Def Leppard brings chart-topping ‘Hysteria’ hits to Blaisdell Arena

Rock ’n’ roll’s double-diamond club is elite, the top level of a pyramid that is very exclusive even on the ground floor.

To be certified diamond, a record must sell 10 million copies. Only 87 studio albums in the rock era (1955 to the present) have done that.

Narrow it to rock albums and there are far fewer. Even using the most liberal definition of rock — Phil Collins? Jewel? Hootie & the bleepin’ Blowfish?— only 45 qualify.

And a mere five rock artists have at least two entries on that list: Led Zeppelin, the Beatles, Pink Floyd, Van Halen … and the band playing at Blaisdell Arena this weekend, Def Leppard.

The British rockers got together in the late 1970s, released their first album in 1980 and became legit stars in 1983, when they topped Billboard magazine’s rock charts with singles “Photograph” and “Rock of Ages” off the first of those diamond albums, “Pyromania.”

GUITARIST PHIL COLLEN, who joined the group for the completion of “Pyromania” and the ensuing tour, looked back on what that all meant to the band in a recent call from Eugene, Ore., where the band was taking a rest day as it made its way south from Vancouver to Sacramento on its second co-headlining tour with Journey.

“We’d been playing clubs and half-empty arenas and were still an opening act. Then ‘Pyromania’ blew up, and … we went from living with our mums and stuff like that to actually becoming grown-ups,” he said.

In 1987, the album “Hysteria” followed. It would be the band’s ultimate best-seller, spawning seven hit singles, including a first No. 1 pop hit, the ballad “Love Bites,” and what has become their signature song, “Pour Some Sugar on Me.” After almost a year, it also became their first No. 1 album — “Pyromania” had been blocked by Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” — and ultimately sold 12 million copies.

“Hysteria” was sandwiched by two tragedies. In 1984, drummer Rick Allen lost his left arm in an auto accident. The band took time off as he recovered and a drum kit was designed so his left foot could do the work his left hand used to.

Then in 1991, guitarist Steve Clark died after consuming a combination of alcohol and drugs.

Collen credits the band members’ parents for their resiliency and said tragedy has made them even closer.

“We have a very strong connection,” Collen said. “I’m very protective of my brothers. We’ve been through so much together.”

Collen was especially close to Clark, with whom he had developed the band’s trademark dual-guitar sound. Clark’s melodic, even lyrical solos laid across the crunch Collen brought.

“It wasn’t a rhythm guy and a lead guy. It was like, both playing lead parts, counter-melodies, lead lines that go under another lead, like, orchestrated guitar,” Collen noted.

Vivian Campbell stepped in for Clark in 1992.

“We really continue in that thread, which is really amazing. Me and Viv have been partners for gettin’ onto 30 years now, which is incredible,” Collen said.

The guitarist also credits Campbell with helping to beef up Def Leppard’s vocals.

“We all did backing vocals, but we weren’t that great until Viv got in the band,” Collen said. “You know, he’s a really good singer, and we worked on that approach. We really use that as an instrument. Some bands have a keyboard player, we have vocals.”

Def Leppard’s Hawaii shows will be the first in more than five years in which they play “Hysteria” from beginning to end. The band — Collen, Allen, Campbell, singer Joe Elliott and bass player Rick Savage — has not performed some of the songs at all in that time.

“We worked so hard … to make those songs have a lasting effect,” Collen said, “and, you know, it comes back to the (producer) Mutt Lange. He said, ‘Let’s create music that people will be talking about in 20 years,’ so it’s been 30-odd years since ‘Hysteria,’ and … I love playing the stuff. It means as much to me now as when we wrote it.”

Lange’s name comes up a lot when talking to Collen, and each time it is with effusive praise. Lange produced Def Leppard’s two diamond albums, as well as “High ’n’ Dry,” which came right before them. Collen credits Lange for the band’s hitting the heights it did.

“We pretty much owe everything to him,” Collen said. “We would have been OK, and the songs would have been good and stuff, but the songs with him … He’d come back, he’d go, ‘OK, this chorus isn’t strong enough. It’s OK for a prechorus or a bridge section. We need a stronger chorus.’”

Lange also produced three diamond albums for country pop star Shania Twain (to whom he was once married) and AC/DC’s “Back in Black,” which has 22 million in certified U.S. sales.

“You listen to anything by AC/DC before he came along, it was raw and everything, but it didn’t have mass appeal,” Collen said. “You know, ‘Back in Black’ has mass appeal. You can play it anywhere.”

DEF LEPPARD was always looking for that broad audience, Collen said — not just to be lumped in with the multitude of metal bands that helped send peroxide and denim jacket sales through the roof in the ’80s.

“You ask all those other bands (on MTV’s ‘Headbangers Ball’) what their influences were on their albums,” Collen said, “and they probably wouldn’t have said ‘Prince, the Police, Run-DMC, Michael Jackson, Frankie Goes to Hollywood. … So that really did set us apart.”

Superstars such as Prince and the Beatles were acts Def Leppard aspired to be peers with.

“That to me is better than sticking to being a rock band and appealing to a single demographic,” Collen said.

Last week it was announced that Def Leppard will get a chance to be peers with those artists in one more way — the band was nominated for induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, 13 years after becoming eligible.

Speaking before the nomination was announced, Collen downplayed the significance of such an accolade, saying it wasn’t as important as the band’s diamond certifications, which showed the public’s love for them. But singer Elliott told Billboard last week, after the announcement, “When I look at the list of who’s in, it’s just obvious you’d want to be in that club, isn’t it? … When you think that every band that means anything in the world, starting from the Beatles and the Stones and any artist that influenced them — your Chuck Berrys, your Little Richards, etc. etc. — then of course you want to be in. Why wouldn’t you?”

The band will find out in December if they make the cut this year, but they have a full schedule in the meantime. After the Blaisdell shows — their first in Hawaii in 35 years — they head to Japan, Australia and Europe. Def Leppard also just released the single “We All Need Christmas” — the band’s first new music since its eponymous 2015 album — in advance of a pair of new compilations due out next month.