High 'N' Dry - Def Leppard (CD 1992)

The band Def Leppard has been equally famous for their extreme hard luck as they have for their music. In 1983, they fired founding guitarist Pete Willis for alcolholism. The following year, drummer Rick Allen lost his arm in a car accident. 6 years down the road, the other founding guitarist, and arguably the 'life blood' of the band, Steve Clark, lost a battle with drugs and the rock lifestyle. Further down the road, Leppard had to deal with interpersonal struggles, domestic issues, and flagging album sales, yet still is one of the only bands from their era still standing.

Most of these happenings inspired Leppard's greatest works. After Pete Willis left, lean, mean, shredding machine Phil Collen came in and revitalized a band that was ready to break up, and their classic 'Pyromania' was the result. After Rick Allen lost his arm, he re-tooled his drum kit and the band re-tooled their style for their biggest seller and pop-metal landmark 'Hysteria'. The death of Steve Clark has made them a more inconsistent band overall, but has inspired some killer songs made in his memory such as 'White Lightning' and 'Blood Runs Cold'.

But let's go back. Let's go back before all of this happened, back when Rick Allen had 2 arms, Pete Willis was still trading licks with Steve Clark, and the band had yet to taste true success. Their debut 'On Through the Night' introduced them as a New Wave of British Heavy Metal band, rawer, hungrier, much younger, and with more sense of melody than their peers. It didn't sell huge but it produced great, now-forgotten songs like 'Rock Brigade', 'Wasted', and the still-underappreciated 'Overture'. For their follow-up, they wanted it all.

The missing ingredient was a producer, someone who could get the best out of them. Mutt Lange, fresh off of 'Back in Black', Foreigner's '4', and select other albums that had put him on the map as one of the savviest producers in rock, got the job. And the rest, as they say, is history. And most Leppard fans would say history began here, with 'High and Dry'.

Right from the opening, furious riff of 'Let It Go', it's apparent that this is a much different band, even though less than a year had passed since their debut (when most of the band was barely 18 and Rick Allen wasn't even 17 yet). The sound is what draws the listener in, though. Instead of the fuzzy, raw distortion of 'On Through the Night', the riffs come through clean, the power chords hit hard, and the sound of the guitars is much more alive. Joe Elliot sings those first verses and it's almost like listening to a completley different vocalist. He's controlling his voice much more, not veering off-key like he did occasionally on the debut, and he goes into much higher registers than he did on the debut as well, even veering into Brian Johnson territory quite often. This is the foundation of the Def Leppard that would become famous.

'Let It Go' was Leppard's first true classic, a high-octane rocker with a catchy riff, a melodic structure that hooked the listener in, and screaming, wailing, occasionally harmonized guitars to keep those metalheads happy. After Elliot's final sky-high wail, the song almost immediatley crashes into 'Another Hit and Run', a high-octane guitarfest in much the same vein as 'Let It Go'.

Numerous building blocks are laid on this album, including the title track, which would belie Def Leppard's future pop-metal leanings with it's midtempoed pace, layered chorus, hook-laden riffs (that were quite similar to their future breakthrough 'Photograph') and simple, sexually-frustrated lyrics. Hard rocking album tracks like 'Mirror Mirror' and 'On Through the Night' (the song, not the album), showed that the band wasn't about to let filler clutter this album like it occasionally did on their first effort. And throughout it all, Mutt Lange has the band sounding like a well-oiled machine; the guitars are seamlessley in-sync, Joe Elliot is driving the material hard with his newfound range and power, and Rick Allen keeps it all together with simple beats augmented by subtle drum fills and timing changes.

The first hit of Leppard's career came in the form of the power-ballad 'Bringing On the Heartbreak' (which almost didn't make the album, actually). A painful guitar melody circles overhead while Joe Elliot pours out some serious emotion into his singing, and when the vocal and guitar overdubs join in for a hard-hitting chorus, the result was an unmistakeable classic-in-the-making. 'Heartbreak' immediatley segues into the melodic, driving instrumental track 'Switch 625', making a great 1-2 punch to centerpiece the album with. Steve Clark and Pete Willis show not only their virtuiosity, but their chemistry and inherent sense of melody and songcraft not only here, but throughout the rest of the album as well.

The other highlight, and an oft-forgotten high-watermark of the early Lep days, is 'Lady Strange', showcasing more of the boy's (and Mutt Lange's) burgeoning sense of pop-songcraft hidden beneath metal riffs and screaming vocals. In fact, the only truly weak spot on 'High and Dry' is the album closer 'No No No', which boils down to nothing more than a bunch of noise kicked up by the Leps with Joe Elliot screaming his fool head off like Brian Johnson at a circumcision. Some versions of this album contain the killer B-side track 'Me and My Wine', which surpasses many of the other cuts on the album, so if you can find it, it's well worth the extra cash.

High and Dry is a chic pick by many people who think this, not Pyromania or Hysteria, is their best work. Many arguments can be made towards that, indeed. This was Mutt Lange's first album with the band, and while his perfectionist production style is very much present, it was still at the point where it merely brought out the best in the boys without CONTROLLING the boys. The metal influences are never forgotten even when the material becomes almost radio-conscious like on the title track. Pete Willis and Steve Clark traded some memorable guitar licks and solos, Rick Allen still had two arms and used them quite well. The band was young, hungry, and was looking to take over the world with this release, and while that didn't happen until their next one, 'Pyromania', this definitley broke them through and made the world aware of them.

With that said, 'Pyromania' does edge this out for their very best work, due to it's 100% consistent, hard-rocking excellence, it's commercial success... there's simply not a weak moment to be found on that record. High and Dry has it's weaknesses, noticably, Joe Elliot and his occasional imperfections, as well as the album closer 'No No No'.

However, 'High and Dry' sits on par with 'Hysteria' for a close second, it just depends on wether you prefer the British Heavy Metal Def Leppard or the Kings of Arena-Rock Def Leppard. If you didn't get into Leppard until later, and you always wondered just how ballsy they USED to be (because it's certainly something long forgotten with their current release 'X'), give this album a listen and become enlightened. Once you've given this a listen, move to their most straight-ahead metallic release, 'On Through the Night'. And then you'll realize like I did; Once upon a time, these boys could kick serious @$$.