A bit of goofing around in the studio between singer Joe Elliott and producer Mutt Lange resulted in the writing of Def Leppard's monster hit "Pour Some Sugar on Me."

"I remember we got little microcassette players, and Mutt went to one side of the studio and I went to the other, and we just sang noises into it." Elliott told Uncle Joe Benson on the Ultimate Classic Rock Nights radio show. "And we swapped machines and translated each other's noises. I thought the first thing he sang was, 'Love is like a bomb,' and I wrote it down. That was it, that was the start."

Rather than ask Lange what it meant - or even if that's what he actually said - Elliott recognized a parallel between the phrase and a particular favorite of his, T. Rex's "Bang a Gong (Get It On)"

"It was like we were Marc Bolan," Elliott noted. "That whole lyric took us right back to being the "hubcap diamond star halo" lyrics that Marc Bolan did. 'Love is like a bomb, baby / C'mon get it on / Livin' like a lover with a radar phone.' Nobody knows what that means. I don't even know what it means! But it's not important. It wasn't Bob Dylan, this wasn't 'Blowin' in the Wind.' It was 'Get it On,' and that's where we were going with it. It was all about the phonetics of the vocal rather than the meaning of the lyric. Much more important."

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