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via OnMilwaukee

The 2025 Summerfest lineup continues to roll out, and on Thursday, we learned who will rock the American Family Insurance Amphitheater on the opening night of next year’s festival.

Rock legends Def Leppard will headline the opening night of Summerfest 2025, officials announced Thursday. The band is set to perform at the American Family Insurance Amphitheater on June 19th, joined by special guests Tesla.

The show will mark Def Leppard’s eighth performance on Summerfest’s main stage, with their first appearance dating back to 1996. The announcement makes them the fifth act confirmed for the amphitheater’s 2025 lineup.

Def Leppard have been touring cosistently for over four decades, but that doesn’t mean they’ve remained stagnant. They recently released a song called “Just Like 73” with Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello this past June, and they have played Milwaukee as recently as 2022, when they took over American Family Field. Tesla also released a new EP, “All About Love,” on Black Friday.

Tickets for Def Leppard and Tesla will go on sale Wednesday, Dec. 18, at 10 a.m. through Summerfest.com and Ticketmaster. Each ticket includes same-day admission to the festival. Summerfest Insiders will have early access to a presale on Tuesday, Dec. 17th, beginning at 10 a.m. Insiders are encouraged to check their email that morning for an access code.

Vault Comics has revealed their Def leppard graphic novel is getting a #0 issue for Hysteria. Written by Def Leppard guitarist Phil Collen and Eliot Rahal (Bleed Them Dry, The Vain, Midnight Vista), with illustrations by Alex Schlitz (Sagas of the Shield Maiden), colors by Fabi Marques (Barbaric, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers), and letters by Andworld Design, the special will give readers an early look at the graphic novel.

Included in the Hysteria zero issue release will be a hyper-limited foil variant edition signed by Def Leppard’s Phil Collen himself. Each signed copy will come with a CGC witnessed certificate of authenticity. Only 200 copies will be available, and can only be found in local comic shops. Pre-orders are open now.

“Blending music and comics together like this is an incredible and insane dream, and I could not be more thrilled by the work Eliot, Alex, and Vault have put into Hysteria. It has been a joy and one hell of a ride. I know fans are going to love it,” said Phil Collen, Def Leppard guitarist.

Co-writer Eliot Rahal said, “From the very beginning, before we had anything, this story felt big. Phil came to us with a vision, a ton of passion, and the word ‘Hysteria’—something that has a lot of history for the band. It’s something that carries a lot of meaning. A legacy. And in many ways, that’s what this story is about. The Vault team  worked with me tirelessly to help create a framework to capture that spirit. Then… as the team assembled and the art came in… I saw the idea take shape in real-time, and the weight of the project became even more real. I put everything I had into this book because it was clear to me that everyone else also had as well. I’ll be forever grateful for being a part of this project.”

Vault and Def Leppard have announced a special zero issue for Hysteria, the forthcoming graphic novel co-written by Def Leppard guitarist Phil Collen and Eliot Rahal (Bleed Them Dry, The Vain, Midnight Vista), with illustrations by Alex Schlitz (Sagas of the Shield Maiden), colors by Fabi Marques (Barbaric, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers), and letters by Andworld Design. This extra-special single issue offering will give readers an early look at the much anticipated forthcoming graphic novel.

Included in the Hysteria zero issue release will be a hyper-limited foil variant edition signed by Def Leppard’s Phil Collen himself. Each signed copy will come with a CGC witnessed certificate of authenticity. Only 200 copies will be available, and can only be found in local comic shops. Pre-orders are open now.

“Blending music and comics together like this is an incredible and insane dream, and I could not be more thrilled by the work Eliot, Alex, and Vault have put into Hysteria. It has been a joy and one hell of a ride. I know fans are going to love it,” said Phil Collen, Def Leppard guitarist.

Continuing the celebration of rock, the graphic novel Hysteria follows Foz, the frontwoman of indie band Darkside, after she inherits her father’s estate and discovers it comes with a half-remembered guitar from her childhood. The guitar speaks to her, promising fame and success. Soon, it delivers. But when Darkside’s equipment is stolen at a massive music venue, just before they’re set to take the stage with Def Leppard, Foz goes on the warpath to get it back. A knuckle-dusting rampage ensues, and the guitar’s true history is revealed.

Co-writer Eliot Rahal said, “From the very beginning, before we had anything, this story felt big. Phil came to us with a vision, a ton of passion, and the word ‘Hysteria’—something that has a lot of history for the band. It’s something that carries a lot of meaning. A legacy. And in many ways, that’s what this story is about. The Vault team  worked with me tirelessly to help create a framework to capture that spirit. Then… as the team assembled and the art came in… I saw the idea take shape in real-time, and the weight of the project became even more real. I put everything I had into this book because it was clear to me that everyone else also had as well. I’ll be forever grateful for being a part of this project.”

Def Leppard’s Hysteria, the graphic novel, features never-before-heard music from Darkside, to be recorded in collaboration with Phil Collen, as it tells the story of the world’s most dangerous guitar. Additional details on the release of the Darkside EP will be announced at a later date.

“As a Midwestern native raised on rock and roll and a musician from a family of musicians, Foz and Darkside’s story has come to mean a lot to me,” added illustrator Alex Schlitz. ”The opportunity to work on this book with Def Leppard has been not only a huge honor, but such an exhilarating treat. I’m so grateful to be part of the team bringing this story to life, and I’ve had such a blast working with Eliot, Phil, and Fabi to create this world. I’m excited for everyone else to finally get to come on the journey with us!”

Def Leppard’s Hysteria issue #0 will hit store shelves

Featuring the one-and-only Tom Morello on guitar, and having been sung right back by crowds throughout the North American tour – 7″ coloured vinyl editions of Just Like 73 have now sold out. But good news! There are still plenty of black 7″ vinyl editions available online.

Inspired by the Glam Rock Stompers of the 1970s, the single is available on the official Def Leppard store amongst many other retailers.

Tracklisting
A: Just Like 73 (Featuring Tom Morello)
B: Just Like 73 (Alternate Version)

ORDER NOW!

 

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via Hollywood Reporter

As a teen in England, Phil Collen was obsessed with all things American. The music, be it rock or blues, were major influences, but of particular interest to the guitarist of heavy metal glam band Def Leppard were the comics that were being imported into London shops in the 1960s.

It was in these shops that Collen picked up copies of Silver Surfer no.1 by Stan Lee and John Buscema and The Hulk No 3 by Lee and Jack Kirby. He still has those copies, stored in a case in his home in London. The Hulk was one of his favorites, as was Batman.

“I really got into the vibe of it and the culture of it,” Collen says on a Zoom from Nashville, where he is taking a short break from Leppard’s circuit as part of the Journey for the Summer Stadium Tour, which also includes acts Cheap Trick and The Steve Miller Band.

Now, Collen will be able to make his own impact on that comic culture. The guitarist, who has been with the band since its 1982 breakout Pyromania, has co-written a graphic novel that blends his musical career and his love of horror.

Titled Hysteria, the same name as the band’s 1987 album, still one of the best-selling albums of all time, the graphic will be published in spring 2025 from indie publisher Vault Comics. It will be the second title from the company’s Headshell imprint, which features sequential art collaborations with recording artists Metallica, Slash, Pete Wentz of Fallout Boy, among others.

Hysteria is a horror story dealing with the dark side of rock stardom, and even features a cameo from the band itself. It tells of Foz, the frontwoman of an indie band named Darkside who inherits her father’s estate and discovers it comes with a half-remembered guitar from her childhood. The guitar is demonic, thanks to being made from some cursed wood back in Mesopotamian times. It speaks to her, promising fame and success — and soon, it delivers. When the band’s equipment is stolen before it is due to open for the band Def Leppard, Foz, in a nod to Bruce Banner seeing the ragefull Hulk unleashed, lets loose her own dark side, so to speak, in order to get the guitar back.

“Poured out on the pages of this graphic novel is a story (Phil) couldn’t tell you in a song that takes you to places Def Leppard have never gone before with their music,” says Vault CEO Damian Wassel, who helped put together the rest of the creative team of the book.

Eliot Rahal, who previously penned the ninja vampire tale Bleed Them Dry for Vault, co-wrote the graphic novel. Alex Schlitz, who previously drew short stories in compilations such as YULE: Dreadful Tales for the Holiday Season and Sagas of the Shield Maiden Vol. 2, is handling the illustrations. Fabi Marques is the colorist and Andworld Design is lettering.

Collen said that the co-writing process was very much like working with bandmates. “It reminded me of songwriting with someone you really like,” he says. “You’d go, ‘What about this?’ And ‘What about this line? And we can follow up with this melody.’ It was very much like that, bouncing ideas, and he would run with it.”

He adds, “When you hit on something, it runs away, and you’re part of the slipstream. It was very inspiring, I gotta say.”

A similar feeling arose when working with Schlitz, who is making her graphic novel debut after working in the anthology shorts world.

Hysteria will come in retail and deluxe editions. A befitting a rock ‘n roll tour, there will be merch, including Dark Side T-shirts. And Vault also had a custom-made guitar built to Collen’s specification that the guitarist will unveil later on this summer’s tour.

Check out a preview at HollywoodReporter.com

via Music Radar

Def Leppard guitarist Phil Collen has been talking about his group’s new single Just Like 73 and its guest feature Tom Morello, who contributes a suitably sparkly solo.

In an interview with the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, Collen spoke about how the collab first came about. “Well, Tom heard my original demo of the song with just me on it, and maybe Joe (Elliot) doing a vocal.

“And he’s, like, ‘Oh my God, this is great.’ So he told our friend Brian Monaco, who is actually president of Sony Music, and Brian’s, like, ‘What do you think about Tom being on it? He loves this thing.’ And it was, like, ‘Yeah, that’d be awesome.'”

You know, I love Rage Against The Machine. I think Tom’s really, really cool and his guitar style is so unique and he really didn’t let us down. I remember talking to him about it. He said, ‘Well, what do you hear?’ and I said, ‘Well, you gotta do your Tom Morello thing.’ And he did. (I) heard it back and said, ‘This is absolutely perfect.’

Just Like 73, which comes out on vinyl in August, is another of Leppard’s paeans to the glam rock era complete with stomping Glitter Band-style drums, Slade-like backing vocals and a Morello solo that’s both recognisably him but also fits perfectly with the glam-influenced song.

Collen admitted in the interview that the song was a leftover from the sessions for their 2022 album Diamond Star Halos (its title itself a pinch from glam icon Marc Bolan). “We only finished it off this year with everyone playing and singing on it. So, yeah, it was like almost there but not quite for that album.”

The guitarist also confirmed that the band were working on new songs. “Without a doubt. (Joe and I) write all the time. We send each other things. Sav (Rick Savage, bassist) gets in on there. Just between the three of us, there’s just a lot of stuff floating around already. So we’ve, yeah, got a bunch of stuff. It’s really exciting. And it’s a great place to be. It’s never that thing where, ‘Well, we’ve got to sit down and write an album.’ It’s, like, ‘Wow, I can’t wait to play this to the guys and see what the reaction is.’ And we keep pushing the boat out even further.”

Joe returns to Life In The Stocks for Episode 320. This actually marks Joe’s third appearance on the podcast, but there’s never any shortage of fun stuff to talk about. Here, they discuss everything from stadium tours with Motley Crue and the shenanigans that went down on the road to the working class roots of Def Leppard and what’s held the band together over all these years. Plus, take a dive into Pyromania, the 40th anniversary edition to which is out now. Tune in at https://spoti.fi/3xVEDcR

via MusicRadar

“Here we are 35 years later and we’re still using it” – Joe Elliot is a smart guy, and he also seems humble for a man whose band has sold 100 million records. But a big part of Def Leppard‘s continued success is this mix of business and musical savvy, with feet firmly on the ground. And it led Joe Elliot to invest in a studio in his Dublin home after their biggest-selling album, when others might have been far more reckless with their cash.

In a new video tour with AMS Neve, Joe takes us around the space that was previously three bedrooms. Established in 1988, he calls ‘Joe’s Garage’ a “fun” studio but the band has done serious work here since their Adrenalize album in 1992.

“I bought all the gear and I was happy to do that because it was my studio and I was going to have it forever,” Joe tells Neve. “We’re still using it, I’ve pretty much recorded something on every album since Adrenalize in this studio.”

Def Leppard’s 1983 album Pyromania (that will see a special 40th anniversary reissue in April) proved to be a huge breakthrough for the Sheffield band in the US, and a far cry from the NWOBHM tag they’d picked up in their early years. For this third album they fully embraced the technology of the time.

“What has happened between ’81 [and then] was just drum machines and synthesizers, and how bands like Joy Division or New Order or the Human League had used all this technology and it just became a talking point, like, wonder what it would sound like if a rock band incorporated some of that into the standard rock sound?” reflects Joe.

But it was the long multi-year process of recording the band’s follow-up, 1987’s masterpiece Hysteria that prompted Joe’s decision to create a home recording facility. Because long also meant costly when it came to studio time.

“Hysteria was recorded in Dublin, Holland, a little bit in France,” explains Joe in the video above. “We went through all sorts of emotional trauma recording that record – Rick lost his arm [drummer Rick Allen was in a car crash during this time and had to effectively relearn to play using a modified drum kit], Mutt (Lange, producer] had a car crash, everyone got sick. We started it with Jim Steinman, it didn’t work out, Mutt wasn’t gonna do it then he came back and he was, we wasted an entire year – if not more – and scrapped it and started again.

“Then it was the raging success that it was,” reflects Joe. “It’s one of the biggest-selling albums of all time. But then when we saw the bill afterward, that’s why we’re in this room now. Because that was another learning curve – if we’re gonna make another record of that standard, we’re not paying that amount of money for it.”

Building a studio for the band meant they could “turn the clock off” while recording when it came to studio hire fees. And it’s paid dividends for other projects too – including the most recent Thin Lizzy album remixes where Joe worked alongside Leppard’s live and studio engineer Ronan McHugh, with Lizzy’s Scott Gorham and Brian Downey.

Joe’s Garage hosts a Neve 8424 console (we later discover he actually bought two) a purchase prompted by Ronan’s suggestion. “This is my first analogue console since 1988,” notes Joe. For Ronan it was a huge advantage to get back to the studio workflows he’d been used to in the past.

“We had a controller before and trying to do everything in the box – like multi-input guitar tracking and that kind of thing – is quite fiddly,” he notes.

“It’s just more natural, it’s easier – it’s faster. We had a bunch of stuff but it was all in racks. Now it’s all here in front of me and it makes life easier.”

The second 8424 is at Ronan’s studio space ten minutes down the road where he can continue to work on projects; “All editing, arrangements – that kind of stuff,” he explains. Def Leppard’s most recent album Diamond Star Halos was mixed on it too.

“It sounds like it could have been recorded in Abbey Road,” notes Joe. “This is the use of technology – Bounce Boss was this incredible filing system that we used to send stems to each other, and you could work on your own leisure.

We’ve got one more for ya! Very excited to add Portland, OR to this Summer’s Tour. Join us September 2 as we rock the Moda Center with Journey. Rock Brigade Concert Club members get first access to tickets and VIP Packages starting tomorrow, Wednesday, March 13 at DefLeppardRockBrigade.com.

Tickets go on sale to the general public this Friday, March 15.

GREETINGS MUSIC LOVERS – AND WELCOME BACK TO JOE ELLIOTT’S SONGS FROM THE VAULT SHOW ON SIRIUSXM’S DEEP TRACKS CHANNEL.

In the JANUARY 2024 hour’s show, Joe highlights and tells stories about some of his favourite songs and artists from his own personal collection.

January’s Show features music and stories from Be-Bop Deluxe, The Stranglers, The Pretty Things, Montrose and more!

WHO: Def Leppard frontman, musician, and musicologist Joe Elliott

WHAT: Joe Elliott’s Songs from the Vault

WHERE: SiriusXM’s DeepTracks (Ch. 27)

WHEN: Show Schedule HERE

MORE:

In his youth, Def Leppard frontman Joe Elliott was creatively influenced by the music of the late 60’s and early 70’s. From legendary acts like T. Rex, Mott The Hoople, David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust and so many others. Each month, listen to Elliott play “Deep Tracks” from his personal music collection. Expect to hear songs from Joe’s vault and some of the stories behind them.