Almost 3 years ago I drove down to San Diego with my friend, Def Leppard lead guitarist Phil Collen for an event he was doing. Once we got down there, we were killing some time talking and I said to him, a little bit out of the blue, “We should write your book.” He looked at me and said, “Really? Why would I I want to do that? And I said, “Look at your life. Look where you come from look what you’ve done and look where you’ve been. I think sometimes you may lose sight of the fact that it’s a pretty amazing life and one hell of a story. Lots of stories, in fact.”
He smiled, shrugged and said, “If you really think so, then maybe we should.”
And so here we are. Adrenalized. Life, Def Leppard and beyond.
We didn’t set out to make a book about Def Leppard. We set out to to create Phil’s memoir. Now, obviously there’s plenty of Def Leppard in there. But there’s a lot more, too. Before joining Def, Phil was an electric and dynamic part of the post-punk London music scene. His stories from that era could easily fill a book of their own.
When the roller coaster ride known as Def Leppard hits in the early 1980s, Phil and the boys are whisked away on a magic carpet ride that is still going on very strong today. I’m very proud of what we captured in this book and I hope you enjoy it. I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know Phil over the years, of writing about and photographing him. But crafting a memoir is a much different sort of project and I learned a lot from it. And I certainly gained a deeper appreciation of a musician I was already a fan of.
I’m really excited that the official launch of Adrenalized is taking place right here in Huntington Beach, Monday night October 19 at the Barnes & Noble in Bella Terra at 7 PM. The book doesn’t come out until later in the month but Simon & Schuster is allowing Huntington Beach first crack at it. After Monday night, no books will be sold until the end of the month. Phil and I will be doing a discussion about the book, then a Q&A and then a book signing.
I hope you all can join us (it is a wristband event so make sure you get one of those at the store that day).
I’ll leave you with this, of which there’s a funny story about in the book (Phil’s first video with the band)
Surf City Chronicles 