Rocket (Def Leppard song)

"Rocket" is a song recorded by English rock band Def Leppard in 1987 from the album Hysteria. It was the sixth (seventh in the US) and final single release, coming out in January 1989 and hitting the Top 15 in the US Billboard Hot 100 and UK Singles Chart.

Contents

• Music video
• Lyrics
• Sony and ITV F1
• 7 Bludgeon Riffola LEP6 UK
• 7 Mercury 872 614 7 US
• 12 Bludgeon Riffola LEPX6 UK
• 12 Bludgeon Riffola LEPXP6 UK
• CD Bludgeon Riffola LEPCD6 UK
• CD Vertigo 872 614 2 Can
• CDV Bludgeon Riffola 080 990 2 UK
• References

The song was considered experimental for hard rock at the time. Most notably, producer Mutt Lange used backmasking effects to feature the line "We're fighting with the gods of war" (from "Gods of War", also on Hysteria) sung backwards throughout the track. This sample was omitted from the single version of the song. The words "Love" and "Bites" (from "Love Bites") are also used as a sonic effect midway throughout the song, in order to replicate the sounds of a rocket launch through musical samples.

Singer Joe Elliott came up with the idea of "Rocket" after he overheard a friend's cassette of "Burundi Black" by Burundi Steiphenson Black, which had previously had an influence on such UK bands as Adam and the Ants and Bow Wow Wow. Elliott then borrowed the tape to make a rhythm loop and overlaid guitar chords over it for a rough draft on the song. When he brought it to Lange and the band, they re-recorded and developed Elliott's idea in a higher key. The song was nearly developed as a near-instrumental with only a short chorus ("Rocket! Yeah"), but after the lyrics "Satellite of Love", which referenced the song of the same name by Lou Reed in 1972, were added to the chorus, the band expanded on the concept of the song and added musical influences of the 1960s and 1970s as lyrics for the verses. During one particular break in the production of the song, the band were surprised to find that Lange had added the extended breakdown, complete with the vocal sampling, to the middle of the song. Lange also instructed the band to record monk-like chants, that were also similarly used by Adam and the Ants in their song "Dog Eat Dog", to emphasize a guitar solo during the breakdown. Although the drumbeat samples, played at the beginning of the extended and edited version after audio transcripts from the Apollo 11 Moon landing and again during the first half of each verse and the breakdown, are widely mis-attributed to be taken from the Royal Drummers of Burundi, they are actually a series of drum machines programmed by Lange and drummer Rick Allen to play slightly out-of-sync with one another to provide a tribal drum effect within the song.

In its single release, "Rocket" was heavily edited from its original length of 6:34 for radio airplay, but would omit many of the portions that greatly distinguished the track from the rest of the album. At some shows, the album version gets performed, while at others they play the edited version instead.

Guitar World Magazine voted Rocket's guitar solo the 17th worst of all time in a countdown published in December 2004's issue. The magazine commented that "[Rocket has] a solo that any fouryear- old with a rack-mounted effects unit could play."

It was used by professional wrestler Flyin' Brian Pillman as his theme music, when he came to NWA/WCW in 1989.

UK versions of the single release also featured a rather unconventional cover of the Engelbert Humperdinck song "Release Me", credited to "Stumpus Maximus & The Good Ol' Boys", which was actually Malvin Mortimer, the band's future tour manager, backed up by the band members themselves. The vocal is particularly notable for starting out as a rather exaggerated pub-singer version of the opening verses, becoming more and more extreme as the song progresses. In the last verse, Stumpus' histrionics are interrupted by a brief belch, followed by a polite "'scuse me" before going back up to eleven without even a split-second pause. Some commentators at the time saw the track as indicative of cynical commercialism on the part of the record company.