Def Leppard review, 1994
Time to play B-sides. Time ain’t on my side: Outtakes from and backstory about the book that wound up being published as The Accidental Evolution of Rock’n’Roll, though I didn’t know it yet at the time. Seems odd that I don’t mention (and the album omits) “Me And My Wine,” the 1981 “Bringin’ On the Heartbreak” flipside that almost certainly has the most entertaining video the band ever filmed.
Spin, January 1994
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Sara Quell
Was “Slang” big in the US? Was about to caption “Only band ever to have their ass kicked by U2” but I checked and this is 2:38 to “Fly”’s 4:29 so IDK. Back then I ranted online about how much I hated ‘rock’ with loops in it (i.e. “unlike my genius self, normies are too stupid to recognize that ‘appeal to novelty’ = ‘’overt commodity fetishism’, except ‘modern rock’ worse than disco because of the residual trad orientation”) but in fairness to myself (a) didn’t know the extent then to which ‘normal’ rock records were made by machines too (b) 90s rock is still mostly garbage that sounds worse than it did then. Have to admit the first hearing (in the wild, artist unknown) caught my ear tho
Steve Schneider
have always assumed the line in “Don’t Shoot Shotgun” is “Take this, little hit and miss,” not “…Indian miss.” And this is one instance in which I’m going to consider it corroborating evidence that all of those lyric sites that are generated by hearing-impaired AI happen to agree with me. Mostly because “hit and miss” seems like a better reinforcement of the whole shotgun motif, as well as an almost subliminal callback to High ‘n Dry’s “Another Hit and Run.” I mean, not that I would consider ethnic insensitivity beyond the capabilities of Joe Elliott, but shooting Indian women? In 1987? Iron Maiden and Anthrax had put metal squarely on the side of the indigenous by then …
You know what I had forgotten about ’90s rock? All the damn acoustic guitars. Buncha frat boys thrumming away like they thought they were Richie Havens or something, getting in touch with roots that weren’t actually their own. It’s like, I like sex and candy too, but you know what I also like? Electricity. Move the fuck on.
Chuck Eddy
>not that I would consider ethnic insensitivity beyond the capabilities of Joe Elliott< Like the time (9-6-'83) Def Leppard played Tuscon and (according to Rock and Roll Confidential Report) "just before launching into 'Rock of Ages,' singer Joe Elliott asked the crowd why they couldn't make more noise than 'those greasy Mexicans in El Paso'." A radio station in Tuscon, which also has a significant Hispanic population, stopped playing the band's records and urged listeners to boycott their albums. Eventually Elliott apologized.
Steve Schneider
That’s exactly what I was referring to. He subsequently gave an interview to Kerrang in which he denied ill intent, claiming he had just been following the example of his heroes Cheech and Chong. As if that weren’t unconvincing enough, in the same interview, he declared how ridiculous it had been to hear Mark Storace, Maltese lead singer of their former opening act Krokus, try to hit on women backstage while speaking “with that kind of accent.” He also claimed Storace had been stealing his stage raps and using them on the audience before Def Leppard could come out, with the result being that Elliott’s attempts at building rapport with the crowd “went down like a pork pie at a Jew’s wedding.” This was about four paragraphs down from his declaration “I am not a racialist (sic).”
Chuck Eddy
>Iron Maiden and Anthrax had put metal squarely on the side of the indigenous by then … They weren’t alone, either. There’s a list (including those two) somewhere in my metal book, but damned if I can remember where.
Steve Schneider
I remember reading some criticism of Maiden somewhere over their use of “insensitive” cowboys-and-Indians film footage in the “Run to the Hills” video, and I remember thinking, “Boy, when irony THAT obvious goes undetected …”