10 Musical Artists Who Never Got To Become Superstars

For anyone on the ground floor for the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, it wasn't a mistake if you thought that Def Leppard were the pariahs of the genre. Though their first release On Through the Night was a nice little slice of hard rock for its time, the cardinal sin of transitioning to MTV for Photograph just seemed sacrilege around the turn of the decade. While some of the hardened metalheads may have been upset, the real sufferer in this story is Pete Willis.

After Mutt Lange already set up the band for greater glory on High N Dry, Pyromania's development was nothing short of painstaking for the band, with Joe Elliott nearly losing his faith to sing in the process. So when you have someone like that behind the board, showing up drunk isn't going to help your case, which came to fruition when Pete Willis showed up for tracking. Though writing a good chunk of the riffs at the time, Willis was told to cool out for a couple of days before being told he was kicked out of the band in the process.

Behind Willis' back, Lange had enlisted Phil Collen to play guitar solos, and after quickly gelling with the rest of the guys, figured it was better for them to stay together as a unit rather than go back to bad habits with Willis. Compared to the other close brushes with legend status, Pete Willis' story seems to come to an end just before the waves were about to crash into shore.