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Biography:
Full Name: Richard John Cyril Allen
Birthdate: November 1, 1963
Birthplace: Derbyshire, England
Residence: Malibu, California
Height: 5'9"
Education: Left school at the age of 15 to become a full-time member of Def Leppard
Family: Parents, Geoffrey Allen and Kathleen Daly (she has remarried); older brother Robert, who manages the Sleeze Beez
Marital Status: Separated from wife Stacy (Gilbert), whom he married on September 29, 1991 at Candlelight Chapel in Las Vegas.
Children: one daughter, Lauren Shane, born May 20, 1997
Up Close & Personal:
He is called the Thunder God, and with good reason - Rick Allen does more with his one arn than most drummers do with two. Life irrevocably changed for the percussionist on December 31, 1984, when his Corvette took a curve too fast trying to pass a car on a rural road outside his native Sheffield, and slammed into a wall. His left arm was severed in the accident, and efforts to reattach it failed. "I don't think I understood the full implications of what happened to me at first, but after a week or two it became clear to me that if I couldn't play my drums again it would have destroyed me." says Rick. "If you're thrown in the deep end, you swim, and that's basically what I did." Tapping on the footrest of his hospital bed adn the footplates of his wheelchair, Rick got the idea to use his left foot in place of his missing arm, developed it, and made it a reality via the electronic kit he used on Hysteria and the subsequent world tour. But Rick has always been resourceful. Starting out on his mum's ketchen countertops, he used a tambourine for percussion until he successfully pestered his parents for a drum kit when he was 10 (the deal: he had to take lessons first, and save up for half the cost). The family dog howled with every beat, but Rick was undeterred, and he vividly remembers the first time he and his pals played for the neighbors in his folks' front room: "It was the first time I got the feeling of making people happy with music." Fortunately for us, he's never let it go.
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