Tickets There Likes: Def Leppard – Adrenalize
What? You were expecting the third Def Leppard Likes to be about Hysteria? Sorry, one more to cover first. Adrenalize gets a very special place in my heart as it’s the very first album I ever owned. This is the mother of all my music tastes and the big bang that caused the chain of events that have shaped the way I live my life ever since. Although the album isn’t generally regarded by fans as one of the bands best, it is. Think I’m a little biased saying that? Well I quite obviously am but I also truly believe it.
I was being driven back to boarding school by my mum one day in March 1992, just after my eighth birthday. It was a dark, wintery Sunday night and out of no where my mum produced this cassette and asked me what I thought of it. She put it on the stereo and we listened to it the whole way up to Dublin. The cassette was (quite obviously) Adrenalize and I loved every bit of it. Let’s Get Rocked what so full of attitude and so cool how could you not love it at eight years old. Leppard were also an interesting choice for first band. They had a drummer with one arm and that seemed very normal for some reason. At the time I imagined that metal bands were so hard most of them probably had missing limbs and it didn’t bother them (eight people, don’t judge). They had a legendary guitarist that had just died the year before and a back catalogue so juicy it was unrealistic. Over the next three months, my mum bought copies of Hysteria and Pyromania and every week we’d listen to Leppard solidly for the three and a half hour drive to Dublin and home on Fridays. I also managed to get a walk man and a copy of all three albums to keep a school where I quickly became the coolest kid in class for about a month because I had a tiny little leather jacket (which I still have) and listened to rock bands.
After three months of almost solid Leppard devotion (Meatloaf had managed to slip in aswell, not to mention the awesome Guns N Roses), I was brought to the Point Depot to see my very first rock concert. Def Leppard’s 7-Day-Weekend tour came to the Ireland and it saw the band play completely in the round. You can read more about that here – Click Here
Anyways, Adrenalize. If you didn’t like it or haven’t heard it, I suggest sitting down and listening to the mighty Personal Property (that guitar solo ugh!!), Stand Up, Tear It Down, Heaven is or I Wanna Touch You and experience pop rock at it’s very finest. Hard n loud guitars, monster riffs and anthems enough to win a war.
Then there’s White Lightening, the bands tribute to the late Steamin’ Steve Clark. Steve died in January 1991 and his death marked a major shift in Leppards sound and song writing. Adrenalize is the last Leppard record of it’s kind and White Lightening is a great tribute to the man who made their early albums so special.
I stick Adrenalize on now knowing it’s not as great as I praise it to be, but listening to those songs brings back memories of the early days of discovering music and discovering a new band you can still love as much as ever seventeen years later is a very special thing for everyone.
What’s yours?
'Ticket's There' - Irish and International Music Blog 
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