Page 146 - Classic Rock - The Complete Story of Def Leppard 2019

benefit from stepping back and having a bit
of perspective, and getting in there and
thinking about things, and sometimes you
get lost in the forest.
Do you feel like Leppard gets the critical
respect they deserve?
Well, put it this way. Back in the eighties
I remember thinking: “Def Leppard never got
a Grammy.” I can say objectively – because
I wasn’t in the band then – that Hysteria is
one of the greatest fucking rock records of
all time. In fact it’s one of the greatest
records of all time, aside from the rock genre.
And not only did it not win a Grammy, it
didn’t even get nominated. I think that really
summed it up for me.
I think it’s a little different now. Because
the band has been together forty years,
we’re beginning to step into the same
company of these other great British bands.
I think you get a lot more respect if you stay
Hello America:
the course.
(l-r) Viv Campbell,
Rick Allen, Joe
If you weren’t all in a band together, would Elliott, Phil
you still be friends? Collen, Rick
To some degree, yeah. We have a lot in Savage.
common, but there’s also a lot we don’t have
in common. We tour pretty much every year
with other bands of our generation, and
I think we’re the only one that still shares
a dressing room. I think that says a lot. It’s
not like we wear matching pyjamas and go
on holiday together, but we sit together in
the same room and prepare for the show,
and we undress afterwards and have a post-
mortem. I can honestly say that almost every
other band of our generation does not share
a dressing room… so they obviously don’t get
along too well [laughs].
Some bands just roll out the hits. How
important is it for Leppard that they write
new music?
I think it’s vital to the lifeblood of any band,
to remain creative. It doesn’t matter that not
so many people want to buy a new record
now. I’ve been seeing more and more kids
coming to our shows, particularly in
America, but all around the world, and I do
honestly believe that’s the upside of music
piracy. A lot of these kids haven’t bought
records for the last fifteen years, but they
became exposed to the music, they became
fans of the band and now they’re coming to
the shows. And I don’t mean being dragged
by their parents, they’re coming on their
own. That’s very encouraging. We’re
growing our audience. We’re continuing to
write new music to remain a vital and
creative force.
Do Leppard still have creative gas in
the tank?
Very much so. More than ever, actually.
I think everyone in this band is at the peak of
their game.
Twenty-three years later, are you proud to
say you’re in Def Leppard?
Definitely. It’s a unique band. I don’t think
there’s ever been another band like Def
Leppard. I’m sure there never will be.
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I was a bit relieved. Because I knew
I wouldn’t have to suffer his pain and
neither would he.
You then made Adrenalize as a four-
piece. Good album, but not in the same
league as Hysteria. Fair comment?
We coped without Mutt quite well, because
we’d grown up a little bit. We used the
tools that we’d developed, only now we
were a bit more qualified and mature to
make decisions. We had a stronger and
more confident opinion on how we should
be doing things. Mutt was in his studio in
Guildford with Bryan Adams and we’d be
in Dublin, talking every day, even to Bryan.
But it wasn’t as adventurous as Hysteria. It
was more of a rock album, less
experimental. It’s like with Pink Floyd, to
me Adrenalize was our Wish You Were Here,
and Hysteria was our Dark Side Of The Moon. when we were writing it. We were
That all changed for the next album,
Slang, but that was more because of the
arrival on the scene of cold, rainy
grunge. Correct?
The landscape had completely changed.
The fans that bought Adrenalize hadn’t
gone away, but there was a new generation
of kids that came of record-buying age as
MTV were showing videos by Nirvana,
Alice In Chains, Pearl Jam and
Soundgarden. We kept doing what we were
doing but we knew things had changed.
Not so much, though, that you didn’t
stay in touch with the charts around
the world. The single Two Steps Behind
in 1993 was top-five in the US. When
Love And Hate Collide, from the ’95 Vault
compilation, was a huge hit in the UK.
I recall hearing you being interviewed
on Radio One about it and you
sounded so pleased – and surprised.
I remember talking to Jon Bon Jovi, and we
were like: “Where the fuck are we gonna go
now? What’s going on?” Everybody was
saying it’s all over for you guys, and it just
makes you go, okay, maybe the major rock
bands rolled over in the seventies when
punk came along, but we ain’t gonna roll
over that easily. It was like we had these
little pockets of happiness that were
enough to keep us going, doing what we
do. We had the biggest hit we’d ever had in
the UK by releasing a tune that went all the
way back to the eighties, but in 1995.
Slang was different, though. Like you
took the fight to the alt.rock crowd.
When we went in to make Slang, we just
knew for our own sake we couldn’t make
another Adrenalize, or even another
Hysteria. We’d done the trilogy of huge
production albums, we needed to cleanse
ourselves and do something different. So
we lost all the big, mad harmony stuff, just
made it sound like it does when we bang it
out live in the rehearsal room. We jokingly
called the album Commercial Suicide
cleansing our souls musically, but at the
same time we’d been put into this great
position of having something else to write
about. For the first time in our lives,
collectively, we were going through birth,
death, marriage, divorce. All these kinds of
things that all grown-ups have to deal with
at different times.
I know it’s a polarising record. I’ve got
friends that say it’s the best thing we’ve ever
done, and I know there’s people out there
that think it’s the worst thing we’ve ever
done. And then there’s other people that
are just indifferent to it – “Er, doesn’t really
sound like Def Leppard.” Well, that was the
point. If we’d made Adrenalize again we’d
have been torn to shreds, so we might as
well make a record that we really, really,
really wanna make. We knew we’d been
shunted to one side but we knew we would
bounce back. We just had to bide our time,
because we knew we weren’t going away.
The pendulum swung back again with
Euphoria in 1999 – an intriguing return
to ‘classic’ Leppard. Why?
The music landscape was once again
changing. I can see from an outsider’s point
of view: “Oh, they gave it a go with Slang