Rick Allen has one of rock music’s most inspirational stories. The Def Leppard drummer tragically lost his left arm following a 1984 car accident, but he relearned to play on a custom drum kit while the band went on to reach their biggest commercial success. That redemption may have never happened, though, without the uplifting messages he received, including one from another famous drummer: Phil Collins.
Allen was, naturally, in a dark place following the accident, which happened Dec. 31, 1984, in the Sheffield, England area, when he was only 21. The prior year, Def Leppard had released their blockbuster LP Pyromania, which featured the hit singles “Photograph,” “Foolin’,” and “Rock of Ages,” and now the future looked uncertain. But hearing from Collins, an immensely popular singer-songwriter and one of the world’s most revered drummers, gave him a crucial confidence boost.
As Ultimate Classic Rock notes, Allen opened up about their exchange in a 2021 interview with Mitch Lafon, saying Collins’ letter “happened to be one of the first” that he opened while he was “actually still in hospital in 1985.” It amounted to “incredible words of encouragement.”
“There were hundreds of thousands of letters, but his stood out because he obviously knew what it would be like, or he had an inkling of what it would be like, to be a drummer and to be involved in something so horrific,” Allen said. “So it just meant that much more.”
As Allen mentioned, plenty of regular folks also sent encouraging letters, and they helped him in the recovery process, inspiring him to find another, more unconventional approach to his instrument. As Blabbermouth reports, he told Modern Drummer: “I remember coming around in the hospital and then realizing what had happened to me after the accident, and honestly, I wanted to disappear. I didn’t wanna do this anymore. And then I started getting these letters from all over the world.”
“I don’t know what happened,” he added, “but I discovered the power of the human spirit and just said, ‘You know what? I can do this.’ It was really a collective thing. It was all this encouragement I was getting from other people, and then it just manifested in wanting to succeed. And that’s exactly where it came from.”
Allen’s return to music is a feat of ingenuity, dedication, and friendship. Backed by supportive bandmates, he stayed in Def Leppard by learning to navigate a custom kit that triggers various drum sounds via his left foot, replacing what he used to play with his left arm. He returned to live performances on Aug. 16, 1986, at the British festival Monsters of Rock, and played on their biggest-selling album to date, 1987’s Hysteria, which features a series of massive singles including “Pour Some Sugar on Me,” “Love Bites,” and “Armageddon It.” As of this writing, he’s still in the lineup.
In a 2021 interview with ABC News, Allen was asked whether, if able, he’d go back in time and prevent his accident. “That’s a really good question,” he said. “I think it enabled me to grow in so many ways. It became a blessing, a responsibility, a responsibility to other people, to myself. And I think that has become a huge gift.”
There’s a poignant footnote to the Collins side of this story. Decades of drumming eventually took their toll on Collins himself. A spinal injury in 2007 led to nerve damage in his hands and feet, and he gave his final performance in 2022 during Genesis’ farewell tour, his son Nic playing drums in his place. In a 2024 documentary, Collins said: “The drumming has taken a toll on my hands and legs. I’ve spent all my life playing drums. To suddenly not be able to do that is a shock.” The man who once reached out to encourage a young drummer facing the unthinkable has since faced his own version of that loss, and the letter he sent Allen in 1985 carries even more weight knowing that.
This article originally appeared last year.
