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DEF LEPPARD |
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"We Got The Power/ We Got The
Glory...Just Say Ya Need It/ And If Ya Need I Say Yeah!"
Anyway...knew this metal fuhrer at 14 who was, much like the Sleazegrinder, born with a tail and a black metal heart. Quick witted, offensively-charming, fearless, and unremorseful kid with a genius I.Q., a handcuff belt, a guilt-ridden single Mother who slept with dudes our age, a gift as a guit-sling, AND an indomitable rebel spirit. Billy Idol/Jim Morrisonesque Sagittarius charisma-king. A bad joker. For our purpose here today, we'll call him Gag Warlock. He had a blonde, almost albino-white shade of shocking mullet that morphed slowly into a fully charged Billy Idol spiky topped pompadour. He had posters of Ozzy holding Randy Rhoades up and Glen Tipton & K.K. Downing and Edward Van Halen on his walls. He alternated t-shirts- Sid Vicious, Exodus, Krokus, WASP, Diamond Head, or Dio. He was fascinated with Tony Iommi, Jimmy Page, Aleister Crowley, Anton LaVey, the Book Of Runes, conspiracies, the Kennedys, the Necronomicon, secret societies, the occult, the Freemasons, the Nazi S.S., Henry Ford's relationship to Hitler and the Black Legion, Nietzche, Ayn Rand, espionage, mind control, magic tricks, the Art Of War, tarot cards, serial killers, psychology, the mafia, tarot cards, Ouiji boards, and the voracious study of any social hierarchies that proved powerfully effective to the elite few. And this kid lived in a town brimming over with the sexual repression and behind closed doors perversions of rightwing fire and brimstone damnation theology. Chicks loved him, I never saw why back then, he was so abusive but he understood power and he WAS funny. He was totally obsessed with the Misfits. |
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| Gag Warlock was a blue-eyed, silver tongued devil, a class clown, courageous, he scoffed at authority and bullies. Once, the richest jock Journey upperclass sadist creeps invited Gag to a party where they beat him severely and I don't recall specifically what he did to exact his vengeance, but I do know they all started treating us all better a few weeks after he somehow responded. He was a bit of a bully sadist himself, he left alot of purple, bloody teethmarks in all his "friend's" arms, biting them all viciously, like a rabid dog some suggested should be put-down. I think he was a werewolf. |
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He took a special joy from repeatedly breaking my awful pre-teen Joey Ramone granny glasses again and again. Gag watched Clockwork Orange way too many times, and did way too much acid for a kid our age. He was like a cross between Layne from River's Edge and Jim Morrison in our dog eared Danny Sugarman paperbacks. A little troublemaker and a catalytic influence on all his stoned followers, he was like a junior cult-leader, really. He was amazing at wank-guitar and particularly seemed to dig that Michael Schenker MSG guitarist, who was the Scorpion's older brother. He referred to willing teenage girls as "squirrels"...?! He was also really into Quiet Riot, Deep Purple, Ozzy, Rainbow, Dio, Venom, Angel Witch, Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, early Slayer and the Doors. And ANYTHING about the debbil. Teachers loathed this kid cos he was utterly beyond their control, baiting and manipulating them and dominating their classrooms by being more prepared, better studied, sharper witted, just all around smarter than they were. He was pretty much my only peer at that age, cos nobody else was really as drawn to books or music as we were. The rest of the school seemed hung up on clothes and sports and shit. We skipped gym together and smoked behind the bleachers outside. He did have that horrible nazi streak that compelled him to mercilessly abuse and prey on his little cronie, a weasel looking stoner who we all called, "the Ratt". Yep, every town has one. He'd humiliate him, steal from his Mom, take all his best shit, beat him with sticks. I dunno what the Rat got out of their "friendship" other than Gag was teaching him some flashy wank-scales on guitar. Mine and Gag's relationship was often even more tense and violent because we respected each other, but we were accustomed to occupying the same space, neither one of us were really sidekicks, and since I was the only person in his life he couldn't dominate back then, there was always friction. I did love hanging round Gag though, cos he could always create fun chaos for our entertainment, even if it was merely grabbing two metal garbage can lids and clanging down the street, goose stepping in the dusk suburban twilight banging away, shouting nazi slogans, etc. He was a little beserker. Psych-wards and juvenile corrections units are full of 'em. He had style, too, wearing combat boots way before
anyone else we knew, and this cool ass bullet belt. He was always talkin'
about Carmine Appice from King Kobra and Vanilla Fudge
as being a great drummer, but I alwaysn suspected he just enjoyed being
able to correctly pronounce his last name. Gag had an older cousin from
Ca. who he spent summer vacations with that would corrupt him with all the
latest bad fun outlaw culture he'd then bring back to his greasy rock
brigade, particularly all the latest, unlistenable speedcore, or
unwatchable splatter footage none of the skateboarder Marlboro Red smokers
knew about yet. ACKNOWLEDGING THE CROW... |
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Our original band was called, simply, HARLOT. I was into Iggy and Bowie when he wanted me to be more like Bruce Dickinson or Vince Neil, but there was nobody else. We had to work together. Gag would always yell at me and our make-shift rhythm section, "WE MUST BE UGLY!" and affectionately referred to me as, "The Glen Matlock" of the group, way before there even really was a group. We both dug all the same sixties shit, the Doors were our biggest influence, but he was always way more metal than me. I wasn't really even metal at all. I mean I mighta liked "No One Like You", "Livin' After Midnight", "Run To The Hills", and "Paranoid" (just for the first line, really!) and VAN HALEN but the rest of it you can keep. |
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I hadn't heard "Too Fast For Love" until AFTER we got into "Shout At The Devil", if I recall, and I always hated Thrash besides thinking Venom were pretty funny. I just wasn't a headbanger. I dug Adam & The Ants and glam and new wave and power pop and David Bowie's "Scary Monsters & Super Creeps". And 60's garage shit like the Zombies. I hated Megadeth, Metallica, all that from day one. So trying to make a band together would usually be more like a ritualistic drinking session where me and Gag would fiercely debate some band's merits and the other kids would just kinda listen slackjawed and then there'd be a truce regarding Slade or Alice Cooper or the Sweet and everyone could breathe easy we weren't coming to "ultra-violence" again - his favorite expression. Gag dug it all really, he was just super prone to reallyemphasizing his allegiance to the whole New Wave Of British metal Scene that always bored me to tears. If you ever end up playing that silver boxed rock trivia game that came out in the eary 90's and you get stumped, just respond, "Tygers Of Pan Tang" and you'll probably be right. The dirty secret was, and he might even deny it now, cos everybody else is revising their checkered Van pasts to seem cooler than they really were, but from probably 13-15, DEF LEPPARD, girl rock, those dirty Leps were our favorite rock band besides Van Halen. I'm not foolin'... UMPTON GLEEPTIN GLOPTON GLOWPIN...... Fuck man, that record rocked us all so hard. Rock Of Ages, Foolin', Stagefright, Photograph! The Union Jack t's and the dumb scarves we all started wearing, the sweatbands, all the fault o' the leps. Leather pants and tennis shoes still worn onstage by the Darkness and Dregen & Co.- all the fault of the Leps. The licorice legged, hockey mulleted, emaciated, splayed legged guitar gods prototype all our bands are subconsciously still affected by. They were on every page of Circus Magazine for years on end. We heard 'em on the radio all summer at the swimming pool, and all winter on school bus Walkmans. The dubbed-in Kiss Alive crowd noises. The curly haired drummer in the unforgivable Union Jack shorts! The horrible canny Mutt Lange already dated new wave drum sound. What liberating dumbfuck anthems to glory! All Joe Elliot's shit about Yeah and Rocknroll and Yes I Do and You Betcha were all just right the fuck affirmations of rock solidarity to us back then. "Photograph" remains as perfect a pop song as I can conceive that latter day paycheck shite like "Love Bites" and "Pour Some Sugar On Me" can not even de-legitimize! "So Wild-So Free-So Far From Me-You're All I Want-My Fantasy!" They nailed every black t-shirt's teenage frustration. Weirdly, much like my former heroes the Leps, all these juvenile cohorts of mine, are adults now, transformed into house-owning responsible husbands I can't relate to, nearly unrecognizably stiff and hollowed shadows of their romantic adolescent selves. I looked a couple of 'em up last year and it was pretty heartbreaking to look in on the cheeseburger munching, pot smoking, TV watcher I was hoping still had the stuff to rock. Alot of 'em seem pretty gleeful about the dead end my life's become, they can all feel successful so long as they make more money than me. God Bless 'Em. Last I heard, Gag Warlock got some fat goth girl
pregnant, joined the Marines, and moved to Germany. Last time I saw Gag,
like 15 years ago, he was showing off his flash red sports car I couldn't
care less about and was simultaneously going through his GBH/EXPLOITED
hardcore British punk phase. OI! Our other childhood pal's a doctor now,
married to a lawyer like the Huxtables mostly preoccupied with cultivating
relationships with colleagues who can help him forge his medical career
under their highclass patronage on the East Coast. I probably miss him the
most. The others got domineering wives and are forced to feel competitive
now, like they gotta prove something to somebody-usually the
mother-in-law, so they're all unreachable, too. The others are dead or
have staked out their status as king cocks of their zipcodes where no one
wants to be in a gang anymore. We're all the proud kings of our channel
changers wondering where the party went. Sad, really...adulthood. Me, I'm
stuck in the flash metal nether lands, still listening to "Bringin' On
the Heartache" and "Me & My Wine" and identifying with all the
drunks in their band they threw out (Pete Willis) or died (Steamin'
Steve Clarke) way more than I do any of the Lep's grown-up suck
shit radio bullshit. Hysteria, Rocketman, all that,
barf. I can't believe they replaced Steve Clarke with that daff cornball
from Whitesnake, but they ain't your Dad's Def Leppard, no more.
Everybody's only living for money. |
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Rick Allen lost the arm, came back from the curse of Def Leppard, bravely soldiers on, yep. All heroic and true. A shame the music bit after Pyromania. Elliot still has the ridiculous fashion sensibilities and hair problems and always rambles on about Mick Ronson, bloody marvelous. I wonder if Phil Collen ever tried to "help out" his old chum Phil Lewis from Gurl and L.A. Glums, last seen working in a cubicle at Cleopatra records. "High & Dry" was great too, but "Pyromania" was one of the most important albums of my youth, and a preposterous listen-to, now! |
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The Leps were to our class of misfit teens what Motley and Metallica were to kids a couple grades below us, total rawk gods. I think the reason we don't hear from the Leps no more is because we were so drenched in all their goofy anthems and overproduced ballads for so long that they know we're all still just sick of 'em, like the Bee Gees, or something, and they've all made too much fookin' money to write anything worth hearing anymore. I mean everything sucked after Mutt's dumb dragged-out drums on the end of side 2, on. I never gave "Slang" a fair listen, maybe you can for me! I'm tired of click tracks and computer perfected Mutt Lange Shania Rawk rocket science. Gimme the Supersuckers or Lazy Cowgirls instead. Even still, Def Leppard, spiked bracelets, checkered vans, and Circus magazines made being 14 years old in "American Township" ALMOST tolerable. Notice I said, "almost". -FIN- ____________________________________________________________________________________ -Pepsi Sheen ain't foolin' himself...
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Yeah,
I know, YOUR chicken pot pie and Schlitz bull stained wifebeater'd
group of confederate flagged danger rockers would never have nothin' to do
with anything by AC/DC's old producer, but we were kids, then. Har.