On Def Leppard.

Def Leppard is a favorite of mine, and I’ve seen the lads from Sheffield UK perform live on four separate occasions, most recently last Friday night (August 19) at Freedom Hall.

The show was good, and the crowd energy was high, a condition that might well have derived from low-quality, high-priced alcohol flowing through many of the attendees’ bloodstreams. After all, the Kentucky State Fair is not an institution noted for top-shelf discretion, and ironic detachment is as unwelcome on the grounds as bicycles.

However, as has been the case at all my previous shows, I found the Lepps’ version of my favorite song, Hysteria, to be wanting. That’s curious, given the band’s well-earned reputation for recreating heavily produced studio tracks with precision while performing on stage, but perhaps its difficulties with Hysteria reveal more than one flawed conception.

First, for all its deafening guitar hero riffs, Def Leppard has been perpetually miscast as heavy metal. The band itself always has described its aim as uniting AC-DC’s music with vocals by the Beach Boys, and on the 1980’s version of “Hysteria,” on the hugely triumphant album of the same name, legendary producer Mutt Lange steered the group’s pop shadings into compelling subtleties of wistfulness and longing that make the listener feel the ache of yearning in his or her gut, even these many years later.

Second, the instrumental metal and massed vocal choruses required to give Hysteria its unique sheen must be played at stadium volume for full effect, thus rendering the necessary subtleties all but inaudible. Acoustically unplugged is not an option, and with octaves already dropped to accommodate singer Joe Elliott’s aging voice and a slightly speedier pace, Hysteria simply doesn’t translate into an easy number to pull off.

And yet, how can Def Leppard omit Hysteria from the set list? When the economy is bad, the fans want the hits, and when the economy gets better – the fans still want the hits. At Friday night’s show, only one album the group has recorded since 1991 was represented, and with a solitary cut: Rock On, a cover of the 1973 David Essex hit, which appears on Def Leppard’s 2006 all-covers album, Yeah!, which I heartily recommend.

Yeah! is a loving homage to the glam and glitter that inspired the founding members of Def Leppard, and unlike many collections of covers, there is a method to connecting the dots of influence; the mature professionals rediscovering the music that filled their youthful heads and propelled their meteoric rise. From the Kinks to Thin Lizzy, and especially T Rex, the cover love is palpable.

Def Leppard’s members are no longer young, and the group’s well-documented trials, tribulations, deaths and dismemberments hopefully are all in the past, yielding to a well-oiled touring machine with a work ethic to match. Music is a business like any other, and it remains fascinating to me to go “behind the music,” not in the tabloid sense, but to examine the plan of operation. How do musicians like these survive and even prosper in a rapidly changing market? The answers are many and varied, and often compelling.

Until next time – and as Elliott always reminds the audience, “There WILL be a next time” – I’ll retain my credentials as a Def Leppard supporter, hoping the band makes new music, content to hear the familiar material yet again, and gauging the mysteria of hysteria as we grow older.