Amputations, addictions, overdoses, and early deaths. Def Leppard have been rocking for decades,
but they've also endured plenty of tragedy along the way.
When it comes to Def Leppard and tragedy, we can't ignore how drummer Rick Allen lost his left arm
in a car accident. On New Year's Eve 1984, he was driving in Sheffield, England with his girlfriend
Miriam when he lost control of the vehicle while trying to overtake another car. He was wearing
his seatbelt, but it tore his arm off as he was thrown through the sunroof. Surgeons were actually
initially able to reattach it, but within weeks it had to be amputated when infection set in.
Def Leppard lead singer Joe Elliott was devastated by the news, as he assumed, naturally enough,
that Allen's drumming career was over. But Allen somehow managed to pull off an incredible
recovery. He had a custom drum kit created and reworked his style and many of his drum fills.
Amazingly, he was back to drumming in live performances less than two years later.
"In many ways, I think it enabled me to grow in so many ways."
But that triumph can obscure the darker side of Allen's recovery.
He has admitted that by focusing exclusively on the band and getting back behind the drum kit,
he didn't deal with his trauma at all. He began to self-medicate with alcohol and
ended up going to a very dark place. It all culminated in a 1997 domestic abuse charge.
He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to community service and Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. It
wasn't until Allen met his future wife Lauren in 2000 that he began to confront his pain and heal.
After the mega-success of their 1983 breakout album Pyromania,
Def Leppard were under pressure to produce a fantastic follow-up. But the recording
sessions for 1987's Hysteria were more or less cursed. According to Joe Elliott,
the band was terrified and had zero ideas for new songs. They struggled to write while touring,
and they'd done nothing but tour until Allen's accident. Luckily, their long-time producer
Robert "Mutt" Lange helped inspire them to begin producing new material,
but just as they were making some progress, Lange begged off from the project due to exhaustion.
So the record label brought in Meat Loaf collaborator Jim Steinman to produce,
but that led to some disastrous sessions. The band eventually paid Steinman to leave
without having recorded a single note. They then worked briefly with another producer
before Rick Allen's car crash threw everything into chaos, delaying everything for months.
But Allen's remarkably quick comeback enabled them to get back to work sooner than expected,
and the delay meant that Lange was able to return. However, Lange's first decision was to throw away
everything the band had recorded over the previous 16 months. The costs involved with all these
changes also meant that the band would have to sell at least five million copies to break even.
After suffering endless delays, things were finally looking up for Def Leppard
in the beginning of 1987. But then tragedy struck again, as Mutt Lange was involved
in a serious car accident. His injuries set the long-delayed recording sessions back even more.
Then as the band was recovering from that shock, Joe Elliot came down with a serious
case of the mumps while working on vocal overdubs to finish the album.
All of these delays took their toll, just adding to the pressure to match the success of the
multi-platinum Pyromania. Rick Allen compared the sessions to "a prison sentence," though
it all worked out in the end, as Hysteria went on to sell more than 10 million copies.
"It was just trying to bridge that gap of making an album that was kinda universal."
Problems with drugs and alcohol are quite common in the stories of successful rock bands,
and Def Leppard has had to deal with the costs of substance abuse more than most
groups. They even had to fire one of their founding members because of his drinking.
Guitarist Pete Willis had been with Def Leppard from the very beginning, and he was working with
them on Pyromania when his habit got so bad that he could barely function, which resulted in his
firing. Nevertheless, he's not bitter about how it went down. As he admitted in 2002,
"It wasn't nice to go that way, but it was something that needed to happen for them,
and the best thing to happen health-wise for me."
Willis' replacement, Phil Collen, loved to drink as well, and he found a buddy in fellow guitarist
Steve Clark, as they quickly became serious drinking buddies. They earned the nickname
"The Terror Twins" thanks to their wild, booze-fueled ways. Clark's drinking was
so bad he would wake up in the morning shaking uncontrollably and had to have a drink to make
it stop. And after Rick Allen lost his arm, he struggled with alcohol as well,
eventually entering Alcoholics Anonymous after a court order.
Founding guitarist Steve Clark was a virtuoso and the creative heart of Def
Leppard during their first 15 years. He was also a functioning alcoholic for much of that time.
He found a drinking buddy when guitarist Phil Collen joined the band, but then Collen's decision
to sober up in 1987 didn't leave Clark in a good place. As Joe Elliott recalled to Louder in 2015,
"They never fell out, but Steve lost his drinking buddy and became a lot more isolated."
Things came to a head in 1989 when Clark was found unconscious in a bar after a night of
heavy drinking. The band staged an intervention while he was hospitalized, and he entered rehab
with their blessing. That should've been the beginning of a new chapter for Clark,
and things looked good when he met the love of his life there, a fellow patient named Janie Dean,
who was recovering from a heroin addiction. But when the two of them left rehab,
they quickly descended back into their addictions. It became impossible to keep
track of where Clark was or what he was doing as he and Janie slid into the abyss.
When Steve Clark entered rehab, his bandmates made it clear that his health was a priority
and that his place in the band would be waiting for him once he got better.
When Clark met and fell in love with Janie Dean while in rehab,
he seemed to be turning a corner. They even got engaged and agreed to support each other.
Unfortunately, as Phil Collen recalled in his autobiography, Clark and Dean soon began
enabling each other. She started using heroin again, and he went back to drinking as heavily
as before. The band lost track of Clark and didn't know where he was or what he was up to.
"He was mixing Valiums, Prozacs, alcohol, coke, whatever anybody would give him."
During one of Clark's benders, he fell and cracked a rib. He was prescribed pain
medication and was warned not to combine the pills with alcohol. But he didn't, or couldn't,
listen to that warning. Then on January 8, 1991, Phil Collen received a phone call informing him
that Clark had accidentally overdosed. He was only 30 years old. And that wasn't the only
tragic passing from around that time, as Dean also died of an overdose a few years later.
After Rick Allen miraculously recovered from losing his arm and continued to drum,
Def Leppard thought they'd seen and faced it all, and that nothing going forward
would ever be so bad. But when Steve Clark overdosed and died, it nearly shattered them.
Phil Collen went into mourning for his friend and quit the band, convinced that it would be
impossible to keep playing after what had happened. The loss of both guitarists could
very well have broken Def Leppard permanently despite all the incredible success they'd enjoyed.
But then eventually Joe Elliott spoke with Collen and convinced him to stay. Elliott explained
that Clark had been ashamed of his addiction and would've never wanted the band to suffer because
of his affliction. That conversation brought Collen back from the brink, as he decided to
stay with the band, utilizing songwriting and performing as therapy. In 1992, Def Leppard
hired Vivian Campbell to replace Clark, and they've released six more albums since then.
"You guys still like each other?"
"We love each other!"
It's pretty well-established that stable marriages and rock stardom don't necessarily mix,
and sadly, this very much holds true for the members of Def Leppard.
Joe Elliott married his first wife Karla in 1989 after meeting her at a nightclub
in 1982. But they ultimately divorced in 1996. Maybe it had something to do
with the rock 'n' roll lifestyle they were exposed to. As Elliott once described it,
"All these groupies started making moves on us. Yes,
we certainly took advantage of it and all sowed our wild oats."
Elliott is currently married to his second wife Kristine, whom he wed in 2004.
Moving on to Rick Allen, his first wife was Stacy Lauren Gilbert, but in 1996 he was arrested for
spousal abuse after allegedly choking her and slamming her head into a wall. They remained
married for a few more years until divorcing in 2000. He married his second wife Lauren in 2003.
Vivian Campbell brought the band's divorce count up to three when he split from his
first wife Julie in 2012 after 25 years. And then there's Phil Collen,
whose two divorces bring the band's total to five. He was married to his first wife
Jacqueline from 1989 to 1995 and his second wife Anita from 1999 to 2010.
He reportedly married his current wife, Helen, just nine days after his second divorce was final.
Despite selling more than 100 million albums, including two that have been certified diamond,
not to mention remaining a popular band for more than 40 years, Def Leppard has never
garnered much respect. For one thing, they're often dismissed as just a "hair metal band."
They're quite annoyed by this reputation, with Joe Elliott telling The New York Times in 2019,
"We couldn't have been so far removed from that if we tried."
To his point, the layered production of 1987's Hysteria was unlike anything
else being done in the heavy metal scene at the time. Def Leppard even
initially refused to license their music to the hit Broadway musical Rock of Ages
precisely because they resented being lumped in with other hair metal bands,
as they described it as, quote, "a play based on everything that we stood against." They ultimately
relented when the show was adapted into a movie starring Tom Cruise, with Elliott quipping,
"There isn't a person alive that's never changed their mind."
"What's it like to be the Stacee Jaxx?"
Another sign of Def Leppard's lack of respect
is the fact that they were left off the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ballot for years.
That led Elliott to dismiss the honor as "nice but not important" and claim that they wouldn't
attend the ceremony anyway. But in 2019, they were finally inducted, and they did attend.
Guitarist Vivian Campbell joined Def Leppard to replace Steve Clark in 1992,
but then in 2013, he was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma. Treatments for this form of cancer have
improved and there is hope of recovery, but Campbell has struggled over the years.
He endured rounds of chemotherapy and a stem-cell transplant that failed to
beat back the progression of the disease, leading him to seek cutting-edge treatments.
"The oncologist said to me, you know, 'Are your legs itchy?' I said, 'Yeah, how did you know?!"
Eventually, Campbell became healthy enough to resume his work with Def Leppard,
and for a while he appeared to be healthy. But then in 2015 his cancer returned,
forcing the band to cancel tour dates as he returned to treatment.
He's reportedly been aggressively fighting the cancer ever since.
After other treatments weren't doing the trick, he began a regimen of immunotherapy.
That's been very effective in keeping the cancer in check, though it hasn't quite eradicated it.
While his disease hasn't been fully defeated, Campbell is still able to perform and live his
life, as he continues to tour with Def Leppard and his side band, Last in Line.
If you or anyone you know is struggling with addiction issues,
help is available. Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).