Hardback by Bantam Press, £18.99 (ebook also available)
Finally, we have a book – an official book – about the band Def Leppard, and about time too.
“It was suggested to me by Chris Epting, who has written books on KISS and Led Zeppelin.” Author and Def Leppard guitarist Phil Collen tells me.
“It was quite easy to write eventually, Chris put it all together and we passed it back and forth.”
“Me and my wife Helen then went through all his chronological stuff and worked out how I would have told it, and this is the result.”
Born in 1957, Collen tells us of his growing up in London and the blossoming music scene which he joined.
He also tells us of his bands before he joined the legendary Lepps, and how his band Girl almost made it big.
Then he joined Def Leppard and the rest, as they say, is history.
Collen holds nothing back, he relates tales of his drink and drug excess and how he came through it (he gave up meat and alcohol 25 years ago).
He goes into detail about the decline and later death of band-mate Steve Clark and the tragic accident where drummer Rick Allen lost his arm.
It’s also a story of fighting against the odds – how does a band lose a founder-member and guitarist and have a one-armed drummer come back to become one of the biggest and most popular bands on the planet.
It’s all here in Phil’s book.
Not only is it a personal memoir and history of Def leppard, it is an inspirational tale of how you can beat the odds.
