Hysteria (Def Leppard Album) - History

History

Initially, Hysteria was to be named "Animal Instinct" and produced by Lange, but he dropped out after pre-production sessions, citing exhaustion from a gruelling schedule from the past few years. Meat Loaf songwriter Jim Steinman was brought in. Steinman's involvement was a disaster because he was more interested in making a raw rock n' roll record and capturing the moment, warts and all, while the band was still interested in a bigger, more pristine pop production. Joe Elliott later stated in interview: "Todd Rundgren produced (Meat Loaf's) Bat out of Hell. Jim Steinman WROTE it". After parting ways with Steinman, the band tried to produce the album themselves with Lange's engineer Nigel Green with no success, as initial recordings sessions were entirely scrapped at this point.

On 31 December 1984, Rick Allen lost his left arm when his Corvette flipped off a country road. Following the accident, the band stood by Allen's decision to return to the drum kit despite his disability, using a combination electronic/acoustic kit with a set of foot pedals that triggered (via MIDI) the hits he would have played with his left arm. The band slowly soldiered on until Mutt Lange made a surprise return a year later, and Allen mastered his customized drum kit. However, the sessions were further delayed by Lange's own auto accident (sustaining leg injuries from which he quickly recovered) and a bout of the mumps suffered by singer Joe Elliott during 1986.

The final recording sessions took place in January 1987 for the song "Armageddon It", but Lange spent another three months mixing the tracks. The album was finally released worldwide on 3 August 1987, with "Animal" as the lead single in most countries except for the US where "Women" was the first single.

In the liner notes to the album, the band apologized for the long wait between albums, and promised to never make fans wait that long between albums again. Later events, namely the death of Steve Clark, proved that a hard promise to keep.

Fortunately for the band, their popularity in their homeland had significantly grown over the past four years, and Hysteria topped the charts in Britain in its first week of release. The album was also a major success in other parts of Europe. In the United States however the band at first struggled to regain the momentum of Pyromania that was lost from such a prolonged absence. The success of the album's fourth single, "Pour Some Sugar on Me" would propel the album to the top of the US Billboard 200 albums chart nearly a year after its release. In the Billboard issue dated 8 October 1988, Def Leppard held the #1 spot on both the singles and album charts with "Love Bites" and Hysteria, respectively.

Hysteria went on to dominate album charts around the world for three years. It was certified 12x platinum by the RIAA in 2009. The album currently sits as the 51st best selling album of all time in the US, and spent a record 96 weeks in the US top 40. The album has sold more than 20 million copies worldwide.

The leadoff track, "Women", was selected as the first single for the US, instead of "Animal", in July 1987. Then-manager Cliff Burnstein reasoned that the band needed to reconnect with their hard rock audience first before issuing more Top 40-friendly singles. The strategy backfired somewhat as "Women" did not make a large impact on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at #80. It was a top 10 hit on the rock chart though, peaking at #7. Six more singles were subsequently released in the United States, with "Love Bites" reaching #1 three others reaching the top ten. The singles earned similar success in the United Kingdom.

On 24 October 2006, a 2CD "deluxe edition" of the album was released, including a re-mastering of the original b-sides and bonus tracks from the album's period. Many of these songs had been featured on Retro Active, albeit with remixes, revamps, and new parts added. The deluxe edition Hysteria deluxe CD included the original b-side versions of these recordings without alterations.