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Album dossier / 1987

Hysteria

Def Leppard · Hard Rock/Glam Metal

Hysteria took nearly three years to make, becoming rock's most notorious drawn-out production: original producer Mutt Lange departed exhausted after Pyromania, an eight-month stint with Meat Loaf collaborator Jim Steinman went nowhere, and then, on New Year's Eve 1984, drummer Rick Allen lost his left arm in a car crash near Sheffield. Allen convinced the band he could still play by designing a custom electronic-triggered Simmons drum kit with engineer/programmer Nigel Green, prompting Lange to return and restart the album almost from scratch at Dublin's Windmill Lane studio. Lange -- who told guitarist Phil Collen he wanted to make 'a hard rock version of Thriller' -- kept revising songs even after mixing, famously reworking the 'Pour Some Sugar on Me' intro on a Fairlight sampler after the album had already been pressed. The finished record topped the UK charts and became a genre-defining glam-metal landmark, driven by its hybrid of processed guitars and electronic drum textures.