Causing mass Hysteria
By Evan Benton, Staff Writer Let me take you back nearly 30 years to the era of the much underappreciated and misunderstood glam-metal genre. Its heyday lay between the glitzy, extravagant and unapologetic years of 1981 and 1989, characterized by titans like Great White, Cinderella, Winger, Firehouse and L.A. Guns. This was a time of rampant androgyny, of tight spandex pants and their essential bulges. This was the golden age of Mötley Crüe, of Poison, of Warrant, who combined are responsible for truckloads of Jack Daniels passed through their collective veins, crates of cocaine passed through their naval cavities and tens of thousands of groupies just plain passed around. This was a time of men, a time of giants. And in terms of popularity, no band was more gigantic than Def Leppard, legendary libertines of the stage and multi-platinum recording artists. Already a household name and relative icon of the age thanks to 1983’s Pyromania and almost constant MTV coverage, Def Leppard took nearly four years on hiatus before producing their next album. In 1984 the band had to overcome a debilitating setback that would have ultimately destroyed a lesser group — the loss of drummer Rick Allen’s left arm […]
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