Def Leppard Day remembered ahead of band's triumphant homecoming at Bramall Lane in Sheffield

The city-born rock band have been enjoying stratospheric success in recent years and have earned their places as true legends of heavy metal.

It’s now nearly 30 years since ‘Def Leppard Day’ – a historic moment when the city thanked the band for all they’d done to further the name of the city around the globe.

The day centred around the band’s return visit to the legendary Wapentake – the cellar bar that had hosted some of their earliest gigs in the late 1970s.

It was probably landlady Olga Marshall’s proudest moment when the band performed one more time – 17 years after she’d first booked them.

Tickets for the event were like gold dust. You could hardly move for cameras. Def Leppard fans even came across from America for the event. The media were lapping it up – Olga and the Wapentake were splashed across the pages of music mags spanning Kerrang! to the NME.

The band did a full acoustic set to rapturous applause. The Wapentake’s unique place in the Def Leppard story was confirmed right across the world after that night.

You had to wind the clock right back to 1980 for the bar’s last piece of major national media exposure.

The Guardian did a feature on the venue.

Hazel Rotherham remembers the first time the band performed at the Wapentake. She said: “In the late ‘70s my then boyfriend kept talking about a new apprentice who liked the same music as we did and seemed a really nice lad.

One day he said: "Young Steve says he's in a band and they're going to play at the Wap, he wants us to come and see them, shall we go?" "A band? The Wap? They don't have bands on at the Wap, I've never heard of it, he's having you on".

“We decided to go anyway and if he was having us on we'd still enjoy a night in the Wap.

“I met Steve and his mates Sav, Joe, Rick and Pete. They were very young, so we didn't expect them to be very good.

“It was packed that night as they took to the stage and completely blew us away, especially Steve, who seemed so shy and quiet ordinarily. We couldn't believe how good they were - wow what a night!”

So nearly 30 years after ‘Def Leppard Day’ the band are set to make history once again later tonight on Monday, May 22, – their first headline appearance at Bramall Lane with Motley Crue supporting.