Recalling the price tag for recording Def Leppard's 1987 album, Hysteria, guitarist Phil Collen is still amazed. "Four and a half million dollars!" he says, laughing slightly. "Which was ludicrous. Who knows what that would be in today’s dollars? We had to sell three million copies just to break even, and for a while, we didn't know if we would."
The band had scored an across-the-board smash with 1983's Pyromania, but as they prepared for the follow-up, tragedy struck when drummer Rick Allen lost his left arm in a 1984 New Year's Eve car accident.
