Here’s my other Creem letter to the editor which was printed in METAL Creem Close-Up January 1988 with Metallica (James and Kirk) on the cover.
The mail column in this spin-off was:
CHAINMAIL (CHAINMAIL is your forum … if you have any opinions, observations, secret knowledge or simply a godlike insight into metal, we’d love to hear from you. So, to become a force to be reckoned with in metal circles everywhere, send your letters … .
LEPPARD: ULTIMATE SELL-OUT OF ALL TIME EVER IN HISTORY … OR NOT?
At the end of last year I wrote you a letter whining about the whereabouts of some mythical Def Leppard record. Now, finally, I have it after scratching on the door of my local record supermarket first thing on August 3, watching the brain-dead clerks trying to get the registers turned on.
Now that I have my record home, what is this? Where is that fabulous “raise your fist and beat the air” music that never left my aural cavities daily for almost three solid years? Listening to the pounding battle-cry of Pyromania (the album I want to be buried with) I ran laps, did volumes of calculus and fought with my stupid boyfriend. I was AWOL from a collegiate torture known as sorority rush in order to go to the fabulous Forum and sit in the nosebleed section with said boyfriend and three of his drug-snarfing pals and I was virtually drooling in euphoria. Now, five long years later, I break all speed records buying this album only to find my idols have mutated into some kind of Night Ranger.
It’s like these guys skimmed the perfect (nauseating) elements of every bogus commercial rock outfit from Bryan Adams to boys-of-the-moment Bon Jovi, and made the quintessential commercial rock cupcake album. There’s no punch, not stomp, no fun! And their formerly crappy lyrics have, amazingly, become worse! I am distraught. Well, I suppose the album will be huge; they probably could use the money. I hope they’re happy now!
Yeah, I never liked the Hysteria album as much as Pyromania but it did spend a lot of time in the CD player back then. It didn’t occur to me until re-reading this letter recently what an oddball biography I was offering what with the metal, calculus and sorority bits. Not what you’d expect from a headbanger, eh?
