How do you remember Hysteria?

[GoodJudge]

We found the one guy who kept his tape.

I had a dubbed copy. It was when I was getting into rock and metal in general and trying all sorts to see what I liked. I eventually bought Pyromania on CD. I never bought Hysteria.

[Sleek]

I worked that tour for liiiike 2 months or some shit, so I remember that...the intro tape, the giant kabuki curtain drop, the "north, South, East, West stage directions...and all of the money. That tour was fucking fat with money.

[SW]

I think Hysteria and Appetite were by far the two biggest albums of the late 80's. I'm tying to be as objective as possible but Motley, Bon Jovi, Aerosmith, none of them came close to the success that these two albums had at the time.

Slippery When Wet has sold 15x platinum while Hysteria 12x in the USA.

[Alias]

I was born in '79 so I was a little young for the Hysteria era.

But I remember my aunt and uncle returned from his Army assignment in Germany with a CD player and had Hysteria. I was playing around in their house when I was 12 or so and put it on. As a kid, the impact was immediate. I thought "Women" sounded so cool.

Def Lep was my first favorite band. I don't listen to em much these days but I'm always rooting for their success.

[BadDogWater]

I remember it as a bloated uninteresting album. I hated it, Hated the videos and that fucking Mullet on Joe. When I would hear em on the radio the songs seemed to last forever.
One night I went to the Troubadour to see CREATURE. I wanted to see em in the cage, Ha. So the last opening band ends and I'm thinking they will start soon. The club starts playing Hysteria and that cd is what a bit over an hour? The entire album plays and they start it again, about halfway thru the second spin. The band has finally secured a huge cage onto the front of the stage. Fucking hell. CREATURE was ok and I think I left after 6 songs.

[Dyslexicheart]

Just like many here I really liked Pyromania and the videos. I wanted to like Hysteria, saw the tour in the round and all that - but I just hated it. The songs were waaay overproduced, even compared to Pyromania. And more importantly the songs flat out sucked. Part of it I guess was I had moved on to other more interesting types of music. I just found shit like Pour Some Sugar too cheezey. Not in a good way.

[Tommy]

Album sold a shitload but apparently the Sludge crowd didn't buy it. Lol, fucking ridiculous.

[FreddyFender]

In what universe did the songs from Hysteria disappear? Not the one we live in

Spotify numbers:
Pour Some Sugar On Me - 544 million plays
Hysteria - 250 million
Photograph - 164 million
Love Bites - 142 million
Animal - 115 million plays

Only one song in their top five most listened to ISNT from Hysteria.

[GoodJudge]

Album sold a shitload but apparently the Sludge crowd didn't buy it. Lol, fucking ridiculous.

Because the people that bought it weren't generally rock fans. Appetite was bought mostly by people who already liked rock / metal, or it got them into the scene. Slippery / New Jersey crossed more into the 'casual listener' crowd. Hysteria was 'Rock' for pop fans who thought they were being daring by buying it, and they never went further into the genre except an Aerosmith ballad or two.

[Tommy2Tone84]

I remember really liking the Pyromania videos (they were scary!) but my bros didn't have that tape, so what little I heard from it away from MTV was from a neighbor's vinyl copy. (Looking back, I was kinda raised by Heavy Metal Parking Lot dudes.)

Anyway, my folks would occasionally cave and buy me a copy of Hit Parader or Circus --remember when those were GOOD magazines and not just Duff poster suppliers?--and I kinda kept up that Def Leppard has a new album, Hysteria, coming out.

I remember the cover. I may have heard "Women" or "Hysteria," not sure.

So not a big impact in Camp Z'Hoy. UNTIL... summer of '88 and a friend of mine turned on MTV and lost it over the video for "Pour Some Sugar on Me."

Now, this friend really liked a big chorus. He was especially fond of "I Love it Loud." So "Pour Some" had obvious BCE (Big Chorus Energy) for him and I liked it a lot too.

But also that summer, while waiting for Def Leppard to pop up on MTV, we came across "Sweet Child O' Mine" and we mostly forgot about Def Leppard because Guns N' Roses were cooler. That's just the way it fucking WAS!

A year later, I found the Hysteria cassette literally in the street. No case. Not even rewound.

And that would be my only copy of Hysteria until, I think, my 20's. (I may have had the CD at some point.)

Late summer or early fall 1987 I saw Women world premiere on MTV at my friend’s house. I didn’t hate it but I didn’t love it either. Pyromania, High N Dry and the single Me and My Wine were my jams in grade school and jr high. Women wasn’t bad but it lacked something.

Animal came out weeks or a month or two later. I still didn’t own the cassette. I liked Animal much better.

Early 1988, Hysteria was released as a single. I saw it world premiere and I loved everything about it. The video, the lyrics, the arrangement, the production. I think I bought it on cassette shortly after.

After buying the cassette the tunes Gods of War and Armageddon It stuck out to me. I remember hearing PSSOM prior to it becoming a single. It didn’t catch my ear. I thought it was kind of dumb. I was shocked when it became such a huge hit.

I might have the timeline wrong here. I think Rock It was the next single. It’s possible Rock It was released prior to Hysteria. Rock It was cool. I liked the ode the their 60s and 70s glam and rock roots. It still wasn’t Lady Strange, Foolin or Rock of Ages.

When PSSOM was released I was shocked. I thought it was an awful idea. Obviously I could not have been more wrong. I thought the song sucked for years. But it exploded at my high school. All the girls loved that song and everyone seemed to be a Def Leppard fan. For a long time, I didn’t love Hysteria. I felt they had lost something. Very similar to how I felt Metallica had lost something with TBA.

I’ve since come to love Hysteria but it definitely ranks a solid 4th after Pyromania, HND and OTTN. That said, 1988 was a magical year and Hysteria was a big reason why.

Outside of Metallica’s dickish fans, there wasn’t a lot of back biting and knit picking. I’m sure there were some exceptions but most at my high school loved all or a lot of it. Hysteria, WS87, AFD, OU812, Savage Amusement, Back For The Attack, Pride, Mechanical Resonance, Seventh Son, Open Up & Say Ahh, Skyscraper, Once Bitten, Crazy Nights.

[Mister Freeze]

Album sold a shitload but apparently the Sludge crowd didn't buy it. Lol, fucking ridiculous.

Because the people that bought it weren't generally rock fans. Appetite was bought mostly by people who already liked rock / metal, or it got them into the scene. Slippery / New Jersey crossed more into the 'casual listener' crowd. Hysteria was 'Rock' for pop fans who thought they were being daring by buying it, and they never went further into the genre except an Aerosmith ballad or two.

The revisionist history on this board is something else.

[Bono Nettencourt]

I worked that tour for liiiike 2 months or some shit, so I remember that...the intro tape, the giant kabuki curtain drop, the "north, South, East, West stage directions...and all of the money. That tour was fucking fat with money.

Whattabout the 30 girls beneath the stage giving out hummers?

[RaceFan3]

Nearly 40 years on, and it's still kind of "meh" to me. It took me a long time to be even close to "getting it" (no pun intended). I think it's an interesting experiment and at times, a kind of cool one.

But overall, it does little for me, especially coming after Pyromania and High & Dry (their best album IMHO), and even On Through the Night.

I've always despised PSSOM and Rocket. Love Bites, Women and Hysteria are okay-ish but not good. The best songs on the album are the deep cuts, which continued a trend from both Pyromania and H & D, and permanently cemented Lep as a band whose hits are not their best songs, whatsoever.

[tooth]

I remember it being great. One of our friends, she was wise to collecting, bootlegs & making cassettes. Def Leppard was her fave band so she had tons of stuff, even back then. I got Hysteria, with the "First Strike" demos to fill up the rest of the cassette, shortly after it came out. I haven't listened to the whole record in some time, but those songs are still cool & bring back some great memories. Great tour, as well, loved that stage in the round & most all the songs up until that point. That was pretty much it with Lep, for me, though. Not sure I've listened to a whole record or seen them live since.

[CrankerBait]

I remember it taking so long to come out that by the time it did I didn't care all that much.

[Sleek]

I worked that tour for liiiike 2 months or some shit, so I remember that...the intro tape, the giant kabuki curtain drop, the "north, South, East, West stage directions...and all of the money. That tour was fucking fat with money.

Whattabout the 30 girls beneath the stage giving out hummers?

That, I actually don't remember...there was SO much poon around back then, every tour was like that, arenas, clubs and in-between.

I always see shit about that in DL documentaries like it was some high-water mark for debauchery, but I think it is more that they were nice English boys who didn't realize that the entire industry was neck-deep in ass.

They did rent out an entire strip bar for a private party (Vancouver?) one night with open bar for band and crew. That was fun.

It is a whole different scene at a strip bar when the girls are trying to get to YOU.

[sirthx2]

Pyromania... I bought it as soon as I heard Rock of Ages - The place Chip heard it and was a fan of it, when he was only 18months old.
But I couldnt warm up to it. It was too lightweight. I was into the heaviest of metal. Iron maiden and Ozzy. I mean, it was never gonna get heavier than that. Was it?!

And then, guess, what? It got heavier than that! Freewheel burning! Whoah. Nothing would ever top this.

Then I got exposed to Motorhead and Ride the Lightning. Fuck, this was some heavy shit. And then Slayer and Venom, which, truth be told, were just to raw and heavy for even me.

Then along comes Def Leppard with a new album. I heard Animal. And I dont know if soccer moms existed then, but that was strictly for what might be a soccer moms, should they have existed at the time, would like.
Then came Hysteria. If you liked this, it was mandatory to turn in your penis.

Pour some Sugar? Ok, this was catchy. But metal it was not.

More singles came. But this was a pussy band. Marked and branded. No self-respecting metalhead dude liked this. None bought it. Not the burnouts in the back parking lot I hung out with, anyway. Maybe all the proto-Beavis and Butthead "Stewarts" did, I heard it sold shitloads. But this was pussy shit, pure and simple. None of the dudes I knew bought Slippery When Wet either. This was not dude metal. No sir. It wasnt.

Never owned it. never would.

No notes.

[Chip Z'Hoy]

In what universe did the songs from Hysteria disappear? Not the one we live in

Spotify numbers:
Pour Some Sugar On Me - 544 million plays
Hysteria - 250 million
Photograph - 164 million
Love Bites - 142 million
Animal - 115 million plays

Only one song in their top five most listened to ISNT from Hysteria.

The only thing surprising here is that "Hysteria" has almost 86 million more plays than "Photograph." Was it popular on TikTok or something? Definitely a hit song in its time, but I wouldn't have expected it to be more popular than "Photograph."

Apple Music shows the same top 5 followed by: 6. "Rock of Ages," "7. "Foolin'," 8. "Armageddon It," 9. "Bringin' on the Heartbreak" (also would've expected this one to be higher), 10. "Rocket."

I'm not making any kind of point, just interesting to see where we're at in 2025, Lep-wise.

[Sleek]

I play in some bands with YOUNGS and it is weird, because they experience an artists entire catalog simultaneously...they know the deep cuts that you don't know as much as the radio singles, because they have no idea what were the radio songs, but then don't know some of the artist's big songs if they weren't on key albums.

Liiiiiiiiiike, I do a Fleetwood Mac cover band with 20-something singers and they have no concept that Silver Springs, for instance, was entirely unknown until the nineties live album and the digital reissues that followed. They don't know that Landslide wasn't really a big song in its initial run or that Don't Stop or Go Your Own Way were huuuuge. Bullshit like Gypsy and Everywhere sits side-by-side with The Chain as just all being the same stuff.


So, if you lived through it in real time, you know Bringin' on the Heartbreak was a big single for Leppard, but if you pick up on them after the fact, you are going to know the big albums in their entirety (Pyro and Hyst), but not so much the other stuff.

[Dyslexicheart]

Album sold a shitload but apparently the Sludge crowd didn't buy it. Lol, fucking ridiculous.

Because the people that bought it weren't generally rock fans. Appetite was bought mostly by people who already liked rock / metal, or it got them into the scene. Slippery / New Jersey crossed more into the 'casual listener' crowd. Hysteria was 'Rock' for pop fans who thought they were being daring by buying it, and they never went further into the genre except an Aerosmith ballad or two.

The revisionist history on this board is something else.

What's "something else" about it? I had Pyromania, liked it, and hated the lightweight Hysteria album - didn't buy it. Pretty straightforward. There's no revisionist history.

[GoodJudge]

Album sold a shitload but apparently the Sludge crowd didn't buy it. Lol, fucking ridiculous.

Because the people that bought it weren't generally rock fans. Appetite was bought mostly by people who already liked rock / metal, or it got them into the scene. Slippery / New Jersey crossed more into the 'casual listener' crowd. Hysteria was 'Rock' for pop fans who thought they were being daring by buying it, and they never went further into the genre except an Aerosmith ballad or two.

The revisionist history on this board is something else.

What I wrote was true for my group of friends. The ones who generally got as 'heavy' as, say, INXS or Bryan Adams liked Hysteria much more than those of us who were listening to metal. And the singles were played on national daytime radio so 'the music business' clearly considered and marketed them as part of pop. The only other hair band music that was treated similarly were the 2 big Slippery singles, and the radio edit of Sweet Child. Obviously this was in the UK. Quite possibly North America was different.

[Ryan81]

I might have the timeline wrong here. I think Rock It was the next single.

As I remember it the order of videos released in America was:

Women - late summer '87
Animal - Autumn '87
Hysteria - Winter '88
Sugar - Spring/Summer '88
Love Bites - Autumn '88
Armageddon It - Winter '88/89
Rocket - late Winter '89

At the time 7 videos for one album was unheard of. The 4 year wait for it to come out after Pyromania was also unheard of. I remember the first 2 singles didn't do much. Hysteria did alright. At that point they were panicking though because they were still in debt from the recording of the album and it looked like it was going to fall way short of what Pyromania did. Then they released Pour Some Sugar and that son of a bitch exploded! (there wasn't fire or anything thank goodness, I just meant there was a significant boost in the number of units moved). I'm probably wrong, but aren't them and Van Halen the only two "hair bands" that have two diamond selling albums in their catalog?

[St_Augustines_Pears]

I'm probably wrong, but aren't them and Van Halen the only two "hair bands" that have two diamond selling albums in their catalog?

Bon Jovi has two diamond selling albums.

[Bono Nettencourt]

I might have the timeline wrong here. I think Rock It was the next single.

As I remember it the order of videos released in America was:

Women - late summer '87
Animal - Autumn '87
Hysteria - Winter '88
Sugar - Spring/Summer '88
Love Bites - Autumn '88
Armageddon It - Winter '88/89
Rocket - late Winter '89

At the time 7 videos for one album was unheard of. The 4 year wait for it to come out after Pyromania was also unheard of. I remember the first 2 singles didn't do much. Hysteria did alright. At that point they were panicking though because they were still in debt from the recording of the album and it looked like it was going to fall way short of what Pyromania did. Then they released Pour Some Sugar and that son of a bitch exploded! (there wasn't fire or anything thank goodness, I just meant there was a significant boost in the number of units moved). I'm probably wrong, but aren't them and Van Halen the only two "hair bands" that have two diamond selling albums in their catalog?

VH is NOT a hair band.

[Black Stuff]

I remember..........doing the time warp

[pieceofme]

I'm probably wrong, but aren't them and Van Halen the only two "hair bands" that have two diamond selling albums in their catalog?

Bon Jovi has two diamond selling albums.

Which is the 2nd one in the USA?

"According to Recording Industry Association of America, Bon Jovi has sold 42 million albums in the United States (including 1 diamond album, 5 multi-platinum albums, 11 platinum albums and 14 gold albums)."

[daveg]

I'm probably wrong, but aren't them and Van Halen the only two "hair bands" that have two diamond selling albums in their catalog?

Bon Jovi has two diamond selling albums.

Which is the 2nd one in the USA?

"According to Recording Industry Association of America, Bon Jovi has sold 42 million albums in the United States (including 1 diamond album, 5 multi-platinum albums, 11 platinum albums and 14 gold albums)."

Crossroad might have hit diamond, but don't think so. That would be the only other one it could be... NJ never hit 10. I think Slippery hit 15 mill sometime in the past year.

[Tommy2Tone84]

I might have the timeline wrong here. I think Rock It was the next single.

As I remember it the order of videos released in America was:

Women - late summer '87
Animal - Autumn '87
Hysteria - Winter '88
Sugar - Spring/Summer '88
Love Bites - Autumn '88
Armageddon It - Winter '88/89
Rocket - late Winter '89

At the time 7 videos for one album was unheard of. The 4 year wait for it to come out after Pyromania was also unheard of. I remember the first 2 singles didn't do much. Hysteria did alright. At that point they were panicking though because they were still in debt from the recording of the album and it looked like it was going to fall way short of what Pyromania did. Then they released Pour Some Sugar and that son of a bitch exploded! (there wasn't fire or anything thank goodness, I just meant there was a significant boost in the number of units moved). I'm probably wrong, but aren't them and Van Halen the only two "hair bands" that have two diamond selling albums in their catalog?

VH is NOT a hair band.

Yes they are

[War_in_D]

This thread got me to listen to Pyromania today. Damn, that's a great album.

[thechefs2003]

Should also be noted, for the purposes of transparency, that when "Love Bites" was a big hit, I thought the line was "Are you wild and woolly?"

.

Lol, I thought the same thing