Phil Collen Adrenalized Life

He's one of the greatest guitarists of our times. But what was it about Jimmy Page that forced the members of his band to keep from being focused on indifference? From the iHeart Radio Studio I'm Unplugged and Totally Uncut with Def Leppard's Phil Collen. In the mid-1980s, Def Leppard catapulted to rock n’ roll superstardom with their blockbuster album Pyromania – until tragedy threatened to put a quick end to their rocket ascent. Now lead guitarist Phil Collen reveals the truth behind the mythology of the band with his memoir ADRENALIZED: LIFE, DEF LEPPARD AND BEYOND (Atria Books; October 27, 2015/ ISBN 9781476751658/ $26.00), setting the record straight in a ‘no holds barred’ life story populated with the biggest names in music history. A voyeuristic peek into the inner-sanctum of Phil Collen, ADRENALIZED is more than the usual cautionary tale where Collen – an unlikely rock star from the start -- offers an inspirational portrait of self-discipline and human resilience. Phil Collen’s story is one of contradictions-rock n’ roll excess clashing with working class values. He was born in 1957 in working class Hackney, a borough of East London. His mother would tell him stories of how she survived the Blitz of World War II. Together his loving parents and grandmother instilled the values of frugality and the benefits of hard, honest work ethics. It was a neighborhood ethos: “We were the working class Blitz kids that were now having handed down to us that same strength and fortitude that helped our families survive.” Despite Phil’s practical upbringing, The Beatles and David Bowie ignited dreams of a music career. By the time he was a teenager and saw Deep Purple live in concert, his path was set: “Many professional musicians will reflect upon a specific time when they saw their future, their destiny, their fate, all converge in one spectacular and explosive moment. This was mine.” Phil got his first guitar, a red Gibson SG, on his sixteenth birthday. At age 21 he answered an ad in Melody Maker magazine for a glam rock band called Girl. Bandmate Phil Lewis was dating movie star Britt Ekland, and with her connections they landed a deal with Jet Records, owned by Sharon Osbourne’s legendary father, Don Arden. At the 1980 Reading Festival, Phil caught the attention of another performing band: Def Leppard, whose lineup included singer Joe Elliot, guitarist Steve Clark, drummer Rick Allen, bassist Rick Savage, and guitarist Pete Willis. The boys became friends. Pete was eventually replaced by Phil and the rest, as they say, is history. Now playing with an established band with two solid albums behind them and mega producer Mutt Lange (AC/DC, Foreigner) at the helm, Phil was poised for stardom. From the start, Def Leppard’s work ethic was a perfect fit with Phil’s ambitious drive. “I noticed right upfront that Def Leppard was different from other bands I had been in. This was a band that had a working class focus on making the best records and creating the best live performances as possible.” When Pyromania was released in January 1983, during the dawn of the video age and MTV, it went ballistic selling 100,000 copies a week. The band seemed unstoppable. And then disaster struck: drummer Rick Allen lost his arm in a car accident. It was unthinkable that he would ever drum again – until Mutt Lange convinced him otherwise. Miraculously, Rick recovered and played on their next album Hysteria. But the band suffered another blow while recording the album Adrenalize: the death of Steve Clark. The next hurdle came courtesy of the music industry itself: Phil recalls, “When I watched Nirvana from the wings at the 1992 MTV Music Video Awards, they blew me away. […] Unfortunately, their ascension only meant the worst for us.” The cultural landscape had changed, and by the time Adrenalized was released, it seemed outdated and completely out of touch. Against all odds, Phil Collen kept himself together. After blacking out during drinking binges on the Pyromania tour, he got clean and embraced exercise– and people were starting to notice. People would say to me [it’s not rock and roll of you to be in great shape.] I would counter with, “But rock and roll is about going against the grain and doing things different.” On “Gunter Glieben Glauesen Gloeben” from their hit Rock of Ages he writes: “Just to clarify some age-old rumors here, that’s (producer) Mutt Lange doing a mock German/Swedish accent and talking gibberish, as a colorful substitution for his usual ‘One, Two, Three, Four.’ The words mean absolutely nothing.” On what made “Pour Some Sugar on Me” take off: “Apparently, radio stations in Florida started getting lots of requests from strippers who were dancing in a frenzy around pole to ‘Sugar,’ their newest anthem,” he writes. On the then revolutionary idea of performing in the round: “Now, the only thing was, how do you get the band to the stage? The stage itself had no facilities for changing rooms or anything,” writes lighting designer Phay MacMahon. “After the opening band, Queensryche, finished up, we would drop the curtains to hide the stage. Then we had these big things that look like laundry baskets to help cart off Queensryche’s gear. What we would do shortly before it was time for Def Leppard to take the stage, was to put the guys in these baskets, cover them up and then secretly wheel them to the stage.” Most poignantly, he captures a moment in time in the music industry that is gone forever: “We actually had been allowed to invest the time and money to find an identifiable sound. We never knew that one day in the future, bands and artists would not have the luxury to be nurtured towards reaching their full potential.” Featuring never-before-seen photos of Phil Collen onstage and off, ADRENALIZED is an indelible chronicle of triumph over tragedy. It’s an intimate story of one starry-eyed kid chasing his dream come true -- and his discovery that the ultimate hero in life is the one he became for himself.