10 Classic Albums That Artists Hated Recording

There was no real set agenda for Def Leppard to wind up where they did in the early ‘80s. After releasing their debut On Through the Night when most of them were still in their teens, their second album High N Dry started to gain traction on the then-young upstart MTV, powered by a massive wall of sound courtesy of producer Mutt Lange. No one really wanted to make High N Dry 2 when they went into the studio again though, so it was about time that the lads went to hard rock boot camp on Pyromania.

While Mutt may have been the unofficial sixth member of the band in the studio, it wasn’t without a bit of pain as well, making sure that every note was played exactly right and never settling for anything less than perfection. During the making of singles like Rock of Ages and Foolin, the band remembers getting way too frustrated to even continue, including one instance where Joe Elliot got so drunk in the studio that he had to cool out for a day before coming back to cut his vocals.

There was little room for error here, but the results were what brought Leppard to the next level of success, creating a sound that had the same crunch as a band like AC/DC but also the massive vocal harmonies that you’d find on a Queen record. Somewhere in between those grueling sessions, Leppard found the perfect middle ground between pop and rock, and the rest of the hair metal world followed their lead.