Def Leppard: How Joe Elliott came up with name during art class at Sheffield school 2 years before band formed

Def Leppard are one of the world's biggest selling rock bands, having shifted more than 100 million records, and their high-octane live shows are legendary.

It all started in Sheffield, where lead singer Joe Elliott grew up in Crookes and attended King Edward VII School, while bassist Rick Savage went to Tapton School.

Elliott was still a teenager when he met guitarist Pete Willis after missing the bus one day and Willis introduced him to his band Atomic Mass, where he met Savage.

Rather than audition for Atomic Mass, he persuaded them to start a new band, Def Leppard, and so the legend was born in 1977, with the group's first gig taking place at Westfield School in Mosborough.

But the distinctive name was actually coined two years earlier, Elliott has revealed, albeit without the unusual spelling.

How Joe Elliott came up with Def Leppard name

In a video on Instagram, the singer explained how the name first came to him while he was at King Edward VII School in 1975.

"I was in art class and I begged the teacher please, please can we stop drawing fruit and flowers and vases and stuff.

"And he said what do you want to do, and I said I want to do posters for rock shows, and he said fine.

"So I started doing posters for real bands like the Beatles and the Stones and Thin Lizzy and stuff. And then eventually I started making names up and 'Deaf Leopard' was one of them.

"It just sounded good. It was spelled correctly when I did it, it was only changed into the misspelling we use these days after the band formed. I had the name two years before."