The Story Of Random Noises And The Writing Of “Pour Some Sugar On Me”

It Was Influenced By Other Rock Classics

Def Leppard’s signature song “Pour Some Sugar on Me” peaked at #2 on the US Billboard Hot 100 and is widely considered as one of the greatest tracks of the ’80s. It was a monster hit that propelled the band to the next level of stardom. It also helped their fourth studio album “Hysteria” dominate the charts.

Interestingly, it all began with singer Joe Elliott and producer Mutt Lange goofing around in the studio.

Elliott recalled on the Ultimate Classic Rock Nights radio show, “I remember we got little microcassette players, and Mutt went to one side of the studio and I went to the other, and we just sang noises into it. And we swapped machines and translated each other’s noises. I thought the first thing he sang was, ‘Love is like a bomb,’ and I wrote it down. That was it, that was the start.”

It reminded him of T. Rex’s 1971 classic “Get It On (Bang a Gong).”

He continued, “It was like we were Marc Bolan. That whole lyric took us right back to being the “hubcap diamond star halo” lyrics that Marc Bolan did. ‘Love is like a bomb, baby / C’mon get it on / Livin’ like a lover with a radar phone.’ Nobody knows what that means. I don’t even know what it means! But it’s not important. It wasn’t Bob Dylan, this wasn’t ‘Blowin’ in the Wind.’ It was ‘Get it On,’ and that’s where we were going with it. It was all about the phonetics of the vocal rather than the meaning of the lyric. Much more important.”

In other interviews, Elliott also revealed other influences of the song like The Archies’ “Sugar, Sugar” which was the first record he bought and Run-D.M.C. and Aerosmith’s “Walk this Way.”