Guest artists on the show included Bob Marley and the Wailers, Billy Joel, Judas Priest, Judee Sill, Heart and Lynyrd Skynyrd. Regarding the above-mentioned TV shows: The Old Grey Whistle Test was a BBC2 TV series running from 1971 to 1988 which focused on giving airtime to "serious" rock music as opposed to playing only the hits like Top of the Pops. And maybe Don Kirshner's Rock Concert would show one, but normally, they'd have a band live. Which for us, we knew the only chance of getting them shown was on The Old Grey Whistle Test on BBC in England or the equivalent shows in France and Germany. I wouldn't call them videos, promo 'movies' of three tracks from High 'n' Dry. We were back home by September and October of '81, preparing for the next album, and didn't know anything about MTV. Joe Elliot talks about the early TV appearances of Def Leppard in the book MTV Ruled the World - The Early Years of Music Video, where he says, "In 1981, we were in the States with Ozzy for about six weeks and Blackfoot for about a month. The whole idea of being in a band is to escape boredom, so you create escapism." I'm an only child I found my own entertainment. It's come across like bloody heavy metal Hovis ad! It's a great place with great people, but in my upbringing there was a lack of community spirit. There's nothing in Sheffield (England) to write songs about - you can't write, 'This is Steel City!' and mean it. He explained to Q magazine in 1988: "I used to work on the treadmill making knives and forks it don't cross over into a lyric. The massive commercial success for the band did not translate into credibility, but songwriters tend to write about life experiences, and lead singer Joe Elliott had no interest in writing about an assembly line.
Def Leppard, with Mutt Lange producing, were one of the best-selling bands of the '80s, succeeding with a formula of polished songs perfect for pop radio but with enough rock swagger to keep guys interested - which is where lyrics about sex and drums and rock and roll come in. The lyrics are clearly about sex - Elliott says "Pour Some Sugar On Me" is "the metaphor for whatever sexual preference you enjoy" - but they are shrouded in enough metaphors to make the song safe for radio and MTV.
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