Page 99 - Classic Rock - The Complete Story of Def Leppard 2019

PHIL COLLEN

Soundgarden were different, and I also
really liked Stone Temple Pilots. To me
STP were a very important band. But, let’s

be honest, rock music needed Nirvana. It
was high time. Things had got stale, sixth
generation copies of Bon Jovi without any
songs, bands who’d diluted it all so much

the only thing they had was the hair gel.
So I did welcome the whole Nirvana thing
but it was embarrassing to get lumped in
with all those other older bands –
suddenly it was uncool to like Def

Leppard. In retrospect, we took too long
between albums. We took too long with
Adrenalize. We should have toured again,
done another stadium tour and maybe we

could have solidified. But we’re still here
and bigger than ever.

What are your personal highlights of
your time with Def Leppard?

I have many highlights but too many to
list. It’s like when people ask, “When did
you realise you’d made it?” But there is
more than one answer to that, too. I

thought we’d made it when Girl got a
record deal and I was able to give up my
day-job earning thirty quid a week as a
motorcycle courier for a typesetter. That
was a huge success to me, giving up work.

Another was getting a diamond award,
for selling more than 10 million records,
at a ceremony in New York City. I think
there were only 68 artists who’d ever sold
that many copies [Def Leppard have done

so with two original studio albums,
Pyromania and Hysteria, putting them
alongside Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, Pink
Floyd and Van Halen as a rock band to
have done so more than once] and I

remember going up to the podium to say
my thank-yous and looking down to see
Elton John, Jimmy Page, Dave Glimmer…
Kenny G! All of these legendary artists

there to congratulate us. We knew how and would get woken every morning by Armageddon rich: them and come out a better person.
Collen (centre)
many millions of copies we’d sold, of him swearing and cursing – “Fuck! Fuck! and bandmates I really think Def Leppard have a work
course, but we’d never had time to reflect Fuck!” because he couldn’t do it. Just the begin coining it in ethic a lot of other bands don’t have. We
as Leppard hit
because we’d always been in the studio or memory of him trying so hard. So there the big time. all come from humble working-class
on tour. So that brought it home to us. are all these moments… playing in a cave backgrounds and it has given us that

One gig I’ll never forget is playing Castle in Morocco… playing three gigs in three edge. It all comes down to our parents,
Donington in the rain in 1986 and the continents in the same day. You know our working-class backgrounds. This
reaction we got because it meant that they say when you’re dying and your life might seem a bit off-topic but it’s what I
Rick [Allen] had come through flashes by you? I think if that’s true these believe. Our parents’ generation grew up

everything and proved he could do it are the things I’ll see, without a doubt. in and came through the war and had to
again. And together we’d achieved what put up with tremendous hardship. That
we set out to achieve. But by the same Not many regrets, then? gave them honest hard-working values
token another highlight is when we lived No, none at all. Even the fuck-ups are and, as we grew up, they transferred those
in the house in Donnybrook in Dublin there for a reason because you go through values to us.

CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM 97