By Greg Prato
As stated in its title, my 2025 book Bang Your Head, Feel the Noize: The Quiet Riot Story covers the QR’s entire history — from inception to the modern day. And here is an exclusive excerpt for you to enjoy, in which we explore which band was the biggest breakout act of metal in 1983 — Quiet Riot or Def Leppard.
By December, it was clear that two metal acts had used a similar formula to conquer the charts in ’83 — Quiet Riot and Def Leppard. And what formula would that be? It would be using the still-newly born MTV to their advantage via enormously popular videos, breaking the mold of metal bands who looked like bikers or hippies (as evidenced by the fashion conscious and pin-up good looks of such fellows as Joe Elliott and Rudy Sarzo), and as mentioned earlier, appealing to both metalheads and pop listeners. So, an important question remains: who was bigger in ’83, Def Leppard or Quiet Riot?
“As much as I loved Metal Health, you really couldn’t put that on with a girlfriend around…but you could put on Pyromania — because ‘Photograph’ was such a big hit, and they had a bunch of ‘female friendly’ songs on there,” Don Jamieson theorized. “In terms of album sales, I have no idea. It’s weird, I remember when Joel Hoekstra was in Night Ranger, he goes, ‘Who do you think sold more records — Night Ranger or Twisted Sister?’ And right off the top of my head, ‘Twisted Sister, definitely. Their hits were gigantic. They were ‘MTV darlings’.’ And it turns out that Night Ranger sold way more albums than Twisted Sister. So, I’d probably be surprised between those two — who sold more albums. Of course, with time now passed and Def Leppard going on to larger heights, I would say Pyromania has probably sold way more albums. But I don’t know – back then, it was probably pretty close.”
By year’s end, both Pyromania and Metal Health were sitting at platinum certification (one million sold). But the last time each was certified, Pyromania had obtained the distinguished diamond certification for 10 million sold (in 2004) and Metal Health was at 6x platinum (in 1995). However, some would say it was much more even at the time between the two bands — and even Quiet Riot singer Kevin DuBrow seemed to agree at the time, by patting both bands on the back. “Heavy metal is now in a very healthy situation here in the States and I kinda feel that it’s Def Leppard and ourselves who’ve opened up the door for this kind of music.”
Additionally, Def Leppard and Quiet Riot would share the stage around this time. To get a feel for just how popular Quiet Riot was by the close of ’83, the group was the sole US representative of a simply stellar metal festival dubbed the Rock Pop Festival, which took place (indoors) at the Westfalehalle in Dortmund, Germany, on December 18th. And who else performed that evening besides QR and DL? Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Ozzy Osbourne, Scorpions, and the Michael Schenker Group (with supposedly the same line-up having performed the previous night as well, but with Krokus in place of Quiet Riot). And judging from several tunes performed that evening on YouTube (“Let’s Get Crazy,” “Metal Health,” “Slick Black Cadillac,” and “Cum on Feel the Noize”), this just might have been the MH lineup at their live peak. Too bad this cast of bands didn’t tour the world at this time — they probably could have sold out the Sahara Desert.
