Bludgeon Riffola/Mercury/UMeToday marks the 30th anniversary of Def Leppard‘s massively successful Hysteria album, which topped the Billboard 200 for six weeks in 1988, and yielded an impressive six top-20 singles. A follow-up to the group’s similarly successful 1983 album Pyromania, Hysteria became Def Leppard’s best-selling record, selling more than 12 million copies in the U.S. to date.
Among the hits featured on the album are “Love Bites,” “Pour Some Sugar on Me,” and “Armageddon It,” which peaked at #1, #2 and #3, respectively, on the Billboard Hot 100. The band overcame major adversity to record Hysteria, as drummer Rick Allen lost his left arm in a New Year’s Eve 1984 car crash, and had to relearn to play drums using a specially designed electronic/acoustic kit.
Singer Joe Elliott notes in a new video about the making of Hysteria that Allen’s electronic drums inspired the band to add modern ’80s elements into their hard-rock sound.
“We were hearing these new bands making totally different kind of music to us — bands like Frankie Goes to Hollywood or The Human League — using all this electronic stuff and thinking, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to incorporate that into rock?'” says Elliott.
Guitarist Phil Collen, meanwhile, says the band’s goal for Hysteria was “to make a rock version of [Michael Jackson‘s] Thriller, that had seven singles on it and that would please every genre of music.” As history has shown, Def Leppard achieved that goal.
In celebration of the anniversary milestone, the band is reissuing a remastered version of the album on Friday, August 4, in multiple configurations — a five-CD/two-DVD super deluxe package, a three-CD set, a two-LP vinyl collection, and a single CD.
You can check out full details for the Hysteria reissues at DefLeppard.com.
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