Page 34 - Classic Rock - The Complete Story of Def Leppard 2019

JOE ELLIOT
We didn’t really know what was going on
at the time. We were in Dublin, working
on the Adrenalize album, and he was in
London. The way Steve used to work is
he’d phone in and go, ‘Hi guys!’ He’d be
nice because he’d been sober for three or
four days. And the second he hung up,
he’d go straight to the bottle. That’s a
classic alcoholic trait, and also a kind of
DEATH, I REMEMBER THINKING:
WHAT’S THE POINT? FIRST RICK
STEVE LOSES HIS LIFE. I SAID TO
32 CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM
personality trait. If there’s a comparison,
it’s Paul Kossoff. Kossoff was a tortured
soul, there’s no doubt about it. I’ve talked
to Paul Rodgers enough to know that.
Kossoff was a very important part of Free,
although by the time he died they’d split
anyway. But with Steve, it was starting to
interfere with the band, which is why he
was given that six-month leave of
absence. We actually couldn’t operate
with him in the band.
Did you fear the worst for Steve?
Every day for the last three months that he
was in this band, we all wondered if he’d
wake up the next morning. We just did.
And then one day he didn’t. We got the
phone call in January 1991, and that was
the end of that. He had passed away in the
privacy of his own home. So our fears
were justified.
What if he had lived?
I don’t know what would have happened.
He might not have come back to the
band. This is all speculation. Had
February come along, it would have been
either, wow, he’s great, he’s fixed, or it
would have been the same old Steve. And
then we would have had to make a
decision. Or he would have had to make a
decision. That decision was taken away
from us. He was gone. And we were then
stuck with that dilemma: what do we do?
Zeppelin decided to knock it on the head
when Bonham died, as was they wish and
their right. We felt that was not the right
thing for us. We were halfway through
making an album. We decided that we
had to see it through. Steve was gone, and
we had to move on.
You’ve always spoken very honestly
about the moment you heard that Steve
IN THE DAYS AFTER STEVE’S
LOSES HIS ARM, AND THEN
MYSELF, DO I NEED THIS?
had died – that it was not a shock.
That was the saddest thing – that it was
expected. Steve had so much more that he
didn’t deliver to the world, and he chose
not to do that. It wasn’t taken away from
him. It was his choice. Of course we miss
him. Every day we miss him. But I miss
my dad too, who died four years ago. In
the end, it’s all about acceptance. We had
to accept that Steve was gone, and that life
goes on…
Was there ever a point, after Steve died,
that you thought about ending Def
Leppard altogether?
Yeah, there was. In the days after Steve’s
death, I remember thinking: what’s the
point? First Rick loses his arm, and then
Steve loses his life. But in the end you click
out of that and go, ‘Well, of course I do.
This is what I do.’
In the end, you completed the
Adrenalize album without Steve.
We weren’t doing it for the money. We
just had to finish that record that we’d
started. Only now the challenge was
finishing it as a four-piece. For Phil that
was a lot of weight. I’m glad that Phil had
stopped drinking by then, because that
would have pushed him over the edge.
But he had the balls and the ability to step
up to the plate and – in a sense – pretend
to be two people. That’s how we got
through that record.
And that album featured a memorial to
him, in the song White Lightning.
Doing that song was so hard. It was an
emotional rollercoaster. We were putting
Steve to bed – metaphorically and
musically. White Lightning was written
about Steve, for Steve, to sound like Steve.
It was our way of saying goodbye to him.