Tuesday, 28th June 2022
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35 Years Ago DEF LEPPARD Bring HYSTERIA To Den Haag PARK POP FESTIVAL (Photos)

Def Leppard 1987. Den Haag 1987

Def Leppard played a Hysteria warm-up show in Den Haag, Holland on this day in 1987 and photos are available.

The show took place at Zuiderpark in the Dutch capital city for the Parkpop festival.

An event which had been predicted to attract up to 250,000 fans but as explained in the 1987 tour programme by then co-manager Peter Mensch, only about 3,000 people were there to witness Def Leppard.

The band had played two small club shows to warm-up for this appearance on 24th/25th June in Tilburg.

Many new 'Hysteria' songs had been debuted at those shows and five of them remained in the set for this show.

'Women', 'Armageddon It', 'Hysteria', 'Animal' and 'Pour Some Sugar On Me'. All would be played for the first time in front of a large (ish) crowd and outdoors.

The show started at 5:40pm on a Sunday afternoon and would last for 40 minutes with the band taking the stage after That Petrol Emotion and before headliners of the second stage - Trouble Funk.

Los Lobos headlined the main stage alongside acts like Deacon Blue and Katrina And The Waves.

Other bands playing before Def Leppard included - Steve Earle & The Dukes, That Petrol Emotion, Icicle Works and Maarten Peters & The Dream.

The set started as the main 1987/1988 world tour would with 'Stagefright' as the opening track followed by 'Rock! Rock! (Till You Drop)'.

'Too Late For Love' was also included as song 6 in the set having been debuted on the 1986 Irish warm-up tour.

Two different websites have added photo galleries from this show as mentioned on the site over the years.

Follow the links to view many rare shots from the show.

A quite decent audience recording of this show exists. It highlights some of the sound issues they had on stage and is interesting for the backing vocal sound. At times you an clearly hear one of them (possibly Steve) with their backing vocals louder the the rest of the band.

When the band returned to Holland for a show in Amsterdam in April 1988, Joe described this show as "a load of shit". Although in fairness on the recording it sounds like they get a fairly decent response from at least some of the crowd.

Considering this was only the third warm-up show both 'Hysteria' and 'Too Late For Love' sound magnificent. TLFL actually has a slightly extended mid section and what sounds like an unexpected extra part near the end.


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Den Haag 1987 Pic - By dltourhistory

Photo Gallery One - bestrockphotos.com - (45 Photos)

Photo Gallery Two - seizoensgebonden.blogspot.co.uk - (13 Photos)

Joe Elliott - Pre-Women Speech

"Ohhh yeah!. Good afternoon Den Haag!. Are you out there?. Are you out there?!."

Joe Elliott - Pre-Armageddon It Speech

"Well, well, well!. Good afternoon Den Haag. Hello Holland!. How ya doing?. Say what?. OK we are Def Leppard and we've got a new album out called Hysteria. We're gonna play you a few tracks from it this afternoon. In fact we'll play you one right now. If Mr. Clark makes it on stage, with his brand new Gibson explorer, or whatever the f**k it is!. This is a song called Armageddon It!."

Note - Joe says "Steve Clark!" before the guitar solo instead of "Come on Steve". If the guitar Joe refers to is the one shown in the above photo, it's actually a Gibson Firebird T rather than an Explorer.

Joe Elliott - Pre-Hysteria Speech

"Thank you. Thank you very much, you're very kind. Got a few tuning problems up here but we'll be alright. This is the title track from our new album. This one's called Hysteria."

Joe Elliott - Before Too Late For Love

"Thank you. Thank you very much."

Joe Elliott - Animal Intro

"Thank you. Thank you very much. Ahh severe dehydration. OK we got a new single out in about three weeks. This is called Animal. Yeah!."

Joe Elliott - PSSOM Intro

"Thank you. Thank you very much. Let there be drums!. Alright. It's about time you lot lighten up a little bit. And that means all these people out here with their hands above their heads!. Come on!. Come on at the back!. Yeah! ."

Joe Elliott - After PSSOM

"Yeah!. Thank you."

Note - The audience recording stops right after PSSOM ends and before Joe says goodbye.

Peter Mensch - 1987 Hysteria Tour Programme Quote

"...when the festival with a supposed audience of 250,000 ends up having 3,000 disinterested people in attendance."


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