Also included are Rarities Vol. 2 and Vol. 3, both specially compiled by Joe Elliott containing more rare B-sides and live recordings from the 90’s, complete with newly commissioned artwork. Even now. I wouldn’t tell anybody what we got up to. We weren’t angels. But we never wanted it to outshine the music. We were very nervous about making that a selling point. Guns N’ Roses lived it and showed it to the world. We may have lived it a bit. We always did it behind closed doors. You get older, things settle down, things change. We barely drink, never mind drugs. It has got to the point of [adopts posh accent] ‘would you like a glass of wine?’ As opposed to, ‘Let’s go and down 20 pints and beat somebody up on Grafton Street’.” Sounds silly, but Def Leppard were very influenced by punk. I’d watched these bands and thought, ‘Well if they can do it, I can’ — Joe Elliott Lovable fluff. Like Personal Property, I Wanna Touch U would be a hit for other bands, but never ascends to Def Leppard's lofty standard. Key change to keep it interesting though. I do so love me a key change. Tear It Down

They knew the world was changing. “The fans that we had on the last record may no longer be fans on the new record," Savage said during an interview at the time. "It's something that every band has to contend with. You never know how your new album is going to be accepted. You never know what's around the corner – especially when you’re in Def Leppard.”

NWOBHM, as Elliott has long pointed out, wasn’t necessarily a natural fit for Def Leppard. Even in their early days, their songs had a pop sparkle that set them apart from the hard-core moshers. Plus, Def Leppard saw themselves as DIY to their boots. “We were actually quite annoyed when we got lumped in with it, because once we started hearing these bands we thought most of them were shit,” the singer once stated. Lange had done so much to shape the band’s sound that they had called him their “sixth member”. As with Pyromania and Hysteria, Lange had co-written the songs for Adrenalize. But as the band began recording, Lange was still working on Bryan Adams’s album Waking Up The Neighbours. So they turned instead to Lange’s right-hand man, Mike Shipley, who had mixed Hysteria and engineered Pyromania. “We figured that us co-producing with Mike would be the next best thing to Mutt,” Elliott said. The coroner’s report, dated February 27, cited the cause of death as “respiratory failure” due to consumption of “an excess of alcohol mixed with anti-depressants and painkillers”. What haunted Elliott was the call he made to Clark on the day before he died. “I got his answering machine,” he said. “That killed me for weeks. If I’d spoken to him, maybe it would have changed the next twenty-four hours…” Elliott might not have cried when Steve Clark died, but he did as he said that to me. We’re not the same. Of course we’re not the same. The Rolling Stones aren’t the same. They’re still The Rolling Stones. I have fantastic and fond memories of Steve. He was an incredibly creative soul. There isn’t a day he doesn’t come into our consciousness. He’s either on a retro T-shirt design I have to approve, or I walk past a poster that’s got his face on it.”

OLD SCHOOL. Tonight gives Adrenalize a much needed boost in street cred with Pyromania / High 'n' Dry feel musically. White Lightning We might be chalk and cheese musically, but I’ve been listening to Bono’s audiobook of his biography [Surrender] and I’m nodding along. ‘Yep, yep ... That’s us too’. Trying to get a record deal in 1979, putting your first album out, negotiating Sheffield as we were, and Dublin as they were. They were parallels to a point with how a band fights through to become the band they become. I see parallels – it’s the period. I dare say, if Dave Gahan from Depeche Mode had an autobiography, I’d be going ‘yep, yep, yep ...’ Same with Simon Le Bon, Steve Harris of Iron Maiden. All these bands started at the same time. And, funnily enough, are still going.” On April 20, the new-look Def Leppard performed at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert For Aids Awareness at Wembley Stadium, at which the surviving members of Queen, joined by a stellar supporting cast including David Bowie, Robert Plant, Elton John, Guns N’ Roses and Metallica, paid tribute to their late singer. With an audience of 80,000 in the stadium and more than a billion people watching on live TV, it was the perfect set-up for Leppard’s forthcoming world tour. Take “Have You Ever Needed Someone So Bad” as an example. Although the title pretty much sums up the idea behind the tune, the band is wise enough to recognize that when it comes to love songs, what gets said matters far less than how it gets said. Thus, the heart of the song is its melodic development, the way Joe Elliott’s vocal builds from the breathy, low-key opening verse to the soaring, full-throated harmonies of the chorus. It’s so perfectly paced that you hardly need to hear the lyrics to understand what the song is saying; the sound says it all.The last gig we did in America on the Pyromania tour was a stadium. Mötley were put on the bill,” recalls Elliott. “That was the first time we came across them. And then, in the 1980s, you couldn’t get away from them. They were notorious: and not necessarily for their music. But for everything. They were Mötley Crüe. Seriously, though, there’s some great music – if you can get past the energy they put out.” Young guns: Def Leppard in concert in Rochester, New York, in the 1980s. Photograph: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty