"This next song is about destruction, like all heavy metal songs": In 1979, the fledgling Def Leppard played a small club show in Sheffield, and our man was there

Def Leppard in 1979.

It’s Tuesday, June 5, 1979. Joe Elliott has just picked me up from Sheffield train station in a battered white Ford Escort van. After a brief stop at Joe’s parents’ house for tea and biscuits, we arrive at Crookes Working Men’s Club – the scene of tonight’s gig by a fledgling Def Leppard. 

The club initially reminds me of my old school dining room: unremarkable, high-ceilinged, lots of light-coloured wooden tables and chairs, little cliques of people huddled haphazardly around. But then again you could never buy a scotch and Coke for 30p at my school (let alone a double for 54p!). And so it is that those academic comparisons fade rapidly and the atmosphere becomes warm, comfortable and more than a little hazy. Especially after the passage of more than a quarter-century…