Monday, June 16, 2003		Web Jingle

AMONGST all top hard Rock groups Def Leppard holds a special position. They have given many hit songs and this group has a strong fan following. Pete Willis, Rick Savage and Tony Kenning, formed this a group called Atomic Mass, which became a popular UK hard rock band in 1977 in Sheffield, Yorkshire. They changed the group name to ‘Def Leppard’ when Joe Elliott joined the band. Elliot had initially coined the name ‘Deaf Leopard’ in school but Tony Kenning shortened it to Def Leppard.

Group initially hired a small room in a spoon factory for their rehearsals. In 1978, Willis met another young guitarist, Steve Clark, and invited him to join. In July 1978, Def Leppard debuted at Westfield School before an audience of 150 children. They recorded their first album, On Through the Night, in 1980. This album was not a big hit but brought recognition to the group. High ‘n’ Dry was the second album and got good position on the charts.

Rick Allen met with a car accident on New Year’s Eve in 1984 and he lost his left arm. The band stopped the work, and did not resume work until Allen had perfected a specially designed kit that made it possible for him to play most of the drums with his feet. His recovery delayed the recording of ‘Hysteria,’ which was finally released in 1987. On a promotional tour of ‘Hysteria’ Clark was found dead in his London flat after consuming a lethal mixture of drugs and alcohol. At that time the group released seven out of the 12 tracks as singles ‘Women’, ‘Animal’, ‘Pour Some Sugar On Me’, ‘Love Bites’, ‘Armageddon it’, ‘Hysteria’ and ‘Rocket’. 16 million copies were sold in short period that included 12 million in the USA alone.

Then the group released ‘Now’ in 2002. The album "X" (Roman numeral for 10), was released the July same year. Both releases brought them immense popularity. Some sites are:

www.defleppard.com

This is the official Website of the group. This site gives complete information about the group tours. There is a separate section, devoted to Lyrics, Samples, Videos and Singles. In the multimedia section, there are few songs that are available in many formats. We can view the videos and listen to the music. The site gives the permission to download the files. Goodbye, Rock! Rock! Till You Drop, Miss You In A Heartbeat, Bringin’ On The Heartbreak, Animal, Action, When Love & Hate Collide, Demolition Man, Women and Two Steps Behind are the songs that are available for free download. Many videos are also available on Multimedia page.

www.defleppardsol.com

This is a site dedicated to the rock group and features the massive tour history and large discography of the group. This site also gives the details of the band members. The sound section of the site offers sound clippings in Real Media format and we can download files from this section.

www.rollingstone.com

This is another site, which has got Def Leppard’s songs. From the index page we can search the songs by typing the group name in the search box. We can not only listen but also rate and review the songs. Biography, photos, discography, articles, reviews, video, sound clips of this rock band are available here.