Def Leppard Turn It Up to X
The words “intimate club gig” and “arena-rock band” should not go
together. The whole point of enormo-dome music is size, of riffs
and choruses pumped up to the concrete arches. But long before they
became the 1980s kings of year-long coliseum tours and
multi-platinum heavy melody — over 24 million copies sold of
1983’s Pyromania and 1987’s Hysteria combined —
Def Leppard played in rooms a lot smaller than New York City’s
Irving Plaza. In the late 1970s, when they were the prize upstarts
of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, the Leppards earned their
crust and stripes in tiny pubs and working men’s clubs, rattling
cash registers and shattering pint glasses with their precocious
mix of twin Thin Lizzy-style guitars and Queen-like vocal shine.
So last night’s show — the Leppards’ first Manhattan appearance
in ten years, singer Joe Elliott noted from the stage — was almost
like coming home. It was also part of coming back: The band would
release a new studio album today — X (pronounced like the
letter or the number ten, your choice) — and it arrives in a weird
pocket of time. The five Leppards, now mostly in their forties, are
considered too young to be equals of the Who or the Rolling Stones,
yet too long in the jowl and too associated with the dreaded “power
ballad” to rate nu-metal respect.
But what the Leppards have in abundance are hits, all scored and
executed with a visceral cleansing joy. Elliott, bassist Rick
Savage, drummer Rick Allen and guitarists Phil Collen and Vivian
Campbell clearly love their work, and they advertised it from first
song (“Let’s Get Rocked”) to encore (“Rock! Rock! [Till You
Drop]”). It was a gas to hear the classicism at the heart of the
Leppards’ sound, like the Jeff Beck-like curls and screams in
Collen’s acrobatic leads. It was fascinating, too, to hear how much
of Leppard’s pop savvy — the tight candied four-part vocal
harmonies, the R&B-dance inflections of “Rocket” and “Pour Some
Sugar on Me” — has turned up on Britney Spears and ‘N Sync
records. Bonus irony: The Leppards, when they started, were a
genuine boy band. Their average age was seventeen when they made
their debut EP.
The Leppards did not overdo the promo at Irving Plaza, playing
only one song from the new album, “Now,” a classy variant on
modern-rock ballladry. Instead, they simply reeled off reason after
reason (“Photograph,” “Armageddon It,” “Animal,” “Foolin'”) why
they are still a great night out. A band that has, in its
twenty-four years, literally defied loss of life (the late
guitarist Steve Clark) and limb (Allen’s left arm), the Leppards
are cheerful survivors. And tonight, they made a joyful noise in
the perfect confined space.