Def Leppard come to town

ROCKERS rejoice – Def Leppard are on their way to town.

The popular UK rock band today announced they will be heading out on tour early next year and have booked a gig in at Ipswich Regent on February 26.

Tickets for the gig go on sale tomorrow and are expected to sell fast.

Def Leppard – Joe Elliott (vocals), Phil Collen (guitar), Viv Campbell (guitar), Rick Savage (bass) and Rick Allen (drums) – are one of the country's most successful rock groups.

They enjoyed hits throughout the 80s and 90s with tracks including Animal, Pour Some Sugar On Me, Let's Get Rocked and Make Love Like A Man.

The foundations of the band, originally named Deaf Leopard, were laid in the late 1970s. With original members Steve Clark and Pete Willis on guitars, they performed their first gig on July 18, 1978 at Westfield School in Sheffield, getting paid £5 from the pocket of a teacher.

A year later John Peel played their first EP on Radio 1 and things gradually began to pick up.

Since then the band have clocked up ten albums and countless more singles. They have also had to endure their fair number of obstacles, not least so when Rick Allen lost his left arm in a car crash in 1984. Rather than quit the band, Rick instead learned to drum with one arm.

The success of the band, in Britain and around the world, was recognised two years ago when the band were inducted at the Hollywood Rock Walk Hall of Fame where they left their hand prints in cement.

More recently the band have been undertaking individual projects but they returned to the studio last year to record their latest album X which was released in July.

And now they are preparing to take to the road again, embarking on a tour of the UK early next year.

N Def Leppard will perform at Ipswich Regent on February 26. Tickets, priced £26, go on sale tomorrow at 10am. They are available from the Central Box Office, Princes Street, Ipswich, by calling 01473 433100 or online at www.ipswich-ents.co.uk

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