Def Leppard opens ‘Viva Hysteria’ run at Hard Rock

Def Leppard’s production “Viva Hysteria” is titled after the band’s biggest hit record, “Hysteria,” which they will play in its entirety.

Def Leppard plays at the after party for the “Rock of Ages” premiere in June in Los Angeles.

It was 1983, and Joe Elliott finally had enough money to buy one of those portable video cameras that, at the time, was akin to lugging a Howitzer barrel on one’s shoulder.

Def Leppard’s third record, “Pyromania,” was living up to its title, burning up the charts with melodic hard rock steeped in the British heavy metal tradition, all hook-heavy bombast and sleeveless Union Jack T-shirts with regrettable matching short shorts.

It was a day off in Vegas while touring that record that forms one of Elliott’s most vivid memories of the city.

“We were driving up and down the Strip and I was filming everything,” the Def Leppard singer recalls. “It was the days when you could still get tickets to see Dean Martin and stuff like that. It really was the Vegas that we grew up reading about in England with people like Sammy Davis Jr. and Dino. The big thing for us was always this mythical Wayne Newton, who was like the biggest thing in Vegas, but I think the highest chart position he ever had was something like No. 112. It was like, ‘Who is this guy?’ ”

Three decades later, Elliott’s band has their name up on a Vegas marquee for an extended run of shows just like the aforementioned greats who captured his imagination so many years ago.

The production’s called “Viva Hysteria,” titled after the band’s biggest hit record, 1987’s “Hysteria,” which sold more than 12 million copies in the U.S. alone and made the band as much a staple on MTV as embarrassing VJ coifs.

The album was a pop culture monolith, a record with a sound as huge as its sales.

Out in front of it all was Elliott in his studiously tattered blue jeans, perforated with more holes than a Suicide Girl’s earlobes, equal parts flesh and fabric. He was the golden-haired rock god whom all teen boys wanted to be and whom all teen girls wanted to be with.

On “Hysteria,” the band had enough of a hard rock edge to appeal to all the young dudes, but it came sweetened with a precisely calibrated pop savvy that lured in the girls.

It was a match made in heaven — if heaven was an ocean-deep pool of hormones.

“Hysteria” helped usher in the digital era of mainstream hard rock. With producer Mutt Lange at the helm, it was far ahead of its time in terms of incorporating recording techniques and technologies normally reserved for synth pop and new wave bands into a rock context, for which they were deemed too fey in the past. There were samples, meticulously multilayered backing vocals that expanded upon what Queen did the decade before and electronic drums that didn’t sound thin and programmed.

It was an album wholly indebted to its era, where Gordon Gecko-style excess became en vogue.

Basically, “Hysteria” was the rock ’n’ roll equivalent of a big-budget sci-fi flick.

And to hear Elliott tell it, that was precisely the point.

“We were trying to make an album that sounded like ‘Star Wars,’ ” he says. “Mutt Lange’s production was the equivalent of Spielberg’s direction. It was just big and ridiculous and exciting.

“With a producer like Mutt, he wasn’t prepared to make ‘Pyromania 2,’ ” he says. “He was the one who sat us down and said, ‘Look, Michael Jackson just had six hit singles (on the same album), there’s no reason why you can’t have seven.’ ”

“Hysteria” did in fact spawn seven singles as a trendsetting blend of the organic and synthetic.

To use another ’80s movie analogy, the album was like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character in “The Terminator”: It may have had a digital core, but it still had the veneer of a flesh-and-bone creation.

An album this painstaking assembled, though, took time.

Lots of it.

“Hysteria” was 3½ years in the making, a period that saw the band have to overcome the car accident that claimed drummer Rick Allen’s arm, numerous producer switches, another car accident sidelining Lange and Elliott getting “deathly ill” with the mumps at one point.

“It was such a draining experience,” he says. “It was one of those things where once we committed to it we were all gung-ho, and then a year into it, we were all going, ‘Oh God, are we sure?’

“We had so much pressure from management and the record company to get this thing out because they didn’t want to lose the momentum of the previous record,” he adds. “Mutt goes, ‘Screw them, it doesn’t matter. If it’s a great record, it’ll work.’ ”

To commemorate the album’s 25th anniversary, the band will be playing “Hysteria” in its entirety during their upcoming 11-show residency at the Hard Rock Hotel.

At long last, Def Lep die-hards will get to hear seldom played album cuts such as “Excitable,” “Run Riot” and “Love and Affection.”

Prior to playing “Hysteria” front to back, the band will spend the first half of their set mixing hits from throughout their career with a selection of rarities that will likely change from one night to the next.

“We’re pulling out some majorly obscure stuff,” Elliott says. “I can almost guarantee that whoever reviews the first night is going to have go on to YouTube and figure out what the hell we just played.”

The seeds for the band’s Vegas residency were first planted in 2008, when the band toured with Cheap Trick, who then came to Vegas for a stay at the LVH where they paid tribute to The Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s” album.

The group invited Elliott to come and sing during a portion of the show.

“Cheap Trick did their thing and I thought it was really well received and very well presented by the band,” Elliott says. “Then, lo and behold, over the last couple of years, we were getting wind of the fact that Motley (Crue) was going to go in and we knew GN’R was going in. We were looking at each other going, ‘Well, it’s just a matter of time before we get an invite.’ ”

Initially the band had planned to take 2013 off from touring (in the past five years, they’ve only abstained from the road in 2010).

But one of the reasons that the group was eager to come to Vegas was that it would get them all in the same city for close to six weeks.

With three band members living in L.A. and two in Dublin, Ireland, it’s a challenge for them to collaborate on new material, which they plan to do while in town.

First, though, they must refamiliarize themselves with tunes that they had all but forgotten.

Hence, it’s time to load some fresh rounds into “Don’t Shoot Shotgun.”

“I don’t listen to us, but I’ve had to do research,” Elliott says of relearning “Hysteria” songs that the band hasn’t performed in ages, if ever. “So I have been jogging with the earphones on and it’s like, ‘That’s not bad.’

“You can’t play ‘Hysteria’ and not do one of the songs. We’ve got to make it work,” he notes. “It’s part of the contract.”

Contact reporter Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@
reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476.