Page 126 - Classic Rock - The Complete Story of Def Leppard 2019

even thought about recording the whole album live. Rammstein and thinks we’re a bunch of wusses.
Sleeve notes And we actually recorded a lot of stuff on tour. For And he’s right!” Viv laughs. “He wanted me to play

Joe Elliott on the cover artwork for Nine Lives I recorded Tim’s [country artist Tim something satanic, so I wrote this riff. And because
Leppard’s Songs From The Sparkle Lounge. McGraw] vocal in Nashville. Rick Allen’s brother it sounded so dark it got me thinking about the
Robert is Tim’s tour manager, and he found out that really scary stuff in the world, specifically terrorism.
Tim is a big Leppard fan. Tim came up with the title The lyrics are written from the viewpoint of a
for the song and we went from there. We demoed it suicide bomber: a personal story, fictitious.”
with him at the Hollywood Bowl when we were on Viv admits that this is heavy subject matter for a
the Journey tour, and then he nailed his vocal in band like Def Leppard, but both he and Phil Collen
Nashville in one afternoon.” have written lyrics for this album that have a deep
Phil actually recorded the riffs to Nine Lives and the emotional content. Viv’s song Only The Good Die
album’s first track, Go, on his laptop: proof that Def Young refers to the man whom he replaced in Def
Leppard are still as savvy with technology as they Leppard, Steve Clark, who died on January 8, 1991
were in the 80s when, with producer Mutt Lange, from an overdose of painkillers, anti-depressants
they redefined hard rock music with their now classic and alcohol. “Steve was the inspiration for it,” Viv
albums Pyromania and Hysteria. says. “I’m accepting of why I’m in this band and I’m
In Joe Elliott’s upstairs loo (which he calls The Bog respectful of who I’m replacing.”
Of Rock) there are two reminders of the phenomenal Collen, meanwhile, wrote Tomorrow in memory
success of those two ground-breaking albums. The of his father, who succumbed to cancer. “It’s about
first is an award from the Recording Industry how I came to terms with that,” Phil explains. “In the
Association of America honouring “the first back to end, his death wasn’t a morose experience. We had
back septuple platinum records in the history of the time with him. He asked me to take him out of the
“As soon as we had the title for the album, we had the image music industry”. The second is a framed page from US hospital near the end and I’m glad I did that for him.”
of a stage with big red curtains at the side, like Monty industry magazine Billboard, dated July 23, 1988, listing Of …Sparkle Lounge Joe Elliott summaries: “This
Python’s Live At Drury Lane album. We wanted the view that the Hot 100 Albums. In the Top 10, alongside George is an album that works on a lot of different levels,
the band would have from the stage, so then we started Michael’s Faith and the Dirty Dancing movie soundtrack, musically and lyrically. We didn’t want to remake
thinking of all these people we could put in the audience. are Poison’s Open Up And Say…Ahh!, Guns N’ Roses’ Pyromania or Hysteria. Some things sound like they
Obviously the sleeve of Sgt. Pepper came to mind. In a could have been on Slang [’96]. It’s our entire history
nutshell, this is Sgt. Python. Appetite For Destruction, Van Halen’s OU812 and, at
“I wanted the cover to look like a kind of weird dream, No.1, after 49 weeks on the chart, Hysteria. in there. We’ve embraced who we are as a band.”
where you had a panda in Kiss make-up, and John Lennon The last Def Leppard album to top the US chart
dealing cards to the Pope. But we couldn’t get permission to was Adrenalize, in 1992. “It’s very difficult for us to s dusk falls over Dublin, Joe’s American
use Lennon’s image or some of the others we wanted. We achieve that level of success again,” Joe concedes. But wife Kristine appears and reminds him that
started to panic – fuck, we’ll end up with no one on the cover! Nine Lives has had a great response from American they have an awards ceremony to attend
So we told the art director, Richard Proctor: ‘If there’s anyone radio stations, and Mercury have identified C’mon A this evening. She opens a bottle of
we have to lose, just use old photos of us instead.’ C’mon as ‘the big single’. As Rick Savage explains: “It’s champagne and, smirking, orders her husband to
“I met Richard Hammond [Top Gear presenter] at the the kind of party song that we stopped writing for a change his shirt. But before we leave him, there’s one
Zeppelin gig at the O2, and he said if we put his face on the while – like Let’s Get Rocked or Make Love Like A Man. more thing to discuss: the not inconsiderable matter
cover he’d buy 2,000 copies of the album! If Jeremy Clarkson You know, a bit mindless.” of the Def Leppard/Whitesnake tour. As the
had gone to that gig we’d have put him on there too. Ian There is, Savage says, “a real buzz about this advertisements proclaim: Let’s Get Rocked… In The
Hunter was cool about it. He’s a mate anyway. There’s Bob album, a positive vibe that we haven’t had for a few Still Of The Night!
Booker, who used to play for Sheffield United. There’s Mutt years.” What it also proves, with the breadth and “It wasn’t me who came up with that line,” he
[Lange, producer] and all of our parents. And my cat’s in depth of the new material, is that Def Leppard are still laughs. “It was the promoter, Rod MacSween.”
there too. She’s called Mui Mui. That was my wife’s idea, a creative force, still willing to expand their range. As a good friend of Whitesnake leader David
naming the cat after a brand of shoes! They really push the envelope on Love, written by Coverdale, Joe insists that the tour will not be “a
“And if you look closely you’ll see a nice picture of Phil Savage in the style of his favourite band, Queen. “It fight, or an ego-fest”. He also stresses that there’s no
[Collen] when he was in the Dirty Blondes, and Vivian only took me 15 years to complete it,” he chuckles. ill feeling between Coverdale and Viv Campbell,
[Campbell] doing his best Brian May impression when he
was with the garden gnome, or Dio as he’s otherwise known. “I started writing that song in 1992, but we put it on who starred briefly for Whitesnake in 1988.
“There’s also a sign being held up: THIS IS NOT HERE. the back burner because Freddie Mercury had “I’ve known David since 1981,” Joe says. “The first
I have that sign over my front door at home. Lennon had it recently died, and I didn’t want it to look like we were night we met, he got me obliterated on brandy. We
over the door at Tittenhurst, his mansion in Surrey, and that’s trying to steal the last bit of Queen’s thunder. I didn’t were right in the middle of recording High ‘N’ Dry and
where we recorded our first album [On Through The Night]. try to write it as an obvious Queen-like song. In fact he got me absolutely bollocksed. But the next day I
“It sounds funny, because we spent a lot of money on the some people have said it sounds more like The nailed the vocal for Bringin’ On The Heartbreak, so it was
sleeve but we wanted it to look cheap. We wanted it to look Beatles. But I’m very proud of that song and the okay. We’ve been good friends ever since. We make
home-made, because we made the album at my home. We’re whole album. It’s still a polished Def Leppard record, fun of him and he makes fun of us. He calls us Damp
self-sufficient!” but there’s an edge to it, a rawness that I really like.” Leotard and we call him Lord Coverdale or Lord Of
Viv Campbell: “Usually when you bring songs to All Adders White; it’s all very Rowan Atkinson.”
Garage keeps overheads to a minimum. The other Def Leppard they get torn apart. But this time we Surely, though, you must want to blow Lord
four band members – bassist Rick Savage, drummer didn’t touch what people had written.” He admits Coverdale off stage?
Rick Allen and guitarists Phil Collen and Vivian that “I don’t write naturally in the Leppard style”, but “Of course! It’s competitive. But most of all I see it
Campbell – have rooms in Joe’s guest wing for the he has contributed three songs to the new album – as a great night out – it’s an event. You know, when
duration of recording. In addition, they’re not paying more than ever before – including the heavy, left-field we had Journey opening for us they did their best to
through the nose for studio time. As Phil Collen Cruise Control. It was inspired by his guitar tech, he blow us off stage every night, and it’ll be the same
explains on the phone from his home in California: says, the impressively named Dave Wolff. with Whitesnake. It’s our job to step up to the plate.
“Back in the 80s, studios cost two grand a day. Now “Dave is a big, tattooed monster who listens to And I can’t fucking wait!”
we don’t have that worry.”
By Joe’s estimate, the band spent a total of four
months, on and off, recording the new album, “We didn’t want to
beginning on January 25, 2007 (“Easy to remember,”
he says. “It’s my mum’s birthday”) and ending exactly remake Pyromania or
one year later. The bulk of the songs were written on
the road during Leppard’s 2006 US tour with Journey.
“You have a lot of downtime on tour,” Joe says, “so we Hysteria… It’s our entire
had a room set up every day for us to jam in. The
crew would fill the room with red shaded lamps,
incense, sparkly tube lighting… so that’s where the history in there.”
title for the album came from.”
“It was a pretty laid-back approach,” Phil says. “We – Joe Elliott on Welcome To The Sparkle Lounge

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