The singer Phil Collen called his ultimate “rock god”
No one in Def Leppard would settle for anything less than becoming a rock star. Although the band’s dreams got started while many of them were barely out of their teens, they chased after their own celebrity like Olympic sprinters, with Joe Elliott stopping at nothing until he had a hit record on the radio. While Phil Collen may have had the band’s same interests at heart when he came on in 1983, he admitted that the band’s glam roots couldn’t hold a candle to Mick Jagger.
Compared to the rock and roll that started a fury in the rest of the band, Collen came at music from a different angle. For all of the great raucous solos that Steve Clark could play, Collen was the technician of the group, making guitar pieces that were indebted to the sounds of everyone from Jeff Beck to Al Di Meola.
While the sounds of technical expertise and rock and roll don’t always go hand-in-hand, Collen always knew how to make it work within the context of Leppard. After giving original guitarist Pete Willis the boot on Pyromania, Collen could lay down his leads in a matter of days, coming up with the amazing licks that appear on songs like ‘Photograph’.
Although it’s easy to see the band wearing influences like AC/DC and Mott the Hoople on their sleeves, even their heroes would admit that they were copying what The Stones had been doing. While The Beatles gave fans a look at the fun that can be had in rock and roll, Jagger was the kind of rock and roll archetype, being the prime example that no mother wanted their child to hang around with.
Outside of their legacy as one of the greatest bands of the British invasion, Jagger also had a hand in ushering in the glam movement that raised Leppard. Even though history reads like the genre began and ended the minute David Bowie hit the scene, Jagger’s flirtation with makeup and his impressive dance moves at the band’s shows gave the audience more than their fair share of excitement every night.
Given that Leppard relies just as much on vocals as they do guitar licks, Collen held Jagger as the gold standard for what a rock singer should sound like, telling The Rock Show, “I think that Mick Jagger was the gateway or the bridge that kind of influenced everyone who sings Rock music. Mick Jagger and the Stones kind of hit on that very early on and made it their own Rolling Stones thing. I was totally influenced by that, still am”.
After the success of Pyromania, Leppard would have their work cut out for him when working on Hysteria, trying to create a pop masterpiece that could go toe-to-toe with what they had just written. Even though the band were troubled by everything from long hours to Rick Allen losing his arm in a car crash, Collen remembered why he got into rock and roll by hearing Jagger sing around the same time.
When invited to the studio for Jagger’s upcoming solo album, he was shocked by how effortlessly he sang, recalling, “It was like surreal, he was actually doing a live vocal to one of the songs in the control room. It was such an amazing moment for me, and you’re always scared to meet your idols in case they disappoint, but he really didn’t. For lots of reasons, you know, that’s my Rock God”.
Jagger hasn’t shown any signs of slowing down, either, continuing to strut across the stage at every opportunity and still managing to preserve his voice as much as he can whenever he comes back to The Stones. Def Leppard may not have the same star power as The Stones have just yet, but Collen witnessing Jagger sounding amazing after years of wear and tear is an inspiration to any musician. It’s hard to beat the odds, but every now and then, it is possible to get better with age.
