AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |
Back to Blog
Phil collen def leppard4/5/2023 ![]() This guitar is on display at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame museum in Cleveland. I used my ’80–’81 Ibanez Destroyer Custom with a DiMarzio Super Distortion in the bridge position and a Kahler trem system. “Mutt had me double-track my solo to give it a creamier sound. ![]() If you can double-track your solo, it shows that you know what you just played. “Musicianship is finding what works and supports the song, creates some kind of emotion and takes it somewhere else from the vocal melody. Mutt always said you have to be able to hum the solo, because if you haven’t got something memorable there, then you’re just doing the song a disservice. ‘Photograph’ was the song that broke us into multi-Platinum status Phil Collen “‘Photograph’ was the song that broke us into multi-Platinum status, with everything lining up perfectly: We had MTV, we were a top-20 band that could still be a hard-rock band, and we knew how to get an eight-bar solo in a song without alienating our listeners. “Def Leppard were actually very much a blend of the same influences as we had in Girl: some Bowie and T.Rex, some AC/DC and the Sex Pistols, glam and Led Zeppelin. Ironically, I recorded this in the same room as I’d recorded ‘Hollywood Tease’ three years before. “ Pyromania kick started the hair-metal thing with the big choruses and killer guitar solos. “Photograph” by Def Leppard from Pyromania (opens in new tab) (1983) I used my Wine Red ’76 Gibson Les Paul Custom with a DiMarzio Super Distortion bridge pickup into a Marshall 100-watt master-volume head through an angled 4x12 cab.” 2. “I also think I based the solo’s format on a Mick Box solo from ’73. ![]() It combined all of my rock influences and made it work in my own context: a little bit of Blackmore, Schenker, Ronson and some Al Di Meola thrown in, right down to the Les Paul with DiMarzios and the shred/burn lick on the neck pickup. “My solo in this was really the first recording I’d done that sounded like what I was trying to achieve. My solo in this was really the first recording I’d done that sounded like what I was trying to achieve Phil Collen I really believe we could have been a lot bigger if that had happened. “The real tragedy for Girl is that we didn’t meet someone like Mutt Lange, because he could have brought a lot to what we did. We didn’t have anyone to guide us, so we were kind of flying blind. We were trying to merge everything together. We were a London-based post-punk, post-glam, hard-rock band. “Hollywood Tease” by Girl from Sheer Greed (opens in new tab) (1980) Some of the guitars I have at home have had the same strings on for four years.” 1. “I’m really lazy with strings, I don’t really change them often because I don’t ever break a string. ![]() “Now that I use brass picks, the string wins out and there is brass dust everywhere,” he says. We were really blessed when we hooked up with Mutt Phil CollenĪ fantastically inventive and devastatingly effective guitarist, Collen has a few unique wrinkles in his arsenal, including the string gauges on his signature Jackson PC1 (opens in new tab)s (.013–.054) and Fender Telecasters (.014–.056).Įven allowing for his habit of tuning down one half-step, that’s some seriously heavy metal.Ĭollen also uses brass picks, having abandoned steel picks due to their habit of breaking strings. “But the results totally justified the time and money,” Collen says. The album took more than three years to record, due to the loss of Allen’s left arm and delays with Lange’s schedule, and it cost somewhere in the region of three million dollars. But the album paled in comparison to Hysteria, which went 12 times Platinum, giving Def Leppard its first Diamond award, for record sales in excess of 10 million. “We were really blessed when we hooked up with Mutt,” Collen says. A huge part of Pyromania’s success was Mutt Lange’s production. ![]()
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |