adrenalize” was OK, but about two years too late. It was more of the same – an extension of “Hysteria.” I couldn’t wait for that album to come out, but when it did, I was a bit underwhelmed. This is what we waited five years to hear?
“I think on ‘Adrenalize,’ we were sort of going through the motions,” drummer Rick Allen told MTV Europe in a 1996 interview. “We were very worried about Steve's situation.”
Despite the evolving music industry, “Adrenalize” sold relatively well (with sales of about 8 million overall). The momentum of “Hysteria” put it in a better position than many other of the era’s bands.
Def Leppard released “Retroactive” in 1993, an album of B-sides and unreleased gems. Ballads “Two Steps Behind” and “Miss You in a Heartbeat” were hits. The album also gave hints of the future. “Desert Song” was different with its darker lyrics and themes, and “From the Inside” addressed the serious issue of addiction.
And then, in 1995, it released its greatest hits album, “Vault,” with one new song, “When Love and Hate Collide” (another ballad that was originally demoed for “Adrenalize”). The band made comments that it was closing a chapter and starting something new.
Many of the 80’s rock bands that were still hanging in there by the mid-90s were doing the same. They tried to incorporate the current trends to sound relevant.
I hated grunge and disliked many 90s rock bands (at that time – I’ve come to enjoy and respect many now). But oddly, I loved many of the 80s bands’ albums during this period.
Motley Crue’s self-titled 1994 album, Winger’s “Pull,” Extreme’s “Waiting for the Punchline,” Skid Row’s “Subhuman Race” and Warrant’s “Belly to Belly, Volume One” all turned away from the good time fun of 80s rock and took risks.
I liked hearing my favorite bands spread their wings a little. I loved 80’s rock, but I also loved hearing growth.
And for Def Leppard, “Slang” was a welcome breath of fresh air. I remember the album hitting me like hearing “Hysteria” for the first time. It was intriguing and diverse, and while “Pour Some Sugar On Me” will always be a classic, it was refreshing not to hear another song like it.
No, these songs were different. They had weight to them.
After years of singing “I’ve got something to say,” at the start of “Rock of Ages,” the band showed it really did – and it was something compelling.
An organic album
It’s easy to dismiss “Slang” as a “me too” grunge-influenced album, but if you give the album an honest listen, it’s anything but that. Yes, it was influenced by the sounds of the day, but it stands on its own without simply mimicking 90s rock. “Slang” still sounded like Def Leppard, just in different ways than people were used to.
“There's just an internal thing to move on and do something else,” vocalist Joe Elliott told MTV Europe in a 1996 interview. “We made the trilogy of big production albums, and, you know, [things] do tend to go in threes. After we finished the ‘Adrenalize’ album, off we went on tour. Halfway through the tour, it just became a very natural thing for us: we got to make a different kind of record.”
And made a different type of record they did.
“It would have been a lot harder, an actual fight, to try and make the same old records that we've been making for the last eight years, you know, because we didn't really want to do that anymore,” bassist Rick Savage told MTV Europe. ”And it was just such an obvious thing within the group to record in a different way and, because of that, actually produce something that sounds a little different.”
That different way was using more traditional analog recording equipment instead of the digital techniques on the trilogy of “Pyromania,” “Hysteria” and “Adrenalize.”
Analog delivered a warmer, organic, unique tone with an authenticity that is hard to put into words. “Slang” is sonically intriguing and just hits differently. The album still sounds fresh today because of it. It simply sounds brilliant.
Allen even played an acoustic drum kit.
“It became a lot more convenient, especially after I lost my arm, to use electronic drums, especially with the sounds that we were using throughout the 80s,” Allen told MTV Europe. “It just seemed like the right time to go for a different sound, something that was a little more earthy. And I was starting to miss the physical aspect of playing drums on records anyway. So the whole idea of playing acoustic drums really just set the tone. And that's why it sounds the way it does, really.”
“Hysteria” producer-before-being-fired Jim Steinman (of Meat Loaf’s “Bat Out of Hell” fame) told Kerrang! in 1989 that Allen’s desire to be more involved on an album may have stretched back to the mid-80s.
“While I was talking to them, Rick Allen came up behind me and said, 'I really want to be on this record,’” Steinman recalled. "I said, 'Hey! You're the drummer, you'll be on the record!' And then I found out he isn't even on 'Pyromania', it's all machines. He isn't on 'Hysteria' either.”
That organic sound meant keeping overdubs to a minimum. While “Hysteria” had multiple layers of guitars and vocals, “Slang” better captured the live energy of the band. You can clearly hear the distinct vocals of guitarists Phil Collen and Vivian Campbell, along with Savage.
The instruments have a rawer tone, as opposed to the clean digital perfection of “Hysteria” (and even more so, “Adrenalize”).
“I think we got so sick of recording separately and doing everything planned under a microscope,” Collen told MTV Europe. “It was a kind of reaction against that, really. A lot of the guitar stuff was one take, and we didn't spend the time actually getting the sounds right. All the effort went into the songs as opposed to the production.”
The band wasn’t as hyper-focused on perfection.
“On this album, we would sometimes carry things over unchanged from our demos into the final recording,” Elliott wrote in “Definitely: The Official Story of Def Leppard.” “The intro guitar part on 'Pearl of Euphoria' is played by me because once the guys heard my playing over and over on the demo, it started to sound like the real thing and not just a demo. I remember Phil saying, ‘We should leave Joe's guitar on because he sounds great. Neither Vivian nor I could play that badly.’ That was the best left-handed compliment I've ever had.”
A deluxe edition of the album released in 2013 includes several rough mixes and first drafts, and they’re not much different than the final versions. So, it’s clear that overdubs truly were at a minimum – the complete opposite of what Leppard was known for on the Lange-produced albums.
Collaboration
The recording of "Slang" was also more collaborative, with band members having more individual input into the process. This approach facilitated a diversity of ideas and influences, which contributed to the album's unique sound.
“I think the whole way of recording with ‘Slang’ was so much more of a team effort,” Allen told MTV Europe. “And I think for us, it's a complete success now simply because we made it the way that we did. Songwriting was actually started in everybody's various home studios. And then when we all arrived in Spain, everybody sort of played their ideas, and we picked out what we liked, what we didn't like and then sort of pieced it together.”
Take “Blood Runs Cold,” a song about Steve Clark.
“I got as far as I could with the song, but I was too deeply involved emotionally, so I talked to Joe about it,” Collen wrote in “Definitely: The Official Def Leppard Story.” “He understood what I was aiming for, and he was able to finish things off. We had always finished each other's sentences; now we were finishing each other’s songs.”
A commercial miss, but…
In the end, “Slang” didn’t sell anywhere near as well as the band’s other albums. Fans pushed back on the new direction.
Yes, Leppard pissed off a portion of its fan base, but it also built a bridge to get through a time that was very toxic for 1980s rock bands.
“We were well aware of what was going on, particularly in America with this new musical movement called grunge,” Elliott wrote in the liner notes of the album’s deluxe edition. “But we were geographically so far removed from it in Spain that we didn’t let it interfere with our writing process too much. In fact, we were so insular in our house above Puerto Banus that we hardly knew what was going on in the outside world at all, and that suited us fine.”
And really, I think that plays out on the album. While it is clearly influenced by the music at the time, I believe it remains Def Leppard. “Slang” is more about the diversity of music and exploration of themes the band was dealing with than trying to be Pearl Jam.
While they had to make a decision to forsake the sound that made them huge with “Hysteria,” they also seemed to need to do so for their own mental health and inner conflicts. They knew they couldn’t do the same thing they had done for a decade, but it also aligned with a period that band members themselves needed to move away from songs like “I Wanna Touch U.”
“Leppard went into make that record knowing only one thing as fact, and that was that we couldn't make a Def Leppard record,” Campbell recalled to Mitch Lafon of Talking Metal in 2016. “We couldn't make a record that sounded like Def Leppard. We had to try all these different things. And a lot of stuff was happening personally with the band. I think you know a lot of grown-up stuff was starting to happen like death, divorce. So it was hard to kind of get your head around singing songs like ‘Let's Get Rocked.’”
Reinforcing that idea in the liner notes of the deluxe edition, Elliott wrote: “When we listened back to the completed album a good 18 months later, we jokingly came up with the working title of ‘Commercial Suicide.’ For we knew it was not what people expected, or even possibly what they wanted, but for us, it was a complete and total success because, where we were in our lives – impending divorces, kids, real life getting in the way for the first time – we had a chance to express our inner feelings lyrically to a much darker and broader musical landscape.“
Leppard had to distance itself from its past to move forward.
Even the tour went to a more stripped-down stage setup, with the band focusing on the music over the lights and lasers of the two previous “in-the-round” tours. Allen played the acoustic drums. The band tore through a tight set which highlighted several of the album’s tracks. The “Slang” tour was, by far, the best Def Leppard show I’ve attended in the nearly dozen I’ve seen. It had a different vibe and energy.
Missed potential
After “Slang,” the band returned to its production-focused formula, reuniting with Lange. I thought that was a shame. 1999’s “Euphoria” overcompensated. Instead of that organic sound, the band delivered a ridiculous amount of digital layers. Outside a few tracks like “Promises,” most songs are simply average.
For a band that had just fought against doing the same thing, it went right back to it as if “Slang” didn’t exist. If it had, at least, combined aspects of both, “Euphoria” could have been a much stronger album. Instead, it let Lange guide them into the same old song and dance. I’ll take “Work it Out” any day over the “Pour Some Sugar On Me” clone “Back in Your Face.”
The same old song and dance trend continued. While I purchase every album Def Leppard releases and will always find the best in its music, the band clearly lost something after “Slang.”
It became safe. In many ways, it stagnated.
The closest the band came to capturing the diversity and feel of “Slang” was 2008’s “Songs from the Sparkle Lounge.” On that album, it tried different things, including collaborating with country star Tim McGraw. The difference with “Sparkle” in its acceptance was the band’s inclusion of some very “Def Leppard” songs, like “C’mon C’mon” and “Bad Actress” to keep a subset of its fans happy.
“Sparkle” was an interesting album after the unremarkable “X” and covers album “Yeah!” But it was no “Slang.”
As it distanced itself from its 80s image during the “Slang” period, it likewise distanced itself from “Slang” during its return to its tried-and-true formula. Campbell seems to be most vocal about his disappointment in “Slang.”
“My personal opinion is we went a little too left-field,” Campbell told SPIN’s “Death and Taxes.” “There’s no backing vocals, which was a big trademark. There’s no real sense of that melody, the hooks. Being the new guy, I didn’t rock the boat too much, but I think we went a few degrees too far left.”
He added to Talking Metal, “Personally, I think we probably could have spent a little bit more time polishing some of the songs. You know, incorporating a little bit more of the aspects that we were strong on, like the hooks and some more backing vocals. As opposed to making it as stripped down and raw as it was. But you know other people might disagree."
And yet, Campbell can’t deny how good the album sounds.
“I think sonically it's a great sounding record because as a result of all this confusion, we at the time kind of recorded live,” he told Talking Metal. “And that was very much not the kind of thing that Def Leppard did, but we actually were pretty solid at the time. So the guitar tones, the drum tones and the organic sound of the record are actually sonically really, really strong I think."
For his part, Elliott embraces “Slang.”
“I stand by Slang,” he wrote in “Definitely: The Official Def Leppard Story.” “I think there are some great songs on it, but the album is Marmite. Some of my closest friends, who are brutally honest with me, think it's the best thing we've ever done; others think it absolutely is not. I'm proud that we made the record because we dared to try.”
I’m of the camp that “Slang” is the best thing the band has ever done. I don’t understand Campbell’s critique because all you have to do is listen to “Breathe a Sigh” or “Turn to Dust” to hear backing vocals. Those backing vocals are just more honest.
“Slang” was a special album and is still a musical journey I enjoy from start to finish. The album deserves more respect than it gets – especially after facing the spotty quality of the band’s albums since.
It may have been contentious, but ultimately, it was needed.
Elliott summed up the importance of Slang succinctly in the deluxe edition liner notes: “As Sav has said many times, if we hadn’t made this album, we wouldn’t be here today to talk about it.”
The songs
Truth?: The album kicks off with a statement: what you thought Def Leppard was is about to be challenged. “Truth?” is different; a reflection of the music scene of the time, incorporating distortion and a driving heaviness.
The band released the “original” version of “Truth?” as a B-side and on the deluxe edition. You can hear the band’s transformation and how it challenged itself between the two versions.
While the album version is tight in both run length and lyrical approach, the original version was more than five minutes long. The original version sounds like Def Leppard trying to sound different, but with too many 80’s elements that could have fit into a song like “White Lightning.”
It sounded raw, but overall the approach just didn’t work. The lyrics were trying too hard, too – with a bridge that included the cringe-inducing, “The left hand gives and the right hand takes away. That’s the law of the jungle which you have to learn to play.”
But the album version was Def Leppard successfully sounding different with a fresh approach, being restrained and making smart choices. The band committed itself to not making a Def Leppard album, and being able to hear the day and night approaches to this song shows they were serious about that.
Turn to Dust: With an Indian/Eastern vibe, the Phil Collen penned “Turn to Dust” has a trippy feel with gorgeous harmonies and thought-provoking lyrics. It features Indian orchestral sections throughout.
“One time when we were in India, I heard this amazing music, so I bought the CD,” Collen explained in the band’s book “Definitely: The Official Story of Def Leppard. “We sampled it and got permission from the artist to put it on the song ‘Turn to Dust’ on the ‘Slang’ album. Within the caste system in India, there's a group called the untouchables, a whole swathe of the country's population who are completely ignored - and that's what the song was about.”
Slang: The most “Def Leppard” song on the album, the title track “Slang” combines a danceable beat with pop and features a catchy chorus.
“I think that's about the only song on the album that's kind of got a a foot in in the old sound,“ Elliott told MTV Europe. “It's just three minutes worth of pop music, really. It’s basically about phone sex.“
The deluxe edition of the album contains the original approach to this song called “Raise Your Love.” While many of the final song’s components are present, the approach is more of a traditional Def Leppard song composition. Where it ultimately landed kept enough of the classic Leppard style, but in a way that sounded fresh. It’s a fun song and one the band still plays in concert.
All I Want is Everything: “All I Want is Everything” was written by Joe Elliott and has a strong 90s feel to it, especially in the guitars.
“'All I Want Is Everything' was my first sole writing credit,” Elliott wrote in “Definitely: The Official Story of Def Leppard.” “I'd written songs that were, say, 80 percent down to me, but this was all mine. As soon as l'd written the opening line - I don't know how to leave you, but I don't know how to stay. I've got things that I must tell you that I don't know how to say' - I knew it was going to be good.”
The deluxe edition of the album includes the demo of the song, which is a more traditional ballad with a mix of 70s rock and country influences. The lyrics still needed some massaging, but overall, I like both versions of this song. The finished version of the song fits better on “Slang,” but the demo could have fit on later Leppard albums.
Work it Out: The first single in the U.S. was the Campbell-written “Work it Out.” Campbell’s original demo has an almost country feel to it. The song ended up with a nice groove, with Sav’s bass prominently featured throughout.
“Modern rock stations had tested the song and got a great reaction to it,” Campbell told SPIN. “But they realized they couldn’t play it because DJs couldn’t announce: ‘That was new from Def Leppard.’ They figured they’d lose so many listeners. They were playing Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Soundgarden – they couldn’t slot in Def Leppard even though they liked the track.”
Breathe a Sigh: “Breathe a Sigh” is an example of how the band wasn’t simply trying to create its own grunge album. Musically, the R&B-influenced "Breathe a Sigh" features a laid-back groove, subtle guitar work, and a focus on vocal harmonies, which highlight Elliott's ability to convey emotion through his voice. The production on the track, while still polished, allows more space and atmosphere than the densely layered sounds of Def Leppard's previous albums, fitting with the overall more experimental and varied sound of "Slang."
Deliver Me: “Deliver Me” is a good example of how Leppard made smart decisions on “Slang.” The original version of the song was called “Anger,” and it came across as too much of a “hey, we can be angry, too” song. It reminds me of the equally silly “Hate” on KISS’s “Carnival of Souls” album.
“What are the kids into these days?”
“I know! Angry lyrics!”
“That’s gold! Let’s write a song called ‘Anger.’”
The band – rightly – reworked the track to be more subtle but with grounded lyrics.
According to Campbell in “Definitely: The Official Story of Def Leppard,” the band was into Soundgarden while recording “Slang.” “Deliver Me” is a clear representation of that influence.
Blood Runs Cold: The haunting “Blood Runs Cold” brings in acoustic elements and is Collen’s attempt at sorting through his thoughts about his departed bandmate.
“‘Blood Runs Cold' was about Steve,” Collen said in “Definitely: The Official Story of Def Leppard.” “He was a really funny guy, really warm and lovely, and then all of a sudden things got tragic. But he was still exactly that person. So, the song was about him being this living, breathing fountain of life that wasn't there anymore - that was the idea of blood running cold.”
Gift of Flesh: A straightforward rock song, “Gift of Flesh” feels like early Def Leppard – the early days with Pete Willis and Steve Clark on guitars. The song could be an extension of “Desert Song." There’s nothing more to be said beyond that it’s a balls-to-the-wall rock song.
Where Does Love Go When It Dies: The beautiful acoustic-based “Where Does Love Go When It Dies” is quintessential Def Leppard and could have fit in on “Retroactive” with a different production.
“I was particularly proud of 'Where Does Love Go When It Dies,’” Elliott wrote in “Definitely: The Official Story of Def Leppard.” “Phil had this two-chord acoustic thing that sounded a bit like U2 or Dave Gilmour, which he thought would be a perfect vehicle for my lyric, and we worked a chorus into it. I still, to this day, think everything about that song is great.”
Pearl of Euphoria: The album ends with “Pearl of Euphoria,” an epic song that feels infinite. The song begins as if you joined at some random moment and ends the same. It’s foreboding, with an exhausting heaviness. I like that album bookends with “Truth?” and “Pearl of Euphoria” – two very different-for-Def Leppard tracks that package “Slang” purposefully. “Truth?” fades the album into a new direction; “Pearl of Euphoria” fades it out to an unknown future and the next chapter of the band. I couldn’t wait to hear what was next. Unfortunately, it was the uninspired “Euphoria” album. Lost potential.