With a line-up of Savage, Elliott, Allen and guitarists Steve Clark and Pete Willis, the band's first album, 1980's On Through the Night, reached the Top 15 in the UK but received little notice elsewhere.

[9] Rick Savage, Tony Kenning, and Pete Doubleday, all students at Tapton School in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, formed a band called Atomic Mass in 1976.

Although the album hit the Top 15 in the UK,[21] many early fans were turned off by the perception that the band was trying too hard to appeal to American audiences by recording songs such as "Hello America" and touring more in the US (supporting Pat Travers, AC/DC, and Ted Nugent); a performance at the Reading Festival in August was marred when audience members expressed their displeasure by pelting the band with beer cans and bottles filled with urine.

This incident was partially blamed on a cover story in Sounds music newspaper by the journalist Geoff Barton titled, "Has the Leppard changed its spots?

[24] The band had by then caught the attention of AC/DC producer Robert John "Mutt" Lange, who agreed to work on their second album, High 'n' Dry, released on 6 July 1981.

Def Leppard's US tour in support of the album began in March opening for Billy Squier and ended with a headlining performance before an audience of 55,000 at Jack Murphy Stadium in San Diego, California in September.

[36][37] While trying to pass another car at a high speed, he lost control of his Corvette C4, which hit a dry stone wall and entered a field; his left arm was severed.

[48] At the 1989 Brit Awards held at the Royal Albert Hall in London, Def Leppard were again a nominee for Best British Group, and the band performed "Pour Some Sugar on Me" at the ceremony.

[52] The remaining band members decided to carry on and recorded the album as a four-piece, with Collen mimicking Clark's style on his intended guitar parts.

In April 1992, Def Leppard appeared at The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert at Wembley Stadium, London, performing a three-song set of "Animal", "Let's Get Rocked" and Queen's "Now I'm Here" with guitarist Brian May.

[33] A collection of B-sides and unreleased tracks recorded between 1984 and 1993, called Retro Active, was released in October 1993, preceded by the success of the acoustic ballad "Two Steps Behind" (from the Arnold Schwarzenegger film Last Action Hero).

On 23 October 1995, the band entered the Guinness Book of World Records by performing three concerts on three continents in one day (Tangiers, Morocco; Sheffield, England; and Vancouver, Canada).

Re-runs of the episode yielded some of the series' highest ratings and brought the band's music back into the public consciousness (following years of burial by the alternative rock climate).

[65] In 2001, VH1 produced and aired Hysteria – The Def Leppard Story, a biopic that included Anthony Michael Hall as Mutt Lange and Amber Valletta as Lorelei Shellist (Steve Clark's girlfriend).

That October, Hysteria was re-released in a two-disc deluxe edition format, which combined the original remastered album with B-sides, remixes, and bonus tracks from single releases.

The first single was entitled "Nine Lives" and featured country singer Tim McGraw, who co-wrote the song with Joe Elliott, Phil Collen, and Rick Savage.

Six shows which were cancelled during the USA/Canada leg of their world tour due to illnesses affecting Joe Elliott and Phil Collen were rescheduled and played in August of that year.

Def Leppard toured 41 US cities plus Toronto during mid-2009 with Poison and Cheap Trick and also headlined the Download Festival at Donington Park, England to a sell-out crowd of 83,000 with Whitesnake and ZZ Top.

Hysteria, featured a two-part show, with the first half featuring Def Leppard opening for themselves, under the alias "Ded Flatbird", (jokingly called the best Def Leppard cover band in the world), when they played songs they very rarely play live, going back to "Good Morning Freedom", a B-side from the single "Hello America" released in February 1980, an era usually left untouched by the band.

[92] From 23 June 2014 to 31 August 2014, Def Leppard and Kiss toured 42 cities, with one dollar per ticket donated to such military charities as Wounded Warrior Project.

The following day's concert was also postponed "due to illness", with Rick Allen stating on Twitter "The Doctor basically said that if Joe continues to sing without resting his throat for a month he might do permanent damage.

[117] The box set The Early Years 79-81 was released in March 2020, featuring remastered versions of the band's first two albums plus a variety of live recordings, B-sides, and studio outtakes from the 1979 to 1981 period.

[citation needed] On 13 June 2024, Def Leppard released its first song in two years, "Just Like 73", featuring a guest guitar solo by Tom Morello.

[135] Def Leppard's music is a mixture of hard rock, AOR, pop and heavy metal elements, with its multi-layered, harmonic vocals and its melodic guitar riffs.

[146] With Pyromania and Hysteria both certified Diamond by the RIAA, Def Leppard are one of only five rock bands with two original studio albums selling over 10 million copies each in the US, alongside the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, and Van Halen.

[156] The current line-up of the band, along with past members Pete Willis and Steve Clark, were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on 29 March 2019 at a ceremony at Brooklyn's Barclays Center.

[162] Cybernauts was a side project consisting of Elliott and Collen teamed with members of The Spiders From Mars (David Bowie's former band), minus the late Mick Ronson.

[164] Collen sings lead vocals and plays guitar in a side band called Man Raze with Sex Pistols drummer Paul Cook and former Girl bandmate Simon Laffy.

[167] Joe Elliott, along with various other musicians including Glenn Hughes, Duff McKagan, Sebastian Bach, Matt Sorum, Gilby Clarke and Steve Stevens formed a supergroup called Kings of Chaos, whose catalogue consists of songs by Deep Purple, Def Leppard, Guns N' Roses and others.

[168] Phil Collen formed a blues project by the name of Delta Deep with vocalist Debbi Blackwell Cook which released an eponymous debut in 2015.