There’s a case that Def Leppard function best with their backs to the wall. Consider the hellish sessions for 1987’s Hysteria, when the Sheffield band reeled from creative strife, plunging debt and the nightmare car crash that cost drummer Rick Allen his left arm. Then revisit the resultant multi-platinum album, whose joyous anthems punched their ticket to the stadium league.
Now, 35 years later, some of that same blitz spirit runs through Diamond Star Halos, the 12th album, forged when Covid turned out the lights, nixed Leppard’s Stadium Tour with Mötley Crüe and scattered each band member to the gleaming ghost ship of his own guitar room. From stasis and isolation grew ambition, a fierce remote work ethic and, finally, 15 shout-it-back songs so big they should bring the world out of hiding.
“I honestly think Diamond Star Halos is the best thing we’ve ever done,” says Phil Collen, the likeable aitch-dropping gunslinger who joined in 1982. His wingman Viv Campbell, a wry Northern Irishman whose presence since 1992 has always made Leppard a few notches cooler, gives a nod: “And we didn’t even have to look at each other while we did it…”
How badly do you think people need anthemic rock ’n’ roll right now?
“I think we all need it. It’s been so crap. And right now, I can’t believe the shit that’s going on in Ukraine. It’s horrific.
