Behind the Scenes Recording Def Leppard's Pyromania

To describe the recording process for Def Leppard's 1983 powerhouse album, Pyromania, as a labor of love would be an understatement.

When you've done so many takes that the tape is falling apart, it's best described as a labor of hate.

But for the man behind the board on that amazing record, producer Robert John "Mutt" Lange, it's all par for the course as he set out to make an album the likes of which had never been heard before.

Mutt Lange is a perfectionist who knows what he wants a band to sound like, and basically stops at nothing until he gets it. And even though the then-members of Def Leppard (drummer Rick Allen, guitarists Steve Clark and Pete Willis, singer Joe Elliott and bassist Rick Savage) had all worked with Lange previously on the fantastic High N Dry record, they'd never been through the ringer like they did working on Pyromania from January-November 1982.

Just ask Leppard frontman Joe Elliott, who endured take after take - for months on end - to lay down the vocals for Pyromania.

"He's saying 'look, you can do it better'," recalled Elliott, who actually took vocal lessons from Lange's ex-wife at the time. "All you're wanting to do is go 'no, I bloody well can't. This is as good as it gets'. And (Lange) says 'Well it ain't good enough then'."

Mutt Lange

And those excessive vocal takes are the tip of the iceberg as Lange added layer upon layer of guitar, drums, bass and background vocals. In fact the recording tape had actually begun to break down by the time the album was ready for final mixes.

"It became clear from the intensity of working on a record like that, going over and over and over, blocking out backgrounds, changing arrangements, and all that. I'm surprised we ever got it finished, because the tape literally fell to pieces," said the late Mike Shipley, who engineered the record.

There were so many overdubs, so much rewinding of tape, that the oxide started coming off the tape to the point where Lange could actually see through it. In the end, all that rewinding meant a major loss of high end in the final mixes.

Leppard Loses a Member

The intense recording process certainly took a toll on the band as guitarist Pete Willis was fired in July after he showed up in the studio severely hung over from partying the previous night. Leppard were working on the "Stagefright" solo and he simply couldn't play guitar that day, so Lange told him to go home and dry out. He was fired shortly thereafter and Phil Collen was quickly recruited as Willis' replacement.

Willis still left a big mark on the record, though. He played rhythm guitar on all 10 tracks (and helped co-write "Photograph", "Too Late for Love" "Comin' Under Fire" and "Billy's Got a Gun").

It was a tough process for drummer Rick Allen as well, who was ostensibly replaced by a Fairlight instrument sampler (drum machine). The only thing Allen actually played on Pyromania were the cymbals.

In terms of the songs themselves, the band went into the studio with only a bunch of riffs. The idea was to work directly with Lange to put the songs together, and the band ended up giving him songwriting credit on every track.

Def Leppard after Pete Willis was axed

Two old Leppard song ideas resurfaced on the album. The first was the main riff and intro section of "Rock! Rock! (Till You Drop)" which were taken from the 1980 track "Medicine Man' – a song they performed live during much of the 1980 'On Through The Night' tour. The second was "Too Late For Love" which was a reworking of the live song "This Ship Sails Tonight" which the band had debuted on the December 1980 club tour of England. Die Hard The Hunter's main riff was written in 1980 during the band's debut US tour.

When working on "Rock of Ages", the song didn't have any lyrics, so Elliott would just hum along with the riff. But then the band let a choir use the studio and Elliott found a hymn book they'd left behind on an organ. It was opened to the old hymn "Rock of Ages", so Elliott tried that as the chorus and Lange loved it.

All the pain Def Leppard endured was well worth it in the end. Pyromania, released on January 20, 1983, would reach No.2 on the Billboard charts and No. 4 in Canada. Heck, if it wasn't for an album called Thriller by an artist named Michael Jackson, Pyromania would have gone to No. 1 in the US. It set the standard for mainstream metal in the 1980s and has now sold more than 10 million copies.

Read about how important guitarist Steve Clark was to Def Leppard before his untimely death

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How Pete Willis Was Fired From Def Leppard

Pete Willis rocking with Leppard

For many Def Leppard fans, their best work included original guitarist Pete Willis.

Sadly though, the last fans heard of his guitar playing were the rhythm tracks on Leppard's blockbuster Pyromania album, as he was fired while the band was recording it with producer Mutt Lange.

Willis was an integral member who co-wrote many songs on On Through the Night, High 'n Dry and several off Pyromania ("Photograph", "Too Late For Love", "Comin' Under Fire" and "Billy's Got A Gun").

It was Willis who brought singer Joe Elliott into the fold, as well as the late Steve Clark.

Naturally, as a bunch of 20-something's from Sheffield, England, the band enjoyed partying as much as the next rock star, but Willis had more of a problem with alcohol than the other members.

Even before he was fired, there was trouble with Willis as they were touring in support of High 'n Dry. His eventual replacement, Phil Collen, told musicradar.com that Elliott actually called him and told him to learn the songs.

"What happened was, Pete Willis was having some problems with the band - things were just not going well - and one day, during the High 'n' Dry tour, I got a phone call from Joe Elliot, who was in the States at the time. 'Can you learn 16 songs in two days?' he asked me. 'Uhh, yeah,' I said. 'Why is that?' And then he told me that things weren't great with Pete, that it wasn't working out," said Collen. "Funny thing is, Joe called me two days later and told me that things were OK again.

That would have been in the late summer/fall of 1981.

Things with Willis would come to a head during the recording sessions for Pyromania less than a year later in England. After a long night of partying, Willis showed up at the studio in rough, rough shape.

The band were working on "Stagefright" and Willis basically could not play the guitar, so Lange told him to go home and dry out.

Def Leppard in the early 1980s

It was then that Leppard decided to fire Willis, and Elliott was tasked with breaking the news to his bandmate. Incidentally, the band wanted then-manager Peter Mensch to tell Willis, but he refused, reportedly saying "No, it's your band. You're big boys."

So Elliott broke the news to Willis over the phone on July 10, 1982.

"He was nice about it," Willis said of Elliott's phone call. "He said 'I'm really sorry, Pete, I didn't want to have to be the one to tell you this, but I got the job anyway.' After he said that, I knew what was coming next, I said I wanted to come down and talk about it. I didn't want to change their minds as much as to ask why - although deep down, I knew why."

The next day, Willis met with the rest of Leppard at Mensch's London home and was told again he was no longer a member of the band.

Elliott recalls Willis offered to get psychiatric help, but the singer responded that it was too late for that. "I had to be adamant because I knew nobody else would stand up. I said 'It's finished, there's nothing to discuss.' After that, he went 'Well, to be honest with you, I'm slightly relieved about it.' And that was it."

With that, the band brought in Collen to finish the Pyromania sessions where he laid down some solos and added backing vocals, then became a permanent member in the band.

Sadly though, alcohol addiction cost Def Leppard another member when Steve Clark died in 1991.

After Willis left, Def Leppard lost some of their hard rock edge as Hysteria, the follow-up to Pyromania, boasted more of a radio-pop feel to it.

To their credit, Willis still gets all of his song-writing royalties and he's never had any hard feelings towards his former band.

Check out our look at how late Leppard guitarist Steve Clark died due to alcohol consumption

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Steve Clark: Def Leppard's Late, Unsung Guitarist Deserves More Kudos

Late Def Leppard guitarist Steve Clark

So many rock stars who die before their time become more iconic in death than they were in life.

Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, Bon Scott, Randy Rhoads are but three examples from a long list of fallen rockers.

Sadly, though, late Def Leppard guitarist Steve "Steamin'" Clark is rarely talked about in terms of the stellar legacy he left behind when he died in 1991 at the age of 30.

Maybe it's because he wasn't Def Leppard's frontman. Maybe it's because he was fairly low key in the band.

Whatever the case, Clark a co-founder of Leppard with ex-guitarist Pete Willis (ironically kicked out of the band for too much boozing in 1982), vocalist Joe Elliott and bassist Rick Savage, was instrumental in writing most of Def Leppard's tracks during their stratospheric rise to stardom in the 1980s from their debut On Through The Night, through High N Dry, Pyromania and Hysteria. Despite not playing on 1992's Adrenalize, Clark co-wrote most of the tracks.

Whether it's "Hello America", "Let It Go", "Switch 625", "Bringin' On the Heartbreak", "Photograph", Rock of Ages", "Hysteria", or "Gods of War", Clark had a hand in crafting those songs and helped Def Leppard reach the top of the rock 'n roll mountain.

Yet, despite that, he seems to never get his due for what he did, unlike Cobain or Rhoads.

Despite Def Leppard's Success, Depression Dogged Clark

Despite his phenomenal talent as a songwriter (one his nicknames was "The Riffmaster") and the amazing success Def Leppard enjoyed, Clark was a depressed alcoholic, who numbed his pain with booze and drugs (both prescription and hard drugs like cocaine).

Tragically, everyone around him knew he would wind up dead, but they couldn't stop it. And Clark seemed resigned to his fate.

His father, Barry, noted in a VH1 documentary his son was " really looking worse for wear" at Christmas in 1990. Barrie recalls telling his son that if he kept on drinking, he'd kill himself. To that Clark responded "Well, I'm not bothered anyway."

Before he died, the members of Leppard and those around them knew Clark was in major trouble, heading down a one-way street to nowhere, so an intervention was held in 1989 after a doctor addressed the serious damage Clark was doing to himself.

Bandmates, longtime producer Mutt Lange, as well as friends were on hand to lay it out for Clark, who, according to guitarist Phil Collen in his autobiography Adrenalized “... sat there with a cigarette taking it all in. Mutt gave him a big hug, then we all hugged him and told him that we loved him. That was a very tearful and emotional experience for all involved, especially when the doctor explained to us that about 70 percent of alcoholics who get to this level usually end up getting killed either by accident or overuse.”

Clark then agreed to go into rehab ( his last of several attempts ) in Tucson, where he met recovering heroin addict Janie Dean, an American. They moved in together and got engaged, but according to Collen, both continued with substance abuse. She was the person who found Clark dead on their couch in their Chelsea home on Jan. 8, 1991.

Clark's Last Night and Death

The night before he died, Dean and Clark were supposed to take in a theatre production, but he'd been out drinking before they were going to leave, so the couple decided to stay home. However, according to Dean, at 8 p.m. on Jan. 7, Clark told her he was going to go out for 10 minutes. He came back four hours later, extremely drunk with a buddy. Clark passed out on the couch and never woke again.

An autopsy confirmed the cause of death was compression of the brain stem - which caused respiratory failure - due to excessive alcohol mixed with anti-depressants and pain killers. According to Dean, he was taking Prozac, Valium, and would also do cocaine.

At the time he died, Clark was on an unofficial six-month leave from the band, so he could focus on getting healthy.

So ended the sad story of one of rock's great songwriters and guitarists. One of Clark's nicknames was "Riffmaster" and when you listen to Def Leppard's first four albums, you know why.

After his passing, Sacramento rock band Tesla, who toured with Def Leppard, wrote a tribute song to honour Clark called "Song and Emotion". And Leppard wrote "White Lightning" for the "Adrenalize" record. The song looks at their and Clark's struggles with substance abuse. Check it out below.

See how founding Def Leppard guitarist Pete Willis was fired from the band during the Pyromania recording sessions