http://theedge.bostonherald.com/musicNews/view.bg?articleid=1016303 Joe Elliott interview By Jed Gottlieb Thursday, August 9, 2007 While Joe Elliott is happy to endlessly discuss the differences between Def Leppard and Guns N' Roses, he's got no problem discussing embarrassing videos and why his band will never be Radiohead. Before Def Leppard's headlining gig Saturday at the Tweeter Center, the frontman waxed poetic about his past and present. Herald: So what specifically makes you so different from Guns N' Roses? Elliott: OK, I'll tell you this. For a long time the Rolling Stones had the tag of the most dangerous band in the world, but I've never heard of them going on at midnight. If they were due on at nine, they came on at nine. If you're going to be a dangerous band you don't have to do it like Axl did where you piss off as many people as you pleasure. With us it's all about the pleasure. We don't have an agenda and we don't try and court the press to make us look better than we are or worse then we are. We get on with it. Why don't you get into all the rock star antics that made G N'R so wild? I think that in part it's because were British. There's a romance to a British band that is different than American bands. As dangerous as The Who were, there was still a kind of gentlemanly conduct about them. It was all champagne and cravats even with the cocaine and smashing guitars. Even with Zeppelin there was a mildness to their rape and pillage, as opposed to the ridiculous Hollywood version of the thing in the '80s where it was all bandanas and headbands and everybody pretending to be out of it. We were always in control with our business managers and accountants. Did you really feel in control when everything got really big with "Pyromania"? Really, the only thing we weren't in control of was how we were going to react to success. We planned in our minds to be the biggest band in the world, that's who we wanted to be. We weren't Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes. God bless 'em, but we didn't want to be any of those guys. We didn't want to be Commander Cody or Zappa. We were always going to try to be up there with the Beatles and the Stones and Floyds and the Whos of this world. So did it all happen just like you planned it? Well, no. It's all good and fine to say you're going to climb Mount Everest, but you don't know how you're going to react to the altitude when you get up there. That's how it was for us. But luckily we were a band. In a band, if one of you goes off the rails you have the other four to pull you along. We've always had a communal ego. There's never been one guy who ruled the roost. It seems like you figured out what you wanted to do early and you locked in and did it. No long concept albums or double albums, just straight-ahead rock. Was that a conscious choice? To a point it was a conscious choice. But you've got to understand that it wasn't as diverse when we started out. Back then there was rock 'n' roll and there was hard rock. Rock 'n' roll was Chuck Berry, hard rock was AC/DC, Queen, Black Oak Arkansas, Boston. It was before the days of death metal, goth metal, Swedish death goth metal. And the less diverse climate made you want to stick to your style? I think we're a lot more adventurous than AC/DC or, to a point, Aerosmith. I'm not criticizing those bands, but AC/DC really did have a game plan. They haven't changed and no one wants them to. If AC/DC put out a ballad we'd all go, "What the f--- are they doing?" Aerosmith broke on a ballad, so they've had the chance to re-release "Dream On" over and over again, like that song from "Armageddon." Or they do that "Toys in the Attic" thing. But I see you in that Stones-AC/DC-Aerosmith category of do one thing and do it well. If we're looking at the big picture, we couldn't possibly make (Radiohead's) "OK Computer." But we don't want to. But we bring in flavors. We can bring in a hip-hop drum loop to introduce a song, but it's going to break into real drums at one point because it's what we do. When I say diverse I mean we've always been a bit broader. We can do a song like AC/DC on a record, but we'll do a song that sounds a little like Queen or T-Rex or Bowie. Do you think you're distinguished by your big ballads more than your rockers? Unlike most bands we've never been afraid to write what we call love songs. Other bands write about dungeons and dragons, but that's not where we come from. We want to write songs where people come up to us and say, "That's my life you just sung about." I don't see how anybody but a 16-year-old acnefied child can get off on some sword and sorcery appeal. What about the big sword in your "Rock of Ages" video? That was more the director than us. We were young, dumb and full of c----. Back then videos were all new and if the director said, "Hold this," you just held it. I didn't stand there and throw a fit like Axl might. I mean I would now, but we were still learning the craft. I see the video now and I cringe. But not as much as I do when I see Toni Basil or some of the other rubbish that came out in the form of video in the '80s. © Copyright by the Boston Herald and Herald Media.