"We're a young band, in a sense," Def Leppard's Joe Elliott explains. "We've only had four albums out. We're all still in our twenties."

The implication, of course, is that this young band, which has been together ofr 10 years, also has plenty left to learn. Fair enough. But this year's lesson has been what happens when you go away for four years. And after setting the music world on fire in 1983 with Pyromania, the members of Def Leppard are learning what it's like to have lower sales figures for their latest album, Hysteria, no hit singles and some empty seats at their shows. Sure, it's a comedown from Pyromania - which sold six million copies and launched hit singles like "Photograph" and "Rock of Ages" - but according to Elliott, nobody's overly concerned.

"No, I wouldn't say we're blowing the doors off in terms of the kind ofbusiness we're doing," he says. "But nobody's panicking. You've got to take it in stride. At least we know it's not us. We're putting ourselves on tour. We put a record on the shelves that we know is great. Whethter people buy us or not is beyond our control."

Prior to the release of Hysteria, however, you couldn't blame Elliott and his mates - guitarists Phil Collen and Steve Clarke, bassist Rick Savage, one-armed drummer Rick Allen - for thinking that the hand of fate had taken control of their lives out of their control. Almost as soon as the Pyromania tour ended, the group endured a series of misfires and maladies they wouldn't even wish on the critics who gave Hysteria a bad write-up.

Let's look at what came their way: GO EAST, YOUNG MEN: Pyromania made the group a lot of money. No joke. But the British government has a simple way of determining income tax - "How much money did you make last year?" they ask. You tell them. "Send it to us," they reply. So the members of Def Leppard moved to Ireland.

WHICH WAY'S UP?: "We did suffer from some form of like,'How the hell do we follow this?'<" Elliott, 28 admits. And wouldn't you? Rock 'n' roll os riddled with stories of failed follow-ups, and Leppard - whose career had built nicely from On Through The Night to High 'n' Dry and then Pyromania - certainly didn't want to blow it.

"It wasn't so much pressure," Elliott says. "It was more an awareness, wanting to do something different than Pyromania. That was the difficult part."

THE EVER-POPULAR TORTURED PRODUCER EFFECT: What the group didn't want to do was change producers, however. Unfortunately, John "Mutt" Lange, who twiddled the knobs on Pyromania, was willing to help with pre-production but was too zonked from working on the Cars' Heartbeat City album to take the reigns on Hysteria. So the group hired ex-Meat Loaf sidekick Jim Steinman and went off to Holland to record with him. And then things really got hysterical.

"It was a total mismatch," Elliott says. "He wanted to record us in a rawer state, more like you'd imagine a Meat Loaf album being done.We wanted to use lots of backing tracks, overload it with lots of vocals, like we did with Pyromania. We wanted a lot of experimentation, soundwise.

"We were actually in there one day just jamming, and he said, 'That's it! That's great!' We said, "You must be joking. We were only f**king around!' But that was his attitude; he wanted to capture us live, but we didn't want want that kind of sound."

CAN IT GET WORSE?: The answer is yes - if you didn't see that coming, what kind of readerare you anyway? By December 1985, Leppard had sacked Steinman and made the decision to produce Hysteria themselves, working with engineer Nigel Green. They reveiwed the tapes recorded so far, shook hands and broke for the Christmas holidays. The, Rick Allen was in a New Year's Eve car crash that cost him his left arm. According to Elliott, there was no question about the rest of the group rallying around their stricken member. "If I had a brother who lost his arm," he's told more than one publication, "I wouldn't kick him out of my family. So why would I kick my drummer out of my band?"

But the accident did cost the group valuable momentum. "The four of us, minus Rick, went back to the studio three days after the accident, trying to carry on without him" Elliott recounts. "But mentally, we were a million miles away from it. You were just with him in the hospital, and after that there was no way to just go in and make rock 'n'roll."

Fortunately, Allen did what his bandmates could only pray for. Doctors told him he'd probably spend six months in the hospital; three weeks after the accident, he was back in the studio in Holland.

"We wanted to make him feel a bit more at home," Elliott explains, "so we started with the backing vocals. We just had everyone stand around the mike and started screaming our heads off. It made him feel like a part of the band again."

That done, Allen bid the group a temporary goodbye; during the hospital stay, he had designed a special drum kit that mixed electronic and acoustic drums and allowed him to play using his remaining arm and both feet. Now it was time to get it put together and learn to play it.

CAN IT GET BETTER? 'Of course it did. Producer Lange began phoning his old charges to find out how things were going. They sent him some tapes. He began making suggestions. Then he came for a weekend visit and never went back. The recording switched locales - first to Paris and then, when the air conditionong there blew up, to U2's Windmill Lane studios in Ireland - But there was no question that things were coming together. All this despite a couple of physical injuries suffered by Elliott and Lange. As recording progressed, however, the group was swept with what its record company would call a foolish inspiration - putting 12 songs on the record at a total running time of about 63 minutes, quite long for a slab of vinyl.