Who started the trend for glam bands doing power ballads?

[TRrEiTxIxRiE DTrash]

Nah Def Leppard are cooler than Dio

But anyway, Vivian Campbell played in a number of other '80s hard rock & AOR bands between Dio & Def Leppard. So it was long before Def Leppard that he went "softer". I mean he played in Whitesnake for a while after Dio, then was on a couple of pretty damn cool AOR albums around the 1990 era. One with an ex-Foreigner member, can't remember what the project was called but it sounded alright from what I heard, and then a band called Total Stranger I think which was awesome.

 

[spawn]

Shadowking was the Lou Gramm project, Whitesnake is way heavier than Def Leppard, 1987 has more in common with Ozzy style metal musically than the hair band/AOR thing I think. Retroactive and Slang are quite heavy, especially Retroactive, they are both awesome. Def Leppard just want to be pop songwriters now unfortunately.

 

[TRrEiTxIxRiE DTrash]

Yeah I know, I agree with you completely. Just responding to Blitzy's thing where he said he'll always hate Def Leppard for turning Viv into a wuss haha. He gradually got lighter as we went on before joining Def Leppard anyway. Whitesnake was the first step down in "metalness" after Dio lol, and from there it was AOR stuff he did before he joined Def Leppard. So it wasn't Def Leppard that turned him into a wuss at all lol.

 

[TRrEiTxIxRiE DTrash]

Oh yeah, and dunno where I got mixed up with Total Stranger there

Riverdogs was the band I was thinking of that he did in 1990. And yeah Shadowking was the Lou Gramm one. He also played on a Lou Gramm solo album in 1989 and Desmond Child's solo album in 1991.

So he definitely had two feet firmly in the AOR scene by the time he joined the Leps!

 

[Blitzkrieg]

Yeah I know he did other stuff first, but when I listen to DL I just keep thinking to myself 'break into a big riff! Oh that sucks, what a waste of talent'. His playing doesn't even have the same sound, it is so sad.

I want to hear some of the stuff he did in between though, but haven't come across any as yet.