Def Leppard
British musical group; rock band
Def Leppard are an English rock band formed in Sheffield in 1976. Since 1992, the band has consisted of Rick Savage (bass, backing vocals), Joe Elliott (lead vocals), Rick Allen (drums), Phil Collen (guitar, backing vocals), and Vivian Campbell (guitar, backing vocals). They established themselves as part of the new wave of British heavy metal of the early 1980s.
The band's first album, 1980's On Through the Night, reached the Top 15 in the UK but received little notice elsewhere. Their second album, 1981's High 'n' Dry, was produced by Mutt Lange, who helped them to define their melodic hard rock style. The album's most popular track, "Bringin' On the Heartbreak", became one of the first rock videos played on MTV in 1982. Their next studio album, Pyromania, the first with Collen featured on five tracks replacing guitarist Pete Willis who played rhythm guitar on the entire album before getting fired, was released in January 1983, with "Photograph" and "Rock of Ages" both topping the US Rock Tracks chart and reaching the top 20 of the Hot 100. Reaching No. 2 on the US album chart, Pyromania was certified Diamond in the US. The band's fourth album, the more pop-oriented Hysteria (1987), topped the UK, US, Canadian and Australian charts and remained on the charts for over two years. It has sold over 15 million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling albums of all time.
The public source identifies “Def Leppard” as british musical group; rock band. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Leppard, British and musical.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q182890. VIAF identifies the subject as 146664851. The Library of Congress control number is n86078759. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1976, 1992, 1980 and 1981.
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This entry incorporates text from “Def Leppard” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.