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Track Listing: Let It Go Another Hit And Run High 'n' Dry (Saturday Night) Bringin' On The Heartbreak Switch 625 You Got Me Runnin Lady Strange On Through The Night Mirror, Mirror (Look Into My Eyes) No, No, No

When the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal crested in the early 80's, Def Leppard was that perfect crossover band that was able to bridge the gap between the grubby male dominated fans of Iron Maiden and AC/DC and the frenzied female fans who loved Journey and REO Speedwagon. Let's face it, high school metalhead guys looking for cool girls to party with (unfortunately most were not hot), and those same girls looking to change their valley girl image and hang with the denim and leather crowd, both found common ground in Def Leppard.

It's hard to believe 30 years ago, on July 11, 1981, Def Leppard's sophomore album was released. A number of bands fall unto the curse of the dreaded second album. Such was not the case with High 'n' Dry. From the opening guitar riff of "Let It Go", you just knew, this was gonna be a cool album. What really made this album shine was bringing in John "Mutt" Lange to produce the record (he was also working with AC/DC and Foreigner at the same time). "Mutt" was able to capture the rawness of a young garage rock band captured on their debut album On Through The Night, and polish their songs a notch. Later, in my opinion, even though it was their biggest selling album, he destroyed Def Leppard's hard rock cred by waaaay overproducing Hysteria.

Side 1 of High 'n' Dry is definitely the strongest with "Let It Go" as the lead track, the title party track "High 'n' Dry" and the classic power ballad "Bringin' On The Heartbreak" which exposed the band to a worldwide audience when MTV played the video over and over and over. "Switch 625" is a very cool hard rock instrumental that nicely builds without any flashy technical guitar.

Being a huge KISS fan as a kid, I quickly noticed how the opening chords of Side 2's "You Got Me Running" is identical to "King Of The Nighttime World" by KISS. Go ahead....check it out right now! And several other songs remind me of riffs and progressions from AC/DC and other 70's rock classics. But this is bound to happen in the world of power-chord rock. How many times have we heard a similar guitar riff from three or four of our favorite bands.

As a guitar teacher I like teaching students that learning guitar scales doesn't have to be a drag. The songs on High 'n' Dry are a great, fun tool to teach students how to create solid progressions and classic rock riffs by using the formulaic structure of the major and minor scales. For example "Lady Strange", which has a riff with an awesome hook, is based on the E major scale note for note with the exception of the bridge which is based on a blues scale pattern.

With the average age of the band at 21 years old, (drummer Rick Allen was only 17), you can't expect too much depth in the lyrics. Most of the lyrics are about finding girls, running away from psycho girls, partying and drinking with girls and breaking up with girls. That about sums up the lyrics. But what they lacked in lyrical depth, they more than made up for it in catchy riffs and hooks, classic melodic hard rock progressions, twin guitar harmonies and solid gritty rock vocals. Simply put, High 'n' Dry is a fun, feelgood, party rock record, period!

To wrap it up, if a young high school kid today just started getting into classic hard rock and heavy metal and asked me, "What Def Leppard album should I listen to first?" Without hesitation I would say "High 'n' Dry".

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