Page 140 - Classic Rock - The Complete Story of Def Leppard 2019

On Me or Do You Want To Get Rocked [sic],
which is what we were trying to distance
ourselves from. We needed to do it for
ourselves, or we’d have gone nuts trying to
recreate the same sound.
None of the ‘hipster’ rock press wrote
about Leppard, though. Did you care?
No. It may have been cause for a bit of
a joke. When it comes to critical acclaim,
we’ve always felt we were underrated. But
you accept it. We were never the cool,
credible band, ever. To us it was all about the
songs. Not about a movement, not about
a political standpoint or standing up for less
fortunate people. That doesn’t mean to say
we disregarded those people, but we also
believed the best way we could contribute
was by letting people escape their boring
lives for a couple of hours. Which I think is
valid. It’s pure entertainment.
You still play the hits, but you write new
material too. Is it important to do both?
I don’t have a problem playing the hits.
Y’know, if you didn’t want to play this song
for forty years, then don’t write it, or don’t
even be in the business. If someone said to
you [as a kid]: “Forty years in the future,
you’ll still be playing this song because
people love it so much,” you’d snap their
hand off. But I do think it’s important to keep
doing fresh things. Not necessarily for the
fans, but for the internal workings of the
band. It keeps us fresh, and that allows us
to put fresh energy into even the old songs.
Are you glad that Leppard got big before
the internet killed album sales?
I guess so, yeah. I must say I’m happy that
we got together when we did. I would hate
to be trying to do it all over again in 2018.
Even being eighteen again. It’s just different
now. It’s a different vibe. There’s so many
other distractions that teenagers have.
Do younger rock bands tell you that
Leppard were an influence on them?
That probably only started happening in
the late nineties, when bands started
coming up to us and saying: “You guys were
great.” Whereas bands like Nirvana and
Soundgarden would try and do anything to
not sound like Def Leppard. Quite rightly.
Is another forty years of Leppard
completely out of the question?
I’ll be ninety-seven by then. I’d be happy
just to still be breathing at that point. But
there’s no time limit on stuff like this. I mean,
the Stones are going out this summer. And
as long as they’re performing to a level that
doesn’t disappoint people, why not? We
were out with The Who in South America
in October. Admittedly it’s only Roger and
Pete left, but the songs were played as great
as they ever were. So the band live on. Same
with Queen. We’re still relatively young, y’know?
It kinda works in our favour, because we’ve
got ten or fifteen years on those guys. So
while they’re still doing it, it gives us
something up to look up and try to achieve.
138 CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM
what a rock record could do in the 1980s. Flying the flag:
Those are the landmarks on which just in case
people didn’t
Leppard built their career. know which
Yet those years also came at an country they
enormous personal cost for the band, were from.
beginning with the firing of Pete Willis on
the eve of recording Pyromania, then
segueing horrifically into the car
crash on December 31, 1982 in
which drummer Rick Allen lost his
arm, again at the start of making an “Lumping us in
album, and ending just a year after with NWOBHM
the Hysteria world tour ended with
the death of Steve Clark. was like lumping
us in with Duran
With Pete Willis, is it to correct
to say his firing wasn’t just Duran and
down to drunkeness and drug
stuff, you just didn’t like him Spandau Ballet.”
very much any more anyway?
I don’t think Pete was a big coke-head.
I think he smoked a lot of weed and
drank a lot of alcohol. But he was
belligerent after the sun went down
and he’d been drinking. It wasn’t that he
wasn’t coming up with the goods,
because he did co-write that [Pyromania].
But all the sexy stuff was Mutt’s
arrangement and Sav’s and Steve’s writing.
Pete would throw in the odd thing. But
Pete would just avoid the situation if he
didn’t like what we were doing. I don’t
think he was that keen in the direction the
band was going in. Whereas we wanted to
go a bit more commercial pop, he didn’t
really want to go there.
Pete told me he’d offered to go and see
a shrink, like Steve had, as a last resort,
but that you all said no. Is that true?
That’s absolutely true. Everybody –
Mensch, Bernstein, friends, family, road
crew, other bands – was saying to us how
many more last chances are you gonna
give this guy? We gave him hundreds.
I rang Phil [Collen] on the High ‘N’ Dry tour
and said: “Can you learn twelve or fourteen
songs in two days? Because if you can
we’re gonna fire him now.” I got talked
down off the ledge with that one.
Steve wouldn’t get drunk until the end of
the gig. He never turned up at the studio
incapable of playing. Not until the very,
very end. But with Pete it had been going
on for two years. I remember Mutt coming
to us and laughing and saying: “You’ve got
to come and hear this solo.” We go in and
Pete was trying to play the back of
his guitar, he was that drunk. Two
bottles of brandy, and when he got
up the next day he couldn’t even
stand. I got so angry, because he’d
promised us it wouldn’t happen
any more.
So World Cup Final day, 1982,
we had Pete driven down from
Sheffield to London – awkward for
the guy driving. Everybody knew
what was gonna happen. We said
we can’t deal with this any more.
“I’m sorry, Pete. I’m really, really sorry, but
we’re done.” He said: “What if I go and see
a shrink?” I was the one that said no to
that. “No. If you really thought that that
would solve the problem, you’d have done
it already.”
What was it about Phil that you
thought he would bring to the group?
Number one, he’s a brilliant guitar player
and writer and singer. But I didn’t know
half the things that I know now when he
first joined. Musically, we bought the same
records in the same week, growing up.
I didn’t know that, but when we did get
together all those things were in the
background ready to be discussed. We still
argue over which of us bought the first
Montrose album first.
He’d stayed at my mum and dad’s house
when Girl [with Collen their guitarist]
opened for UFO in Sheffield. We hung out,
me, Steve, Phil and [Girl singer] Phil Lewis.
We got up on Sledgehammer’s gear in the
Genevieve, which was actually a disco. We
asked if we could have a go on their gear.
I went on the drums, Steve went on the
bass, Phil on guitar and Phil Lewis sang,
and we did You Really Got Me, and Do You
Love Me by Kiss. It was hilarious. Steve lay