“I got to know tonight
If you’re alone tonight”
Gregg found Armin. Felice’s brother-in-law likes to live large. I was happy with Uber, until…
They stopped coming to the hills. If you could even get a driver, they’d drop you just minutes before they were supposed to pick you up. Uber used to be dependable, but now… As for those who are Lyft fans, Lyft’s in deep trouble, because they never diversified. Their market share and value is declining, even though I still check their prices, which are sometimes cheaper, but I wouldn’t even risk Uber in the hills.
And I have airport anxiety. I need to be there early. This came up at dinner the other night, I’ve never been late for a flight. But we almost missed our plane today, because halfway to Denver Felice realized she’d left her license and credit card in her ski vest. I keep my passport in my computer bag, and I’m not going anywhere without my computer. Yeah, you can operate on an iPhone. But if you want to type something, like this, even an iPad is insufficient.
But we turned around, and then someone drove the items to the Conoco station at Copper, and we made our flight. I’d like to tell you that Clear saved the day, but in truth the line for standard admission to screening was pretty short.
So I didn’t get much sleep last night, I was too wound up. And I tried to sleep on the airplane, but I only got about fifteen minutes.
Felice wanted to fly to Burbank, which is very low key. This is what people in the East can’t understand about Southern California. The baggage carousel is outside. I used to be shocked that schools had outside hallways. But it’s all de rigueur where it’s never cold and almost never rains.
So we had Armin picking us up. But he wouldn’t pick us up where regular people pick people up, right at the curb. You see he has a TCP license. You know, those little white numbers on the bumper of the Escalade…
That’s the standard black car these days. Lincoln stopped making its sedan, the standard “limo” of yore.
And I was pissed Armin wouldn’t pick us up right where we were and we had to schlepp our gear to his location, but it turns out with a TCP license you can’t drive up close and personal.
So we’re driving home. And I’ve always wondered the source of Armin’s music that is shown in the dash. Was it a mixtape (and don’t tell me cassettes are coming back, please), or SiriusXM, or…
Armin told me it was Spotify. He just punched in seventies and eighties, he loved that music.
So I started asking him about his favorite acts. The first person he mentioned was Lionel Richie. I like “All Night Long,” and I’ve come to love “Brick House” from weddings, but my favorite Commodores song is from when he’d already left, “Nightshift.” It’s all just too MOR for me.
But then Armin was mentioning a cornucopia of musical genres. And suddenly, nearly sotto voce, he told us he loved country music. The old stuff. And he had to play us “Rhinestone Cowboy.”
All these years later, it sounded really good. I hated it when it was overexposed way back when, but I can never forget Johnny Carson singing it while sitting on a horse on “The Tonight Show.”
And he’s mentioning acts from the past. But then Armin says his favorite artist is Garth Brooks. And then he mentioned Jake Owen. So I wondered, did he like Morgan Wallen?
OF COURSE! He said in the way of a dyed-in-the-wool hipster.
And as our luggage was being brought into the house, Armin told me his favorite band ever was Led Zeppelin.
I told him my favorite Led Zeppelin song was “Ten Years Gone.” He was flummoxed. So I pulled it up on Spotify on my phone and…he didn’t know it.
But then, when all the luggage was inside, he nearly begged me to come back to his car. He apologized for eating up my time. He just had to demonstrate his car stereo, it was so great.
Sure, I’ll come listen to your car stereo.
And he brings up “Ten Years Gone,” and boy does it sound phenomenal.
And then I saw him scrolling, and I saw “Ramble On,” so we listened to that.
And then he asked me if I liked the Scorpions. I said I loved “Rock You Like a Hurricane,” had hung with them back in the day, but they weren’t one of my favorites.
And Armin started searching for this one special Scorpions song to play me. Yet he couldn’t find it.
But as he’s scrolling, from the back seat, I see…
“Hysteria.”
“Pyromania” was the breakthrough. People will tell you they were into the previous album, but it got no airplay, Def Leppard was seen as somewhat lightweight. I remember when we were negotiating for Iron Maiden to play the first Rock in Rio, Rod Smallwood insisted that Maiden go on after Leppard, if Leppard wasn’t excised from the bill entirely.
But then came “Photograph.”
It was the harmonies, the Beach Boys element in aggressive rock, even if you couldn’t call it metal.
And then there was… F-f-f-“Foolin’.”
And “Rock of Ages.”
And if you had the album and played it, which so many of us did, there was “Too Late for Love.”
And then came the car accident, and a start with another producer, and it was three and a half years before the release of “Hysteria.”
You see the special sauce was Mutt Lange. Pronounced “Lang-eh” if you’re overseas, not like the ski boot, as we do in the good ole’ U.S.A. Word was Mutt could make the albums all by himself. Stayed in the studio after everybody had left and perfected the sound. And “Hysteria” was released in August of ’87 and…
I bought it the day it came out. It was different from “Pyromania.” As in all the tracks somehow sounded the same, they blended together, but the first track that jumped out was “Animal.”
And “Hysteria” wasn’t an instant hit. The first single, “Women,” underperformed. It was followed by “Animal,” which was a smash when it was released first in the U.K., but someone in the U.S. overthought it and put out “Women” first. And “Animal” did better than “Women” in the U.S., but man, the sheen was gone, Leppard looked like has-beens to the general public, a band that could not follow-up its success.
And then came “Pour Some Sugar on Me.”
Credit MTV. Leppard was fresh-faced as opposed to the grizzled veterans of the hard rock scene. And unlike so many of the hard rockers, women LOVED Leppard.
And the rest is history.
There were endless singles. The album sold twelve million copies in the U.S. Leppard was bigger than any act today, they were ubiquitous, part of the culture in a way that even Drake and Taylor Swift are not. That might be hard to believe if you’re a youngster, but you didn’t live through the MTV era, the eighties, when if it was on MTV, it was truly everywhere. Radio took its clues from MTV. World domination was still a thing. If you made it on MTV, you could tour the entire planet.
Now “Hysteria” is sixty two minutes and thirty two seconds long. That might sound average today, but not yesterday, when CDs still hadn’t peaked, when you had to fit all the music on the vinyl album, which I purchased first.
Meaning…it took a long time to digest.
I loved “Armageddon It.” And, of course, “Rocket.” And the closer, “Love and Affection.” But as time passed, a song that never registered previously started to emerge, to the point that the title track is now my favorite, that’s right, “Hysteria.”
“Hysteria” is subtle, it doesn’t have the in-your-face sounds of “Photograph.” It sneaks up on you and then you’ve got to play it incessantly, to be in the groove, to be in the mood.
By this point I had the CD, so that’s what I did, put it on endless repeat.
“Out of touch, out of reach, yeah
You could try to get closer to me’
But it’s not about the lyrics at this point, but the guitar riff, played over and over and over again.
But then Joe Elliott needs to know…are you alone tonight?
“Hysteria” is personal. Not for everybody in an arena. You hear it and think you’re the only one listening, it boosts your mood, to make an approach…
And then that hypnotic guitar figure once again.
And “Hysteria” is nearly endless, it’s five minutes and fifty four seconds long, which is an eternity for a pop number. And that’s what “Hysteria” is. It’s definitely rock, but it’s poppy.
It breaks down in the middle. There’s essentially a brief drum solo. And then the guitars truly begin to wail. Remember when we had guitar heroes? And everybody knew who they were? Before people thought playing fast was everything, before rock was eclipsed by hip-hop. Actually, all over America there are kids playing this music, not only at the School of Rock, just go on YouTube, not only guys, but girls. They replicate the classics of yore.
And after more singing, there’s another guitar solo. But subtle, it doesn’t beat you over the head. And Joe exclaims in the background. And then it fades away, and all you can ask yourself is…WHAT WAS THAT?
It’s like a train, a mirage, a fantasy, came rolling down the track, pike, road, you were mesmerized, and then it rolled right past you. You couldn’t let it fade away, you had to catch it, you had to play the track again. And again.
Not that you could explain the magic. It was a feeling. Sure, the rock critics of yore, with their leather jackets and skinny jeans, couldn’t endorse “Hysteria,” it wasn’t noisy, it wasn’t thrashy, it wasn’t cut in New York, it was edging on slick when rough was exalted.
But the public didn’t know all this. And the public won this war, not only on “Hysteria,” today critics are meaningless.
And “Hysteria” sustains.
And I’ve got to say, Armin’s system in his Escalade was top-notch. The music was plenty loud, but he’d turn down the peaks, as if I couldn’t handle it, I may be seventy years old but…TURN IT UP!
Then I thought about listening to this music via earbuds. It wouldn’t work, you’d miss the flavor. Oh, you can buy headphones that overemphasize the bass, but then you’ve got inaccuracy. And that’s not what Mutt was selling. He was presenting precision, you could turn it up and it didn’t distort, it just got louder, took over your whole life.
And Armin is in the front seat beaming, he starts to testify about “Pour Some Sugar on Me.”
Which I know by heart, all of us who lived through those years do.
So I figured I’d had enough, we’d peaked, we’d bonded. And I opened the door to get out. But Armin rushed out of the driver’s seat. To meet me by the tailgate, before I went into the house. It was like he’d met a long lost brother. He held his fist to his chest. Then he put it against mine.
He said some words, but I don’t remember them, I just remember the connection, the feeling.
And I walk into the house and tell myself what I lived through was real. It was not like today, where there’s music, but it’s part of the machine, it’s sales, not art.
Of course there are exceptions, but it’s akin to what it was like prior to the Beatles.
And there are people who say the seventies don’t compare to the sixties. And that the eighties are a joke. But compared to today…
In the sixties they told us rock and roll would never die.
In the seventies they beat it into our heads.
And the eighties were a victory lap. The sound was everywhere.
And you put on certain records and…
“It’s such a magical mysteria
When you get that feeling better start believing
Because it’s a miracle…”
That’s rock and roll.
