{"id":384,"date":"2015-09-01T11:41:10","date_gmt":"2015-09-01T15:41:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/?p=384"},"modified":"2015-09-01T11:41:10","modified_gmt":"2015-09-01T15:41:10","slug":"memories-of-the-def-leppard-method-of-babysitting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/memories-of-the-def-leppard-method-of-babysitting\/","title":{"rendered":"Memories of the ‘Def Leppard Method of Babysitting’"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Rick<\/a>

Rick Allen, longtime drummer for Def Leppard, listens to some stories from fans during an appearance Aug. 31, 2015, at Wentworth Gallery in King of Prussia, PA.
(Photo by Mike Morsch)<\/p><\/div>\n

I was reminded this week that I once successfully employed the Def Leppard Method of Babysitting when my oldest daughter was an infant.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s because I had the chance to interview and meet Rick Allen, who has been the drummer for Def Leppard since the late 1970s. Allen was appearing at Wentworth Gallery in King of Prussia, PA, along with his art exhibit \u201cRick Allen: Angels and Icons\u201d in conjunction with a Def Leppard concert the following evening in nearby Allentown, PA. Wentworth Gallery curator Tom Curley, a dear friend with whom I have worked many times on stories, invited me to do a piece on Rick\u2019s appearance and come out to the gallery and meet the rock star.<\/p>\n

Talking to Rick took me back to 1988 when I became a father for the first time. In those days, we were a young family that needed to have two working parents with opposite schedules. When one of us was working, the other would care for the baby. I liked the arrangement because it allowed me to spend quality time with my daughter and it saved us the cost of daycare, which we couldn\u2019t afford anyway.<\/p>\n

In those early days, the baby was nursing. But that created a problem for ol\u2019 Dad when Mom was at work: I did not have the proper equipment for the task at hand. This did not make the young lady happy, and as a result, she spent a good deal of our time together giving me seven kinds of what for.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not exaggerating. She was like a baseball manager who was upset with an umpire\u2019s call and she was determined to get in my face and take a chunk out of my hide, even though there was little I could do to change the situation. I\u2019d try to feed her with the milk her mother had left, I\u2019d make sure she was changed, I\u2019d rock her in the chair, walk her outside, snuggle with her, make funny faces. Nothing seemed to help.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t a situation that could be fixed with the usual Dad tools: duct tape and WD40. And faced with seemingly unsolvable challenges, Dads are sometimes forced to improvise.<\/p>\n

At that time, in the late 1980s, MTV and VH1 would play music videos all the time on TV. I usually had one of the channels on to listen to the music and watch the videos, something to help drown out the noise from the constant chewing out I was getting from one peeved little lady who wanted to nurse and couldn\u2019t. I thought maybe the music might help sooth the situation.<\/p>\n

But it didn\u2019t. At least it didn\u2019t until one day when the video for \u201cPour Some Sugar on Me\u201d by Def Leppard was played. The song, released as a single off the band\u2019s 1987 album \u201cHysteria,\u201d reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts in July 1988, right around the time my daughter was six months old and had perfected her Earl Weaver imitation.<\/p>\n

Fortunately for me, the song and video were popular and were played regularly on both VH1 and MTV. But it took a couple of times for me to notice that whenever the video was played, my daughter would stop crying and stare at the television. All it took was a little \u201cHysteria\u201d to help solve her hysteria. Go figure.<\/p>\n

Naturally, that gave me an idea. The technology in the late 1980s was such that I could have a blank tape in the VCR, set and ready to record \u201cPour Some Sugar on Me\u201d the next time it was played.<\/p>\n

And it worked like a charm. Once I had the video recorded, all I had to do was sit my daughter in her bouncy chair in front of the TV and hit the play button. The only problem was that there seemed to be no other song that would pacify her. I experimented with different artists and different songs but it was only Def Leppard and \u201cPour Some Sugar on Me\u201d that did the trick. All I had to do was constantly hit rewind all day long, a small price to pay for some moments of peace.<\/p>\n

She couldn\u2019t talk and tell me what she was thinking then, but I did sense from the way she looked at me after the discovery that it was something like, \u201cOK, man. You let me watch rock and roll videos when Mom isn\u2019t here. Maybe you\u2019re not such a pain in the ass after all. I will allow you to continue to be my Dad in relative peace.\u201d<\/p>\n

That was 27 years ago. I was able to share that story with Rick when we talked this week and I thanked him for helping me babysit in 1988. Fortunately, he did not ask for any compensation from me for his contributions to the effort.<\/p>\n

My daughter and I are still Def Leppard fans. But we don\u2019t rock out when we hear \u201cPour Some Sugar on Me\u201d today. We listen. Quietly. And we are reminded of the time when father and daughter came to an understanding all those years ago, courtesy of some rock legends.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was reminded this week that I once successfully employed the Def Leppard Method of Babysitting when my oldest daughter was an infant. That\u2019s because I had the chance to interview and meet Rick Allen, who has been the drummer for Def Leppard since the late 1970s. Allen was appearing at Wentworth Gallery in King […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":104,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[74,211,217,299],"class_list":["post-384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tvdbook","tag-def-leppard","tag-pour-some-sugar-on-me","tag-rick-allen","tag-wentworth-galleries"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/104"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}