DEF LEPPARD – “Acoustic Medley 2012” (iTunes single)
Def Leppard have released the second in their series of iTunes re-recordings. The first, a double single of “Pour Some Sugar”/”Rock of Ages”, was a pretty straight “forgery” (to use Joe Elliot’s phrase). The second, entitled “Acoustic Medley 2012” is exactly what it sounds like it would be. Apparently, Leppard were playing this medley live, and decided to commit a studio version to tape.
The songs in the medley are: “Where Does Love Go When It Dies”, “Now”, “When Love and Hate Collide”, “Have You Ever Needed Someone So Bad”, and “Two Steps Behind”. Total time: 7:32. The first two songs in the medley, I give Def Lep full points for. I’ve always been a sucker for the Slang album, so to hear something from Slang again, is just…wow. Maybe this is being done to pre-hype the Slang deluxe edition due 2013, eh?
“Now”, and the X album in general I’ve never been a huge fan of, as I made clear in my review. I give the band credit for putting “Now” back out there, since they rarely touch that album anymore. I’m all for obscure material being resurrected.
The other three tunes in the medley are a bit ho-hum, but taken as a whole it’s incredible how well they all work together. “Two Steps Behind” gets the majority of time in the medley, a song that I really never need to hear again. It’s pretty much identical to the standard version from the Retro-Active CD.
As mentioned, this is an iTunes-only release, but I’d love to see a physical product. Limited edition vinyl? I would buy that. Are you listening, Joe?
4/5 stars
mikeladano.com 
I thought it was cool that they dusted off the X and Slang tracks for this. Very encouraging! I didn’t like X much but I thought Now was a good tune… and I wish they would do more Slang tracks. They have so many great tracks that they just never play…
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Who knows? With the reissue coming, maybe you’ll hear more. It’s clear there’s a group of fans who appreciate that album, and it’s also obvious that the band is still proud of it. Stuff like this acoustic medley are encouraging.
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I’m glad that the band are still proud of Slang despite the reaction it received initially. It’s a great record.
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It was 1996. They could have released Sgt. Peppers and got that reaction!
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Haha true!
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I read in classic rock the reason they are doing this is they do not own any of there old stuff and that’s why hardly any of it is on iTunes . So to piss off there original label they are doing reworking versions of there past hits.
Kinda sucks for them as they sold millions of albums and they don’t own the masters…..
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Yeah it’s something like that. They had a battle with the label over the old songs and how much they’d be earning on iTunes, and couldn’t reach a deal with the label. So they’re doing new versions and selling them on their own on iTunes. More power to them.
I’ll continue to buy them, I just wish they’d release a physical product of some kind. Record Store Day is coming…
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For sure a live show from High n Dry would be good for,starters…..
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2 CD deluxe edition with bonus live disc. There’s my wish, Joe Elliot!
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Hahahaha….that would be cool……man what a great rock record that was….
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Agreed. I was lucky and I got to hear it very early on…I bought it at a Zellers store in Stratford during summer holidays and played that album so many times that summer. It blew me away!
I had to buy it on vinyl, because the vinyl has that “endless groove” at the end…”no no no no no no…”
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It’s lovely to see people still interested in this band, after all this time.
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They’re still very popular, on that Bryan Adams level of things. In other words they tour all the time, people go to see the hits, and it’s an older crowd now.
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