Def Leppard: ‘Let’s Get Rocked’: The internet was a mistake

Def Leppard
‘Let’s Get Rocked’

Highest UK Top 40 position:
Number 2 on March 29, 1992

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In 1992, we had no idea that we were on the brink of a world-altering revolution.

That revolution was the internet. It has transformed every aspect of our life, bringing us good things (Cher’s Twitter feed) and bad things (everything else).

And yet, in 1992, no one suspected that any of this was coming. The popular imagination entertained vague ideas about cyberspace, much of which was influenced by the writing of Wiliam Gibson. But nobody knew that, very soon, we would all have a pocket-sized device that made it possible to instantly send anonymous death threats to feminists, game developers, and strangers who think that the latest Spider-Man movie was only okay.

Not that 1992 was a technology-free analogue wasteland. Home and office computing were already becoming integral to everyday life at this point. For me, much of my universe revolved around an Amstrad CPC464 with a green screen monitor and built-in tape deck.

I also had an Atari 2600 that was already quite retro by 1992, and occasionally I got to borrow my cousin’s extremely futuristic Sega Megadrive.

Like most kids, I felt that technology was my birthright. I found it cool, entertaining, and intuitive. I only had one small concern, which was the fear that the machines would rise up and kill us all. This particular scenario had been depicted in the 1991 summer blockbuster, Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

Digital information networks existed in 1992. Anyone with a computer could connect to a Bulletin Board Service, allowing them to exchange messages with other geeks and square.

Only in the local area though. Connected to a BBS meant plugging your computer into the phone line, and then dialling the server’s phone number. Dialling up an international BBS would have meant paying for an international phone call.

A new system was emerging that made it easier to share data internationally. Tim Berners-Lee had created HTTP and the WorldWideWeb browser in 1990, and this technology was catching on in academic circles.

But real people did not care about any of this. A bunch of geeks and hobbyists sending dorky messages to each other? What could possibly be less important?

Instead, people were thinking about the terrors of about cyberspace and virtual reality, thanks to The Lawnmower Man.

The Lawnmower Man was released in the States at the start of March 1992. Loosely adapted from a Stephen King novel (very loosely—King sued to get his name taken off it), it tells the story of a guy who goes online, turns evil, and tries to destroy the world.

This is actually a pretty good prediction of how technology would turn out.

The Lawnmower Man bombed on release. Which is fair. It’s not a great film.

Many people admired the CGI sequences in the movie, which were quite groundbreaking at the time. But audiences didn’t actually want to pay money to see this stuff in a cinema, because it looked like hot vomit. They were happy to sit tight and wait for Toy Story to get made.

Bad news, then, for the rock band that released a CGI music video that looked even uglier than The Lawnmower Man.

Def Leppard were returning to action in 1992 after a very painful moment in their history.

Guitarist Steve Clark had long been struggling with an alcohol addiction that had spiralled out of control. The band sent him away to dry out before they started work on their follow-up to the blockbuster Hysteria.

But Clark kept drinking. At the start of 1991, he died due to a lethal mix of alcohol and painkillers.

The band paused for a while, and then made their comeback with their fifth album, Adrenalize. ‘Let’s Get Rocked’ was the lead single, and it is a song so profoundly mindless that it makes ‘Pour Some Sugar On Me’ sound like ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’.

But that’s okay, no judgement here. After what Def Leppard had been through, you can’t begrudge them an upbeat party song.

For the video, the band drafted in Steve Barron, who had already changed the CGI game with his video for Dire Strait’s ‘Money For Nothing’.

There are two discrete parts to the ‘Let’s Get Rocked’ video. One part is a fully computer-generated 3D cartoon, featuring an animated character named Flynn, who is loosely based on Bart Simpson.

Everything about Flynn makes your blood turn cold. His dead eyes. His robotic movements. His creepy lip-syncing. He is a terrifying creation, proof that the digital world exists outside of God’s grace.

The Lawnmower Man and Flynn both offer a vision of our digital future as a garish, immersive, VR nightmare. A 360° nightmare that erodes humanity and severs our connection with the outside world.

This has always been the big question about cyberspace: will we eventually build a digital hell for ourselves. The Matrix, for instance, asked the terrifying question: what if we were trapped in a computer-generated world where everyone has a job and a nice apartment?

Right now, Mark Zuckerberg and various crypto hustlers are trying to sell us this idea, but in a good way. They promise that the Metaverse is coming soon, and we will live, love and work in this virtual realm.

The only problem is that the Metaverse looks about as appealing as the ‘Let’s Get Rocked’ video.

But wait, let’s step back a bit.

Remember when we said that there are two halves to the ‘Let’s Get Rocked’ video?

The other half is actually much more impressive than the weird nightmare cartoon. In this half, we actually caught a glimpse of what lay ahead.

I’m talking about this bit:

Throughout the video, Def Leppard appear to be playing on a vast stage with a Union Jack carpet.

But they are not. The band performed in a small set with a blue screen. Everything else was added digitally.

In other words, it’s shot using the same technique as almost every big-budget movie of the past 20 years. It’s not quite seamless, but it looks convincing enough at times.

And here is the high-tech future we failed to predict. We always imagined ourselves in conflict with technology. Computers will either destroy us, like Skynet, or swallow us whole, like The Matrix.

But the real story of technology is how it’s insinuated itself into our lives. The internet is now kind of like gut bacteria: a weird, ineffable parasite that came from who-knows-where, and we would probably die if it went away.

In 1992, we were all at the beginning of a journey. Over the next 30 years, the boundary between the physical and the digital would become increasingly blurred.

And one of the first steps in that journey was here, in a video for a dumb cars’n’girls rock song, as Joe Elliot bounced around on an imaginary stage that only existed as 1s and 0s on a hard drive. Our future had begun.

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