It was the album that nearly broke the band and the duration of the recording seen all member’s go through a really rough time but it also turned out to be Def Leppard‘s biggest selling studio release to date, selling over 20 million copies worldwide.

Hysteria was released on August 3rd, 1987 and was the forth studio album from the band.

Produced by the brilliant Robert John “Mutt” Lange. The title of the album was thought up by drummer Rick Allen, relating to his experiences during the time of his car accident which seen him lose his arm, and the worldwide media coverage that followed.

It is also the last album to feature guitarist Steve Clark, with Adrenalize being the last to feature his songwriting.

The creative process for the album took over 3 years to complete with the band binning tracks from the first half of the session due to being unhappy with them. Before the release, the band published a book entitled Animal Instinct: The Def Leppard Story, written by Rolling Stone magazine Senior Editor David Fricke on the recording process of Hysteria over the 3+ years it took to record the album and the tough times the band went through.

In the liner notes to the album, the band apologised for the long wait between albums, and promised to never make fans wait that long between albums again but this proved hard to follow with the death of guitarist Steve Clark.

The first single’s released were ‘Animal’ worldwide except for the US where ‘Women’ was the first single. It wasn’t until the release of the fourth single ‘Pour Some Sugar On Me’ nearly a year after it’s release that Hysteria really blew up for the band and put them on a touring schedule that would make even the tightest band crack.

As with most hit songs – Sugar was the last song written and was quickly finished within two weeks!

Hysteria went on to dominate album charts around the world for three years. RIAA x 12 platinum sales in America 2009. The album currently sits as the 51st best selling album of all time in the US, and spent a record 96 weeks in the US Top 40.

Track Listing:

1.”Women”
2.”Rocket”
3.”Animal”
4.”Love Bites”
5.”Pour Some Sugar on Me”
6.”Armageddon It”
7.”Gods of War”
8.”Don’t Shoot Shotgun”
9.”Run Riot”
10.”Hysteria”
11.”Excitable”
12.”Love and Affection”

So today we put this album on and turn it up as loud as possible – Happy Birthday Hysteria!

Take a read of the recent interview Phil done with Music Rader, on recording of the album track-by-track.