If you were a Def Leppard fan in the 1980's, chances are your room was lined with posters of other hard-rockin' hair band--Poison, Whitesnake, maybe White Lion.
But when drummer Rick Allen thinks about his band's peers, none of those names come up. After all, do any of those bands appear anywhere besides VH-1's "Behind the Music" these days? Def Leppard, by contrast, is still touring. They will perform Tuesday in Portland, the end of a six-month tour.
When Allen lists his musical colleagues, he pulls out the big guns--Aerosmith and the Rolling Stones. He claims he's motivated by the fact that "Mick Jagger gets up every day, looks in the mirror and goes out on stage."
Though Allen is 19 years younger than Jagger, he recognizes the qualities that have kept the Stones around for three and a half decades. "Anybody who's stayed together more than 10 or 15 years either realizes they're on to a good thing or they're in it for the money," he said by phone from a hotel is Salisbury, MD. "The whole thing that keeps (Def Leppard) going is the friendship."
Sure, there have been disagreements over the years. Various members have wanted to quit at different times. "We've punched each other out a few times, but if anything, that clears the air," Allen says, though he adds that it's been four or five years since fists were last thrown.
When the band gathered at singer Joe Elliott's Dublin home to start recording their latest album, "Euphoria," none of the problems surfaced. "It became boy town again," Allen said. "We can't help but have a good time when we're together."
As they worked on "Euphoria," the band consciously tried to recapture the signature Def Leppard sound. It had missing somewhat on "Slang," a 1996 release that was hailed by some critics as an adventurous experiment, but was lost on fans.
"(Reaction to the record) was frustrating to a point, but if people don't get it, you go back to the drawing board," Allen said. That, in fact, is what the band had been trying to do with "Slang."
"The '90's came along, and we were about as hip as hemorrhoids," Allen said. "Nirvana was a reaction against the style of music we were playing, which was `Star Wars' for the eyes and ears."
Def Leppard tried to react back, in an album that Allen sees now as "quite self-indulgent," though he adds that its songs go over well live. In planning for "Euphoria," it was clear that the band needed to return to its tried-and-true formula--"large vocals, large guitars, large drums, large everything."
When you hear a chorus or two, it's clear that Def Leppars is back on track, with catchy hooks, strong guitars and an attitude like the 1980's never ended.
The '80's are definately over in band members' lives, though. Three of them are fathers, and a fourth has a child on the way. And when Allen picks out a CD to listen to in his down time, he chooses "anything without (expletive) drums."
"When I need that quiet time, and I walk into a record store and the guy says, `You wanna hear something that rocks?,' I say, `Point me to the New Age section!"
Allen is looking forward to the end of the tour--Portland is the last night--so he can "be a civilian" again. He'll head home to California, where he's got a 3-year-old daughter, Lauren, who is starting to understand why her father has to travel so much. He'll read the spiritual books he's become interested in recently, meditate, go to the beach--in short, Allen says, "I'll do whatever I need to keep myself right."
But never fear. Modern music's most famous one-armed drummer--he lost the other one in a car accident and taught himself to play again on a modified drum kit--still has the rock star role down pat. When asked how he'll spend his day until the evening performance, Allen says "I'm just laying around, listening to stuff, thinking about how I'm going to tidy up my room. I think a hand grenade will do."
