Date: Tue, 08 Jun 1999

Question: Hi guys!! Bought the CD first thing today & I love it!!
Welcome back!!

Question: We got our tickets already for the Allentown fair. We're
driving out from NY.

Question: How was it today in Austin at Wal-Mart?? How was the crowd??

Deflepvh1: 8.5 thousand people in the parking lot.   It was sweltering
hot, it must have been close to a 100.  And they were fantastic crowd.  
It was nice to be back.  And we are, as I speak, doing a signing session
in the store and there are about 3,500 people here.

VH1Voche: (We're talking to Joe Elliott folks.)

Question: What was your influence for "goodbye"  and "paper sun"? thanks
and I love you guys.

Deflepvh1: Goodbye was written by Rick Savage and the influence was
....it became Lepardized and we made it less specific
than it was. But it was hands reaching out above adversity. Paper Sun
musically we created what we call the "epic" song for the album and
lyrically, we were just about to do the lyrics and they were just showing
the carnage from Ireland, when a bomb had gone off, just over a year ago
and watching it with the sound off on TV, it was our observations of a
terrible, terrible thing that happened.

Question: On the last tour you switched over to using Marshall’s.  Are we
going to see that mighty black wall again this year?

Deflepvh1: That is affirmative... Yes, a mighty big yes (say the men in
black).

Deflepvh1: They’re screaming at me:  Yes!  Yes!  Yes!

Question: Will Def Lep put songs not included on the CD as b-sides as they
have done in the past?

Deflepvh1: Absolutely, we've got loads of them.  Some titles that will
hopefully come out soon.... Immortal, I Am Your Child, Worlds Collide,
Burnout, Gone, Lifeless, Candy In Your Hands and then three cover songs
that we've done -- Stay With Me, an old Faces song.  Rebel, Rebel by David
Bowie, from '74.  And an Ian Hunter song called Who Do You Love?

Question: Is there any plan to re-release the videos on DVD with extra
footage?

Deflepvh1: One second, let me ask the experts....

Deflepvh1: Let's come back to that one.

Deflepvh1: Someday they will be out on DVD, yes.  Not immediately.  But
whether there's any extra footage, maybe not.  So there may be a new DVD
out with some previously unreleased stuff, but not old stuff with new
footage or anything like that.

Question: Every show you do is great from the fan's perspective...what
makes a show great for you?

Deflepvh1: A great audience, a decent performance, no mistakes.  And
good interaction with the crowd.  Because if we do a
similar set every night, it becomes tedious.  The difference between
doing a sound check and doing it for an audience, is you get
a reaction from the audience.  Yeah, they were, actually.  And we've
always been one of those bands, the bigger the crowd, the
better we are.

Question: How much of Rick Allen’s drum set is acoustic and how much is
digital?

Deflepvh1: (asking Rick)  ... kick, snare, high hats and cymbals are all
acoustic.  Toms and foot pedals are electric with triggers on them for
certain sounds.

Question: Does Def Leppard have any secrets to hit songs?

Deflepvh1: If we did, every song we put out would go to #1.  No, there is
secret.  People can write to formulas.  The secret of writing a good song
is capturing a moment in time, it's having a good hook, and having a
melody that's memorable, having a lyric that's meaningful...there's no
secret.... it's very easy to write a song, it's very difficult to write a
hit song.  Otherwise, everyone would be doing it.

Question: What happened to the tracks Telephone, Space, Kickin’ It, and No
Matter What? Were they just working titles?

Deflepvh1: Kickin' It became All Night.  The other three, they didn't make
it, they're finished songs, Telephone actually was called Telephone... it
came from the same place as Lifeless which was mentioned in the B side
question. It's a song we may possibly do at some other time.  Space isn't
quite there, but it's nice to have something on the shelf the next time we
do an album.

Question: Does Def Leppard have a special 'magic' connection with Mutt
Lange?

Deflepvh1: We have a very good working relationship with him.  It's
special too the point where he still wants to do it and we
still want to do it.  It's special in that we've been working with him
since 1981.  It's a dream team together and we love the guy and we like to
think that he loves us.

Question: After I see one of your shows, I'm totally hyped-up....what do
you guys do after a show to unwind?

Deflepvh1: A lot of it takes care of itself.   Physically, when you've
been on stage for 2 and a half hours, you're already winding down.   And
we've done that since we were in our 20's, it's not an aging thing. Now
the mind slowing down, that's another thing.  Me, I talk a million miles a
minute and I get told to shut up sometimes.  I may sometimes have a drink
or two but the others don't drink anymore and I have no idea how they wind
down.

Question: Hey you guys welcome back!!  We have been waiting for you!
When will you be heading to Southern California?

Deflepvh1: I don't know when we're going to be in Southern California. We
will be starting our North American tour on the 16th of July and we're
doing a lot of state fairs, which we've done before.  We'll be here for 8
weeks, while the weather's good enough to do that.  Then we go to Britain
end of  September, basically most of October in Britain.  And then if the
album does well, we'd like to come back to North America and do some
proper Def Leppard show.  We'd do a different show indoors than outdoors. 
And we want to keep people excited about it and ourselves.

Question: What is it about albums ending in ' ia ' ? :)

Deflepvh1: Just me, I'm a sadist.  The 'ia' as regards Euphoria is more a
coincidence than a corporate committee decision.  I remember when we
actually suggested using Euphoria, I said You know what they're going to
say?  But it's such a nice word, it rolls pleasantly off the tongue.  It's
simple, it sums up the meaning of the album very well.  It's an uplifting
record, we hope we give a feeling of Euphoria to the listener.

Question: My I ask why you chose Wal-Mart to launch your album? I have
always enjoyed your music-thanks!

Deflepvh1: We chose Wal-Mart for the same reasons we  do anything like
this--it was advised to do this.  The record company wanted to do
something a little different, than some nightclub where it's all record
company execs and we wanted to do it where people who normally couldn't
get into something like that could see us and we wanted to do it somewhere
warm and large with a lot of great people.  We've been  signing autographs
for two hours now and the queue doesn't seem to be shortening at all.

Question: What do you guys like to do when you are not working?

Deflepvh1: There's not many days in the recent past or going too in the
near future when we haven't been working.  I can't remember not working, a
actually.  For me, personally, I like to spend 12 hours a day in bed.  I
like to watch movies, I like to work out, I like to play golf. Vivian
probably likes to play with his baby.  We just basically work so hard all
the time, I defy anyone to say that we even know how to relax.  We relax
by going on stage.  It's the one place the phone doesn't ring.

Question: where is the band calling home these days?

Deflepvh1: On the road for the next year.  Me and Savage live in Dublin
and have done for the best part of 10 years.  Rick, Phil and Vivian live
in Los Angeles.  Other than that, we live on the road. So the fact that we
don't all live in the same city, but it works very well, it's not a
problem.  When we're on the road, we're all together anyway, on a plane,
on a bus, in a hotel.  We'll go our separate ways after that, and then
we'll get back together to do another album, with any luck.

Question: What are your plans for the next single?

Deflepvh1: I think it's going to be "Goodbye" .  I think that's the
deal.

Question: All of the previous Lep albums have had very visually exciting
covers.  What is the story behind Euphoria's cover?

Deflepvh1: We finally wised up to the fact that we sell a hell of a lot
more CDs than we do vinyl.  Consequently, the CD is small, we wanted a
sleeve that people could see from 15, 20 yards away and say, ooh, I
recognize that.   So we went for a design that was basically just bait,
that's what it is , eye bait.  And we wanted people to be able to see it
from a distance and see exactly what it was.

Question: What was it like working with Jim Steinman, and are there any
other producers out there you'd like to collaborate with?

Deflepvh1: It was a very negative experience working with Jim Steinman. We
mistakenly confused song writing ability with production ability.  He
maybe better now, but in 1984, Jim wasn't a good producer.  We don't hold
any grudges against him, he's a good guy, but just not a great producer
for Def Leppard.  As regards working with other producers, nothing that
we'd particularly want to do.  We talked with a couple of guys before
Euphoria, but we didn't think they would work well with us.  So many
producers that we've listened to recently seemed to contribute nothing. 
So, consequently, we're extremely happy with the production team we have
right now, which is Pete Woodruff and Def Leppard.

Question: On which album did you have the most fun recording?

Deflepvh1: Whoa.  All Through the Night.  Because it was our first, it was
done in three weeks and we were blind drunk every day.  And consequently,
it's my least favorite album.  I've learned since that you don't
necessarily enjoy making an album, but you can enjoy listening to it for
many years afterwards, so as I've said before, I don't mind serving the
prison sentence, before I do the crime.  But we had a great time doing
this last one, we got along, we got the job done and it was pretty
painless.

Question: Hey Joe!  Euphoria is great but will you be playing songs from
Slang on tour?

Deflepvh1: Yeah.  We will.  We don't know which ones, we don't know how
many, but we'll certainly be playing a minimum of one, maybe more.

Question: Are there going to be any videos for Euphoria?

Deflepvh1: Yes, we've already shot one.  We shot a video for Promises
about three weeks ago in Los Angeles.  It's just been added to VH-1.  And
it'll be on the Rock Show, which I guess is on every night.  It's very
much like the Star Wars movies, it was done blue screen and it's very
cool, very spacey.

Question: When are you slotted to be on with Howard Stern on Fri. What
time... by the way, Love you Joe!!

Deflepvh1: Yes, we are.  And we're going to play an acoustic song on
Howard Stern, as well.   It'll be a surprise.  We're
scheduled to be on somewhere between 8 and 10 Eastern time.

Question: Hi Joe!!  Just wondering why the words to the songs aren't in
the CD?

Deflepvh1: We didn't fancy putting them in this time around.  In the
Slang album,  we literally tried to write lyrics that would look
good on paper. For this album, we wrote things that were more
frenetically connected to the music, and they don't look so well
on paper.  We thought we'd put more photos in instead.

Question: Joe was the entire CD recorded at you house in Dublin?

Deflepvh1: The entire CD was indeed recorded at my place, Joe's garage,
Studios 1 and 2, which is the real studio, plus an over spill studio,
which is one of my bedrooms.  We did it 6 weeks on, 2 weeks off, 6 weeks
on, we finished March of this year, so with the breaks that we took, it
was about a 10-month album.  It was the same studio where we did the
Adrenalize album.

Question: Great new album, but I am wondering if you have any other old
songs with Steve Clark you might ever release?

Deflepvh1: No, we don't.  It was a half-finished demo of a song called Bad
For Me, Baby that we did with Steve.  But we're not really sure if the
tapes still exist.  But we've moved on, I don't know, if we found them, we
might include it as a bonus track somewhere, but the slate is pretty
clear.

Question: Joe, have you done much recording away from Def Leppard?

Deflepvh1: Not really, no.  I did two songs for a film back in 1995,
When Saturday Comes.  And I did two songs for the
soundtrack of the movie, they were credited to me.  But in actual fact,
the title song, the song that ended up getting called Jimmy's Theme, the
song was originally  Song for Ronno.   It sounded good for the movie, so
consequently I had to change the name.  But the tracks were played by me, 
South and Phil.

Question: What groups do you currently listen to?

Deflepvh1: We don't listen to ourselves, only when we have to learn the
songs.  We listen to Bob Cherry, we think he's totally cool.  We'd love to
tour with him.  We met him about three weeks ago and they were absolutely
fantastic.

Question: Where do you see Def Leppard in 10 years, 20 years from now? Do
you think you'll be like Rolling Stones, still rocking?

Deflepvh1: I would hope so. I will be, in 20 years time, I will be 59. So
who knows?  I don't know, realistically, 20 years sounds like a while.  We
feel very privileged and blessed that we've done and apparently, in 1999,
are bigger than we might expect to be..  But you know, Aerosmith is about
15 years older than we are and the Stones are 20 years older, so it's not
out of the question.

VH1Voche: Thanks, Joe and the band.

Deflepvh1: Nice to be back.  We'll be in touch.  Keep the faith.