Taylor Swift was just 18 years old when she teamed with Def Leppard for a 2008 episode of the popular CMT series, Crossroads. The band initiated the collaboration after Swift revealed, in an interview, that Def Leppard was the only group she would partner with for a Crossroads performance.

” I’ve always though, if I ever get to do one of those shows, it has to be with Def Leppard, ” said the young singer, speaking with People Magazine, follwing the taping.

” This is really a dream come true for me. I’ve been screaming the words to Def Leppard songs for years! “

Collen was a mere lad of 14 when he attended his first live rock concert, catching Deep Purple in London during the band’s 1972 Machine Head tour.

Years later, examining the back cover of Deep Purple’s Made in Japan album, he noticed that the fans in the crowd photo were not Japanese.
Inspecting the photo further, he saw himself in the front row, “propping up the stage at [his] very first rock concert.”

More importantly, the concert solidified Collen’s desire to become a musician.

“It was the most spectacular thing I had ever seen,” he told this writer, in 2011. “It was as if I had no choice—I knew I had to do that.”

Longtime Def Leppard fans are all too familiar with the horrific 1984 car crash that severed drummer Rick Allen’s left arm.

What’s less known is that a nurse happened upon the scene shortly after the accident, followed by a police officer.
Both were instrumental in getting Allen prompt medical care, but what’s even more remarkable is that the good Samaritans ended up becoming husband and wife.

Allen’s recovery and adjustment became a study in heroic determination. Weeks after the crash, he performed a piece of drum music for the band, in order to demonstrate he was still capable of manning the skins.

The music he chose? The intro to Led Zeppelin’s “When the Levee Breaks.”

Producer Mutt Lange was adamant that the follow-up to Def Leppard’s Pyromania album should not rehash the formula for that record’s success.

To that end, Lange persuaded the band to use Michael Jackson’s Thriller as a template, with a goal of mixing genres and striving for crossover appeal.

The group even considered bringing Quincy Jones on-board as producer, but it turned out Jones was busy with other projects.

Ultimately, the band opted to work again with Lange, despite having to endure a lengthy delay while Lange completed production on the Cars’ Heartbeat City album.

As history shows, the decision proved to be the correct one.

Def Leppard’s Hysteria album was slow to take hold in America, but with the release of the record’s fourth single, “Pour Some Sugar on Me,” the album soared to #1.

The reason? According to Collen, exotic dancers in Florida adopted “Sugar” as their anthem, which in turn ignited a surge of radio airplay.

As reported by Palm Springs’ The Desert Sun, the adult-entertainment publication Adult Video News declared “Sugar” the all-time #1 song used by strippers during their set.

Hysteria went on to spend 96 weeks in the U.S. Top 40.

Def Lepard’s 2018 compilation—The Story So Far: The Best of Def Leppard—features three new songs, including a hard-rock cover of Depeche Mode’s “Personal Jesus.”

But Vivian Campbell’s first choice for a cover tune was not Depeche Mode, but rather the Swedish popsters, ABBA.

As reported by Blabbermouth, the idea originated with a request that the band come up with a cover song for Spotify’s “Spotify Singles” series.

“I thought we could rock the hell out of ABBA, because of our vocals,” explained Campbell. He added, “There’s a little harmony line in [“Knowing Me, Knowing You”], an instrumental line, that would have been a great rock guitar line.

I know it’s a bit of a happy song, but I think we could have darkened it up a bit. Anyway, that [idea] got shot down in flames.”

OK, OK … so lots of Def Leppard fans know about this one.

Still, we would be remiss not to mention it.
On October 23, 1995, the group gained entry into the Guinness Book of World Records.

Their accomplishment? In the course of that single day, the band played three 45-minute shows on three different continents.

The locales were  Tangier, Morocco; London, England; and Vancouver, Canada. “It was surreal,” recalled Collen, in his memoir.

“It felt like a week because we were in such drastically different environments in such a short space of time.”