Retro Active -
1993Vault -
1995Tracklisting -
1.
Desert Song.
2.
Fractured Love.
3.
Action.
4.
Two Steps Behind.
5.
She’s Too Tough.
6.
Miss You In A Heartbeat.
7.
Only After Dark.
8.
Ride Into The Sun.
9.
From the Inside.
10.
Ring of Fire.
11.
I Wanna Be Your Hero.
12.
Miss You In A Heartbeat (Electric Version).
13.
Two Steps Behind (Electric Version) 14.
Miss You In A Jeartbeat (Acoustic Version).
1.
When Love and Hate Collide.
https://open.spotify.com/album/51JMDhly9GKYXgFrOekyIR?si=d2ZeeQNORJmsMcTm1vg8-w and
https://open.spotify.com/album/2eb76s2S0cEzqqyEeGJ8Xk?si=HBFT6hw5TpufyNg5qnufnA12 years in and there have been only five full length albums in the Def Leppard discography. In a time where the band’s sound was evidently changing and evolving, it was clear that an era was now over in Leppard history that deserved cataloguing one more time. To close the door on the Steve Clark era, Def Leppard released
Retro Active, a collection of B-Sides and unfinished tracks.
To quote the sticker from the front of my Dad’s CD copy from 1993. “This is not a new Def Leppard album, nor is it an old Def Leppard record. It is
Retro Active - a collection of songs which have appeared in various hard to find places or in certain cases never made it out of the studio until now.” I’ll be referring to the liner notes for the album and telling you their original release history as we go along here. The first thing to note here is that this is the very first release featuring performances from Vivian Campbell and sadly the last to feature any from Steve Clark.
Desert Song kicks us off and this is my favourite Def Leppard song. Did you expect me to say that? I bet you didn’t. This thing just has a crushingly heavy riff for Def Leppard and it’s HUGE! According to the liner notes, the instrumental idea was written and completed during the
Hysteria sessions but left unrecorded due to remaining lyricless. In 1993, Joe penned the lyrics on a “day off” in Portugal during the
Adrenalize tour, and the track was recorded shortly after that. My question follows along the lines of that used on many
Adrenalize songs. Why was this not used in a proper album and why the hell have they not played this live? The second solo is from Steve Clark and is probably my favourite of his work, the clean bridge is the perfect relief (in which Sav’s bass fills are impeccable) and the difference between Joe’s lower verse vocals and the higher choruses really sells me on the intensity. This song harkens back to Def Leppard’s metal roots and absolutely smokes it. This song is immense, and if you aren’t headbanging while this song is on, you’ve got it very wrong indeed.
As
Desert Song fades out, we get the sound of almost tribal percussion fading us into the nest song. Here we have
Fractured Love, another leftover from the early
Hysteria sessions. Before Mutt Lange threw the idea of making “
Pyromania 2” out the window in favour of making the Hysteria album, this was one of the strongest tracks they wrote. However, the intro was incomplete and the song was shelved. You can really hear the new work from 1993 compared to the original work from 1984, as once we kick into the full song the vocals change kinda drastically. This song is a banger, and I’m left wondering what the follow up to
Pyromania could have been without Lange’s push to make Hysteria what it became.
“We wanted to do a few cover tunes for the
Adrenalize B-Sides, we chose this one because we are all big Sweet fans. ‘Nuff said”.
Track three is the B-Side from the
Make Love Like A Man single,
Action. This song sees it’s way in and out of the setlist fairly regularly, having seen it’s way as a bonus track on
Mirror Ball and one of the two encore openers on the 2019 Vegas residency setlists. This cover is one of those that improve upon the originals and the Leppard version just oozes charisma. The group vocal is on point, the guitars are huge and there’s just a lot of great stuff here. This is the first performance credited to Vivian Campbell, here credited only for backing vocals.
Track four is easily the most successful song on
Retro Active,
Two Steps Behind. “Inspired by Joe’s original demo” (we will get to that in roughly nine more songs) “and done for fun acoustically, this song eventually surfaced as an extra track for a CD single release. Strings were added a year later when it was chosen for the “Last Action Hero” movie soundtrack.” This song is still played frequently in Def Leppard concerts and it was a huge hit. This song was released as a band only version on the
Make Love Like A Man single before strings were added by Michael Kamen (composer behind a lot of great film scores including Licence to Kill and Die Hard, as well as being the orchestral composer for
The Wall and Metallica’s original
S&M). This is Vivian’s first appearance on guitar for the band too. Not much needs to be said about this one, it’s a huge track and we all know it.
Personal story I can add is that this was actually played at my Mum and Dad’s wedding!
Track five is
She’s Too Tough, a song written back in the
Hysteria sessions by Joe but for a Canadian band named Helix. In 1992, Phil laid down new guitars and then the two Ricks came in and did their parts while Joe had a day off. This song uses Joe’s original demo vocals from somewhere between 84 and 87 and this actually sounds really uncomfortable for Joe. This is a whole tone higher than
Stagefright, so it’s barely in Joe’s range. Nonetheless, I like this song. Nice and shirt and would’ve made for a great B-Side to
Heaven Is,
Tonight AND Stand Up (Kick Love Into Motion).
Track six,
Miss You Like A Heartbeat, is a similar story. This song was written Phil for a band called The Law in 1992. This version came about when Phil heard Joe messing around with the song on a piano, and was originally intended to just be a demo recording for just guitar, piano and vocal, but the song just kept growing as it often does in Leppard land. A demo version of this, the way that Phil originally wrote it was also on the
Make Love single. This is actually a really moving ballad, and is another song that could’ve fit really nicely onto
Adrenalize. As it is, this song was released as a single and it did pretty well for itself. Phil plays an almost Spanish inspired guitar solo here on the acoustic, and the whole sing just has a really good mood to it.
Track seven is easily my least favourite song on
Retro Active,
Only After Dark. This is a cover of a Mick Ronson song that was “updated and given the profile we felt it always deserved”. This song is a decent jam, but it just doesn’t do very much for me ultimately. This was released as a B-Side for the
Let’s Get Rocked single, so I guess that whole single was a little disappointing ultimately. This is a cool enough song, but even at just under 4 minutes I feel like it goes on too long for the limited ideas presented. Rest In Peace Mick Ronson.
Track eight is the ultimate version of
Ride Into the Sun. This is a slight update from the
Hysteria B-Side. This has an added Honky Tonk piano intro by Ian Hunter of Mott the Hoople and David Bowie fame. Other than that, we have a better snare sound added in June of 93. I don’t really have much I can say about this song, because the write up from the
Hysteria B-Sides thread was pretty much all that needs to be said.
Track nine is an oddity known only as
From The Inside. According to the liner notes, this song was originally written by Joe when he was asked to perform with the Hothouse Flowers for a late night TV Show. The two bands loved the song, and it appeared as a B-Side to
Have You Ever Needed Someone So Bad. This is a really intriguing song, written about addiction from the point of view of the drugs. It’s an odd one to be sure, but a really welcome one. I don’t think Leppard has another song that sounds like this, for better or for worse, but the song itself is actually really good. This showed up a fair few times on the Adrenalize tour and then showed up for some acoustic performances in 95, 96 and 2004. Statistically speaking, this is the most played song on
Retro Active apart from
Two Steps Behind.
Track ten and eleven both also emerge from the Hysteria sessions,
Ring of Fire and
I Wanna Be Your Hero.
Ring of Fire has a way better intro for the
Retro Active version, and I feel like the clean guitar swells within the second verse are a lot more crisp. This is a really great song, which saw a few live performances as a concert opener on the
X tour. The liner notes say that this song was “inspired by… ahh, you don’t want to know”. If I don’t want to know writes songs this good, then keep doing whatever it is we don’t get to know about!
I Wanna Be Your Hero was originally written under the name
Love Bites, but the title was stolen and used for a much different song (which for me is kinda inferior). This version has a bit of a different intro, which brings the little lead guitar fills in a little earlier. This song is still a banger and should’ve been on Hysteria for my money. The drums for both of these songs have been re-recorded and both songs were enhanced with more guitars (like that banging intro riff for
Ring of Fire!) and chorus vocals in 1993. The issue I had with
Hero on the B-Side version is removed and we get a proper fade out this time. Love it!
Track twelve is the original electric version of
Miss You In A Heartbeat. The opening guitar swells are a thing of total beauty and this version of the song is actually the one I think I would tend to gravitate towards for an actual album, as it just has a great vibe. Joe’s delivery on this is actually even a bit cleaner to me than that of the main version. The solo here is your run of the mill Phil, but that’s kinda what this version called for. I just really like this.
The closing track is a full band take on Joe’s original demo of
Two Steps Behind, and I actually love the fact that this is the closing track for no other reason than we actually get a Vivian Campbell guitar solo! This version of
Two Steps Behind actually fundamentally changes the song, removing the main chord progression outside of the chorus. Rick’s drumming feels a little too drum machine like, but he chucks in a few cool fills here and there. Joe’s vocals on this version are nowhere near as good as they are on the main version of the song, but you get that. The whole song builds to that guitar solo, and even if it’s a little short, it’s a great intro to Vivian in the band and kinda reassures us that the band is in safe hands with him. One could almost view this whole album as a concept about Def Leppard learning to become a band again without Steve and looking into the future by letting go of these old songs once and for all. In doing so, I think it’s an amazing release.
Now, see, after the closing track, there’s a hidden bonus track of just Joe’s piano and vocal for
Miss You In A Heartbeat. It’s kinda same old same old after you’ve heard the main version. However, I’m instead going to touch on another song that was released only on the greatest hits collection in 1995, since it doesn’t really have another chance to come into play. That song is called
When Love and Hate Collide, from
Vault. Why include it here? Well, it was said in an interview with Joe in 1995 that putting this song and the compilation as a whole out was to completely close the door on the Steve Clark before they put out
Slang.
When Love and Hate Collide is a very pretty sounding ballad which still makes its way out from time to time, mostly recently being played as part of the encore to the
Hysteria 2018 tour. It’s your standard power ballad affair for Leppard, and this is actually one of their biggest songs in the UK. This one never did anything much for me, but I can see why it still gets attention.
So,
Retro Active. It actually feels unfair to rate this album as it is a collection of leftovers, much as I couldn’t rate leftover spaghetti bolognaise as a new meal. We have, in fact, already discussed three of these tracks during this deep dive already. But in looking at it now, and not being a live album, I kinda have to give it a rating. One would think that being a bunch of leftover songs would tend to mean that it shouldn’t deserve to be ranked higher than any proper album, but I think it genuinely is. I also realised that I didn’t give
Adrenalize a rating, so I’m giving that a 3.75.
Retro Active, I think I’m gonna give it a 4.5. This really holds up, flows well as an album and serves as a critical milestone in the band’s career.
And with the changing of the guard taken care of, we get to start the Vivian Campbell era. Join me on Monday for a discussion of the oft-maligned
Slang!