A couple of hours before Def Leppard take to the stage for their second, and last, night at the tiny Nooderligt club in Tilberg, me and Rick Allen and a couple of brown bottles of beer hunker down in a corner of the upstairs production office and out of the goodness of our hearts throw down these words on to the tape.
I begin by asking Rick how soon it was after his accident he made up his mind to try and carry on as the drummer in the band? "About two weeks," he says. Jesus, you didn't fuck around, did you! I cry. Seriously though, I'm astounded.
"What happened was, I'd lost my left arm, and I'd busted up my right pretty badly as well. So to begin with my right arm was more or less strapped to my side. To help me sit up straight in bed and move around a bit and make myself comfortable, the nurses placed a block of foam in the bottom of the bed so that I could push against it with my feet. Well, it was just in the perfect position for me to tap away on it with my feet. So out of sheer boredom I used to lie there tapping my feet against this thing, and I started thinking, hang on a minute, I can use this, This has possibilities..."
"So I got this friend of mine down and he looked at what I was doing and he agreed that the idea of some kind of foot pedal that would at least enable me to get a snare sound with my left foot could probably be worked out and designed. Within a matter of days this guy returned to the hospital with what turned out to be a prototype for the pedals I'm using onstage now."
"The other thing I got into doing, don't laugh, was sitting in my wheelchair and banging on the foot plates, getting a rhythm going. And to be honest, what I'm doing now onstage isn't much different," he grins. Rick Allen may have lost an arm, but he hasn't lost his sense of humour.
"And because the rest of the band were so much behind me as regards, like, you're still in the band, Rick, all that occupied my time while I was in hospital was working out what I was gonna do when I got out. It was great to be able to think positively about the situation, it really helped a lot in the beginning. Because of that I had this tremendous urge to get out and actually start again, I was out of there inside a month!"
With an iron will, and displaying remarkable courage, Rick Allen was back in the studios in Holland with the rest of the band within six weeks of his accident. "It wasn't easy," he says, "making a sudden reappearance. Not at first, anyway. I don't think any of us quite knew what to say. It was strange for all of us, to begin with. I think the rest of the band were waiting to see if I was going to crack up or something. Nobody was sure yet how I was going to handle it."
"But they gave me their support, totally, from the word Go. I mean, if they'd have said `Sorry Rick we can't really carry on this way,' I'd have stepped down gracefully, you know, fine, no problem...But that was never the case at all, they all left it up to me to decide. And that was all the spur I needed, I think, to try and work things out as a drummer again..."
The technical details for Rick's new specially designed electronic kit were worked out over a period of a few short months. Meanwhile, in the studio Rick relied mainly on a Fairlight computer to achieve the drum sounds you can hear on Hysteria. Outside of the studio, he worked overtime on refining a startling new technique that would enable him to return to the stage the next time Leppard played as a legitimate live drummer.
Showing the same heart that dragged him from a hospital bed back into a recording studio inside the space of six short weeks, within a year of his return to the band Rick decided he was ready to put his balls on the line and try out some of his big ideas on a stage...
In August last year, Rick Allen and Def Leppard finally got some of their prayers answered when the band got it up for five low-profile gigs in Ireland as a prelude to their three, more well-publicized, festival appearances later that month. But this, if you've been paying attention, you already know.
I ask Rick how he felt in the dressing room, before he went on for that first gig?
"I never, ever drank before I went onstage, but that first night in Ireland using the new kit, even with Jeff Rich beside me on the stage, I was so jittery I downed the best part of a half a bottle of brandy before we went on...And then the minute I got onstage I was straight! I mean, I was just so frightened! And I made a few silly mistakes, a few obvious errors; my timing was a bit off and I kept thinking of things before I was supposed to play them,and then rushing things...Because Jeff Rich was there, though, I didn't have to panic too much. And then over the space of those first few gigs, I started getting it together again. Suddenly I felt a lot calmer and I was doing all right."
"There's an old Irish joke that goes, `When you see a guy with a short leg you can be sure the other one's always longer!'" he laughs. "It's only a daft joke but there's a grain of truth in there. Losing an arm might have been the worst thing that could ever happen to me. But it happened, and that's that. In the meantime, I feel like the rest of the me has grown much, much stronger as a result. Maybe it's just nature's way of compensating for the loss of one part of me. I don't know, but within the space of those first few gigs in Ireland everything started coming together so quickly I think I surprised everybody myself included."
"Peter (Mensch, Leppard's manager, as if you didn't know) had been saying all along that I should try playing live on my own, but I really needed those gigs with Jeff to take some of the pressure off while I got used to the idea of being onstage again and the new way of playing. Then, the second from last gig, Jeff had flown out for a couple of days work with Status Quo, in Germany I think, and he was supposed to take a flight back to where we were in Ireland on the afternoon of this particular gig. Something happened-he missed the flight or the plane was delayed-but soundcheck time came and Jeff still wasn't back. We carried on without him, and then it was time for us to go onstage and he still wasn't back, and nobody knew whether to go on or not without him, with just me by myself. In the end, we decided to do it anyway and hope that Jeff would show up soon."
"Anyway, we went on as a five-piece, which I must admit felt great, and then we just ploughed into the set and I got on with the drums on my own for about the first six numbers. It was good, too. Nothing too fancy, but I was definately holding my own. And then Jeff finally arrived and jumped up onstage and the two of us finished the set together."
Impressed by his solo performance, the following night, their last gig in Ireland before readying themselves for their appearance at Donington in a few days time, the rest of the band encouraged Rick to have a go at the whole set alone. He'd got this far on sheer guts and determination, maybe he new found technique would carry him the rest of the way.
"What happened was, I did the gig on my own and Jeff stood out by the mixing desk listening for any obvious mistakes, trying to spot if I wasn't holding my end up on each number, ready to step in and help me if it looked like I couldn't handle it. Well, I got through the entire gig, and afterwards Jeff came backstage and shook my hand and said, `Well,it looks like I"m out of a job then!' It was a nice moment."
Leppard's appearance on last year's Donington bill was an understandably special occasion for Rick Allen. Leppard's first gig in England in three years; Rick's second on his own.
"When we went on knew there would still be some people out there who probably thought we had a second drummer hidden somewhere underneath the stage," he jokes. "I was really nervous, I think we all were. But we started off OK, and the set started building and I just got into the gig. And the longer we played the more I could sense that people had stopped staring at me and were just getting into it, too. And then Joe started talking to the crowd inbetween numbers, and then he said something like, `I'd like to introduce you to my mate Rick Allen!' And the place went mad!I've never seen so many hands go up in the air I just sat there behind the drums and burst into tears."
"What we need to do right now is get out on the road, go everywhere we can, and prove to the world that Def Leppard are still a great live band," says Rick Allen. "Since Donington, we've finished the new album and I've had another 12 months to improve on my ability and my technique, and now we're as ready as we're ever going to be. We've been away a long time, but we've got nothing to hide behind. And now we're back to prove it."
Heroic last words from a heroic young man indeed. Later that night during the show I crouched down in the darkness behind Rick's drum riser-it's OK, Rick asked me if I'd like to and watched the boy work. I looked on bleary-eyed as he romped through a blistering Rock of Ages, his right arm doing what it always did; barefoot, raining down hard and with precision upon the pedals.
Can he still rock? Is Argentinian tennis star Gabriela Sabatini a hornball? Do fish f**k in water? And is Malcolm Dome mad? See for yourself in September, then you tell me.
