Some Def Leppard tracks have snuck their way onto my playlist, and listening in particular to songs from the classic ‘High n’ Dry’ album (possibly the worst cover in history - but that’s another story) reminds me of what a great band Def Leppard have been at different stages in their career.

While most associate them with the string-by-string multi-million dollar recording bill of Hysteria, for me the band remain the one that I was lucky enough to see in the summer of 1986 on their Irish ‘rehearsal’ tour. The band played a number of gigs around Ireland, all with a minimum ticket price (to cover venue costs), to warm up for their Monsters of Rock appearances. I saw them in Dublin’s SFX centre, and listened to a hard rock band that had riffs, subtlety, and ambition. There was little of the gloss of Hysteria that night - which is not to say that there was anything wrong with Hysteria, though when they played the same venue a year or two later to promote that album the show was bitterly dissapointing, with a venue swamped by layers of sound all struggling for supremacy.

And the star of that first show - Steve Clark without a doubt. Constantly moving and blasting his low slung Gibson.