You know, that first record, Tom Allom produced it, God bless him. Lovely guy and a good producer. But I think his instructions from the record label must have been something like, "Just capture the band's energy, man." We'd been playing most of those songs live for 18 months. So, if anybody came along and suggested we change them in any which way, we wouldn't have been able to. We'd lived with them for so long. We just had to leave them as they were and record them as best we could. Because we knew the songs so well, we had the backing tracks down in a day. And then we spent three weeks ruining that record by doing way too many overdubs. That was the thing that we had a struggle with. It was us trying to find our way.
Joe Elliott / Def Leppard interview, AV Music, 2011
Early DEF LEPPARD, when they were part of the emering new wave of British heavy metal. Their debut LP, On Through the Night, was released on this day in 1980. A year of endless British metal riches. Here's an excellent article from Sounds focusing on the scene in the north west in May 1980.