In late 1984, Def Leppard drummer Rick Allen’s life took a drastic turn. On New Year’s Eve, the 21-year-old Allen was involved in a car accident near Sheffield, England, that resulted in the amputation of his left arm.
For any drummer, losing an arm seems like a career-ending tragedy. Allen himself admitted, “I honestly thought that was it” for his drumming when he awoke in the hospital and understood his injury.
Yet within a few months, Allen was back behind the drum kit.
Through determination, creativity, and technological innovation, he devised a way to continue playing at a world-class level with only one arm.
A Devastating Accident and an Unlikely Comeback
Allen’s car crash on December 31, 1984, could have ended his career. While driving his Corvette C4 on a winding country road near Sheffield, England, Allen attempted to pass an Alfa Romeo that had been speeding and slowing erratically.
As he accelerated to overtake, he lost control. The car rolled several times, the seatbelt came undone, and Allen was thrown through the sunroof. His left arm remained in the car.
“What saved my life is that I tensed up so I didn’t bleed out,” Allen later recalled in a Forbes interview. Doctors initially reattached the arm, but due to severe infection, it was ultimately amputated. Allen didn’t fully understand the extent of the injury until waking from a coma weeks later.
Initially, Allen felt defeated and withdrew, not wanting to see anyone. “When I finally realized that I’d actually lost my arm… I really didn’t wanna be here,” he recalled of those dark days.
But support came from family, bandmates, and notably producer Mutt Lange, who encouraged Allen to focus on what he could still do rather than what he’d lost.
The band refused to seek another drummer, giving Allen time to recover and retrain. Buoyed by encouragement and “hundreds of thousands of letters from all over the planet,” Allen decided he would find a way to drum again.
Just three months after the accident he was practicing with Def Leppard, and by mid-1986 he was performing live on stage, astonishing fans with a remarkable comeback behind a radically re-engineered drum kit.
Reengineering the Drum Kit: Foot Pedals and Electronic Aids
Continuing with Def Leppard meant Allen needed to completely reinvent his drumming setup. Early on, while still in hospital, he had a revelation: perhaps his feet could do more.
“I started listening to all the music that inspired me and I realized that I could… play all those rhythms with my feet and hold down a pretty solid groove,” Allen said, recalling the moment he understood drumming with one arm might be possible.
Seeing Allen tap out patterns with his feet, a close friend named Pete Hartley—offered to help. “He said ‘You know what? I can make you foot pedals.’ And that’s exactly what he did,” Allen recounted.
Those custom-made foot pedals allowed Allen to trigger various drum sounds using his feet, effectively compensating for the missing left arm.
This initial invention was just the beginning. Word of Allen’s efforts reached the electronic drum company Simmons, then famous for its hexagonal electronic drum pads. Simmons stepped in to build a custom electronic drum kit tailored for Allen’s needs.
The kit featured electronic drum pads and an array of foot-trigger devices so that Allen’s right foot and left foot could produce sounds normally played with two hands. By using electronic sensors and samples, Allen could hit a foot pedal and trigger a snare drum hit or tom strike instantaneously.
He essentially reassigned the role of his lost limb to his legs. “From that point on Simmons got involved. They built me a really nice kit and I slowly but surely progressed through all these different electronic drum units,” Allen explained.
When Allen triumphantly returned to the stage in August 1986, and during Def Leppard’s 1987-88 Hysteria world tour, fans saw him playing an elaborate setup of electronic pads mounted on a rack, with multiple foot pedals at the base.
One of Allen’s original 1987 Simmons kits now resides in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, while another was recently put on display and auction – complete with six hexagonal pads and three “Shark” custom foot triggers used to activate various drum sounds.
Learning a New Technique: “Everything with my left arm, I do with my left foot”
Adapting the hardware was only half the battle; Allen also had to completely retrain his drumming technique. He approached this challenge with intense practice and an inventive mindset.
“Basically, I think that the human spirit is the strongest thing I know. If you can tap into that… your brain rewires itself,” Allen said in an interview with Metal Edge Magazine, describing how he learned to compensate for the lost limb.
He discovered that skills he’d built as a two-armed drummer didn’t vanish – “all that information of having two arms was in my head,” as he put it – and his brain could redistribute drumming tasks to his other limbs.
“All the information that used to go to my left arm kind of went to the rest of my limbs,” Allen has explained, allowing him to “emulate a lot of the things that I did prior to losing my arm”.
In practice, this meant Allen’s right arm had to become even more agile and strong, since it now handles the majority of stick work on the drums (such as cymbals, hi-hat rhythms, and tom fills).
At the same time, his left leg took on an unprecedented role in drumming. “Everything that I used to play with my left arm I now play with my left foot using foot pedals on the floor,” Allen noted, summing up his technique transformation.
He trained his left foot to do what left hand would normally do: hitting the snare drum backbeats, for example, and even playing drum fills in combination with his right hand.
This was facilitated by the electronic pedals linked to drum sounds. Over time, Allen’s left leg grew incredibly dexterous.
“My left leg got more dexterous as time went on,” he says, adding that his right hand also learned to “do more things” than ever before.
Essentially, Allen developed a highly independent four-limb coordination, where three limbs perform the work of four.
His right foot still operates a traditional bass drum pedal for the main kick patterns, while his left foot multitasks between hi-hat and those extra pedals triggering snare and tom beats.
The learning curve was steep. In the early stages, Def Leppard rehearsed with Allen to help build his confidence. By 1986, he was playing live shows with surprising power and precision.
The band’s frontman Joe Elliott observed that to the audience, Allen’s adapted drumming was nearly seamless – a product of Allen’s dedication to making the new setup feel as “natural” as possible. Allen himself felt that he reached a kind of instinctual re-mapping of his motor skills.
He recalls seeing progress almost unconsciously: “I saw things change without me even really trying,” as his muscle memory adjusted and new neural pathways developed.
The result was that Allen could keep Def Leppard’s thunderous rhythm section intact, even if his approach to drumming had fundamentally changed.
A High-Tech Hybrid Drum Setup
Allen’s early post-accident kits were fully electronic, built with Simmons pads and early MIDI triggers. Over the years, he transitioned through gear from Hart Dynamics (using Aqua pads and later hammered chrome shells).
According to 65 Drums, Allen currently plays Pintec ConcertCast mesh pads with bar triggers for cowbell and kick sounds. Some of his kits use acoustic shells outfitted with internal triggers, such as ddrum Acoustic Pro triggers on snares.
He uses custom Axis foot pedals with neoprene wedges instead of springs to reduce double-triggering, a potential issue given his powerful stomping technique.
These pedals are topped with Dr. Scholl’s inserts and gaff tape for comfort and barefoot traction—Allen famously plays barefoot to avoid snagging when sliding across multiple pedals.
His setup includes at least four foot pedals: typically assigned to kick, snare, toms, and effects. Pedal assignments can change from song to song—sometimes triggering closed hi-hats, layered snares, or multiple toms. He even has a secondary kick pedal on the right side as a backup.
Allen maintains three full drum rigs (A, B, and C rigs) for touring logistics. The A and B rigs are built on heavy-duty custom racks, transported fully assembled, while the C rig uses a Yamaha modular rack for easier breakdown and travel.
He plays with up to four hi-hat setups: one traditional acoustic pair and three electronic hi-hats with built-in triggers for varying levels of openness or for triggering loops like tambourines.
All triggers are routed through a sub-snake to a rack unit managed by his drum tech. His current system avoids using traditional drum modules.
Instead, it relies on laptops running trigger software. The A/B rigs use M-Audio Delta 1010 interfaces, and the C rig uses a MOTU 24 I/O.
Allen monitors a different set of drum samples than the audience hears, allowing him a clearer reference mix while delivering a powerful live sound.
An RJM Mastermind GT pedalboard allows him (or his tech) to switch kits or song-specific setups instantly during a show.
Despite the complexity, latency is only about 2.1ms—impressively tight for such an elaborate system. The entire rack setup weighs over 450 pounds and is powered through universal converters and UPS battery backups.
While we don’t have current images of his exact rig, it’s likely that the system in place is relatively the same—with a few pieces of newer or upgraded equipment.
“Over the years we’ve simplified things; with fewer moving parts fewer things can go wrong,” Allen noted, explaining that his setup became more streamlined and reliable as the technology matured.
Today, Allen’s stage kit is an impressive mix of analog and digital. He often uses a full-size acoustic bass drum (kick) and acoustic snare, which provide the punchy sound and visual impact of real drums, along with acoustic cymbals for crash and ride sounds.
Complementing these are electronic drum pads (typically at least three pads arrayed around him) which he can hit with his right hand to trigger additional drum sounds or effects.
Electronic sampling technology has been a huge part of Allen’s sound. His kit is wired into drum synthesizers and samplers that produce the desired sound for each trigger.
In the 1980s he used Simmons drum modules and later incorporated custom MIDI trigger systems; nowadays he employs modern digital samplers (in the 2000s he used Akai and Roland modules, and more recently software-based samplers on a computer).
On stage, Allen wears headphones to monitor a click track and any loops or sequences he triggers, ensuring he stays tightly locked with the band while using these electronic enhancements.
One famous example of Allen leveraging technology is the song “Rocket” from Hysteria. The drum groove in “Rocket” includes a rapid-fire shuffle feel that would be challenging with one arm, so Allen uses a little technological help.
“What I do for that is I use a four-beat loop that I play on the upbeat,” he revealed, meaning he triggers a prerecorded rhythmic loop to repeat while he plays along with it, effectively giving him an extra “limb” in the form of an electronic loop.
“A nice thing about the electronics is I can take elements from the record and actually use them… live,” Allen said, describing how he integrates samples from the studio recordings into concert performances.
Despite all the electronics, Allen balances them with acoustic drumming to maintain the organic feel. “When I’m out on tour with Def Leppard, it’s more like a Formula One car…you want it to be really fast and to the point,” he explained, referring to the precision of his electronic sampler-based setup for live shows.
But in the studio, or when practicing at home, he often plays a more acoustic kit to keep the natural touch. He’s noted that no matter how advanced digital drums become, he still loves the “sound and feel” of acoustic drums and tries to keep “some element of the acoustic drums in there” for that reason.
The Legacy of Rick Allen’s Ingenuity
Rick Allen’s ability to overcome the loss of his arm and continue performing at the pinnacle of rock music is often hailed as an inspiring human story.
But underlying that inspiration is a story of technical innovation and musical ingenuity that has captivated drummers and engineers alike. By reimagining the drum kit and retraining his mind and limbs, Allen expanded the possibilities of what a drummer can do.
His custom one-armed setup proved so successful that Def Leppard not only survived the accident but thrived: the first album recorded after his recovery, 1987’s Hysteria, went on to sell over 20 million copies worldwide – all powered by Allen’s inventive beats.
Four decades later, Allen is still touring and recording with Def Leppard, his technique continually evolving alongside technology.
He has partnered with drum and electronics manufacturers to develop gear (from custom foot pedals to advanced drum modules) that suit his unique needs, influencing drum design for accessibility.
Countless fans and fellow musicians have taken inspiration from his journey, but Allen remains humble about his role. He often points back to the teamwork and support that enabled him to push boundaries.
In interviews, he emphasizes the “power of the human spirit” and insists that with passion and creativity, “you don’t necessarily need all your limbs to create something incredible” – a lesson he has proven on stages around the world.
Jerome Sandy
Rick was a really Good Drummer to start with … ∆