Rick Allen did not play on 'Pyro' or 'Hysteria'?

News to me:

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It was a total eclipse of the charts, and Jim Steinman, the hotshot hitmaker reborn, was chosen to produce Def Leppard's follow-up to their multi-platinum 'Mutt' Lange-produced
monster 'Pyromania.'

"It was a weird time," says Steinman. "Mutt Lange is totally insane. He has nervous
breakdowns as part of his process of making records! He mixes, remixes and has a nervous
breakdown. That's why they're always finished up by his engineers, Nigel Green or Mike
Shipley.

"I went to Dublin to meet the band, where they were living in tax exile. They're great kids,
but they were like little boys lost."

"While I was talking to them, Rick Allen came up behind me and said, 'I really want to be on
this record.'

"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.

"So we get the drum machine out, like Mutt says, and program it. Rick starts to play along,
and he's really good! He was as good as any rock 'n' roll drummer I've ever worked with.
So we use all live drums.

"Mutt comes down two weeks into recording, (He had helped the band during
pre-production but originally opted out of producing. - Ed.) listens to a little of the drums,
which sound perfect to me. And he goes, 'What are you doing? You're gonna throw these
poor kids careers' in the toilet!' This was with the drummer right there! So we had to erase them and do the drums his way....With drum machines.

"Joe Elliot was the hardest to get along with. He's got a great really low voice, and a great
high voice, but he has a real problem in the middle registers. So we start on a verse, and it's
in the middle registers and he's having trouble."

"So I said, 'Let's skip onto the chorus to get you going,' because that was higher. It was
good, so I say, 'Lets do another track,' and after a while he comes storming in the control
room and says 'What the f**k are you doing?'

"It turns out that when Mutt does vocals, he uses one track and he won't let him go on to the second line of the song until he has the first line right! And he keeps erasing the first line till it's right! Joe was going, 'How am I supposed to feel the song if I'm jumping to the chorus!'

"It's a very bizarre set-up there. I got sick of it after about four months. Mutt did almost
everything. He created them, and they were lost without him."

Hmm.... wonder if that is true - Def Lep did fire him

thejokeriv wrote:

Hmm.... wonder if that is true - Def Lep did fire him

Def Leppard says they fired him...maybe he did really quit?

That's very interesting. Thanks for sharing.

I guess CRIMSON GLORY did the same thing, though I wonder if the drummer programmed his own parts.

I am not surprised, Mutt Lange is known for doing this sort of thing, the only band I can think of did not go along with this was AC/DC, on AC/DC's albums that Mutt Lange produced that was AC/DC playing not studio hacks or machinary.

The band (including the late Bon Scott) did state that they did enjoy working with him. But by time Mutt Lange worked with AC/DC they had a few albums under their belt where Def Leppard was only on album #2 when they began working with Lange.

Producers/engineers are weird sometimes.

One Ultimatum's Puppet of Destruction CD, our bassist and the engineer at the time did not get along well. The engineer thought that Tom overplayed everything. He would argue with him while he was recording telling him how to play the songs, which of course, would tick off Tom. Tom refused to go back to the studio after he finished his bass tracks. Well, on the song "Never" the engineer didn't like the way Tom played the song, so after we left the studio he re-recorded the bass tracks using a keyboard. Of course, Robert and I didn't notice as we weren't there for the bass sessions. It sounded good to us as the time. We mixed the album and out the door it went. When CD copies came to us, Tom nearly lost his mind. "That's not what I played on that song!" Sure enough, it was not. His bass tracks had been replaced.

On the 2010 remastered version that is out on Roxx, those original bass tracks have been put back in and the midi-bass has been removed. So, track one on the CD is actually a different mix than the one on the original Puppet of Destruction release from 1997. However, you can hear the midi-bass version on the bonus track. It was how the original demo version sent to Rowe Productions was, so we left that track alone.

Anyhow, not sure if that story really fit in a Def Leppard thread but there it is nonetheless...

That's weird, but it's happened with other bands as well. Legend has it that Dave Holland's drum tracks on Judas Priest's RAM IT DOWN were severely "edited" with post production tampering. Supposedly he was going thru some family issues during recording (his mother passed away while they were working on the album) and the band/producer thought his work was below par.

Fred Coury of Cinderella didn't play on either of Cinderella's first two albums (NIGHT SONGS and LONG COLD WINTER), though he did the tours for both records they used a different drummer in the studio.

Sounds like Steinman watched the "Hysteria" Classic Albums show. On that show Joe and Phil said Jim didn't know what he was doing when working with Def Leppard. As for Rick Allen not playing on those albums, I can believe it. Just compare the drums on Hysteria and Pyro to High N Dry and On Through. There's a definite "robotic" sound to the drums on the later albums.

That "family issues" thing (along with "health issues) is almost always the public reason given to dismiss a band member without them losing face.

SpectreFate wrote:

Sounds like Steinman watched the "Hysteria" Classic Albums show. On that show Joe and Phil said Jim didn't know what he was doing when working with Def Leppard. As for Rick Allen not playing on those albums, I can believe it. Just compare the drums on Hysteria and Pyro to High N Dry and On Through. There's a definite "robotic" sound to the drums on the later albums.

Joe Elliot's whole thing about Steinman wanting to keep a take that was out of tune sounds like BS to me...you're gonna tell me Jim Steinman doesn't know when something is in tune or not? Please...

Shawn Of Fire wrote:

Joe Elliot's whole thing about Steinman wanting to keep a take that was out of tune sounds like BS to me...you're gonna tell me Jim Steinman doesn't know when something is in tune or not? Please...

Yeah.

SpectreFate wrote:

Sounds like Steinman watched the "Hysteria" Classic Albums show. On that show Joe and Phil said Jim didn't know what he was doing when working with Def Leppard. As for Rick Allen not playing on those albums, I can believe it. Just compare the drums on Hysteria and Pyro to High N Dry and On Through. There's a definite "robotic" sound to the drums on the later albums.

The timing is almost too perfect - the stuff I read said they used a drum machine and Rick played over it later on for both albums, sometimes down to just recording the snare drum to get the right "sound", especially on Hysteria.

Mutt and AC/DC was classic stuff and damn good! AC/DC wouldn't have gone with a drum machine, they have Phil Rudd who's timing is drum machine like.

Shawn Of Fire wrote:

SpectreFate wrote:

Sounds like Steinman watched the "Hysteria" Classic Albums show. On that show Joe and Phil said Jim didn't know what he was doing when working with Def Leppard. As for Rick Allen not playing on those albums, I can believe it. Just compare the drums on Hysteria and Pyro to High N Dry and On Through. There's a definite "robotic" sound to the drums on the later albums.

Joe Elliot's whole thing about Steinman wanting to keep a take that was out of tune sounds like BS to me...you're gonna tell me Jim Steinman doesn't know when something is in tune or not? Please...

LOL! Could be - depends on how out of "tune" it was. Jim wrote some great songs and did a great job on BOOH II's production, so who knows.

thejokeriv wrote:

SpectreFate wrote:

Sounds like Steinman watched the "Hysteria" Classic Albums show. On that show Joe and Phil said Jim didn't know what he was doing when working with Def Leppard. As for Rick Allen not playing on those albums, I can believe it. Just compare the drums on Hysteria and Pyro to High N Dry and On Through. There's a definite "robotic" sound to the drums on the later albums.

The timing is almost too perfect - the stuff I read said they used a drum machine and Rick played over it later on for both albums, sometimes down to just recording the snare drum to get the right "sound", especially on Hysteria

I remember that on Classic Albums, where he spent forever playing one snippet of music over and over.

That's quite a revelation if true.

Where did that original quote come from? Is it recent? I'd like to see if anyone from the Def Leppard camp comments on it.

Happens more then we want to believe. Bunch of egos in a room, producer who thinks God consults him on music and you get crap like this.

I imagine it is much more expensive (time consuming) to record drums than any other instrument so I imagine that is why a band like CRIMSON GLORY in the early days would've tried to save money there to maximize their budget elsewhere.

I have some very shocking news. I did not play on 'Pyro' or 'Hysteria' either.

I always said i didn't care for the drum sound on those DL albums with Mutt Lange... now i know why. I thought they just triggered the crap outta the drums, but it was a freakin drum machine the whole time!

The question regarding the drum sound being different on the first three lps as opposed to to the two mentioned ? Well you gotta consider that Rick had two arms then and could play a fully acoustic kit. The latter lps, the dude had one arm and most of the kit were pedals and triggers to compensate. Sure they were sampled acoustic sounds but a foot and/or trigger can never duplicate what a human can do with hand/wrist and fingers.

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Sure they were sampled acoustic sounds

Did that technology exist in 1982?

Shawn Of Fire wrote:

Quote :

Sure they were sampled acoustic sounds

Did that technology exist in 1982?

pyromania was released in 83'. So why would 82' apply to the two lps afterwards.

The Alesis HR16 had actual acoustic samples and it was on the market in 86' It was middle-o-road product. Sure the big boys had better toys prior to that.

James B. wrote:

Shawn Of Fire wrote:

Quote :

Sure they were sampled acoustic sounds

Did that technology exist in 1982?

pyromania was released in 83'. So why would 82' apply to the two lps afterwards.

The Alesis HR16 had actual acoustic samples and it was on the market in 86' It was middle-o-road product. Sure the big boys had better toys prior to that.

We were talking about Pyro & Hysteria...Pyro was released in 83 but recorded in 82, when they would have had to use the technology...

my bad bro

I'm pretty sure this is true. VH1 did an episode of Ultimate Albums on Pyromania, and the band themselves said pretty clearly that it was a drum machine on Pyroe. Rick Allen pretty much did nothing but cymbals.