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The following is the first part of a raw transcript of a chat Gordon Shearer had
with Rick Savage in the quiet room of the backstage area of the Teco Arena in
Estero, FL on April 29, 2003.


GS: So lets start off with the tour. How's it been going? How have the crowds
been?

RS: Crowds have been great.....crowds have been really good. We're probably
doing better business than we thought we would do especially considering the
disappointing way the record company has handled the album. It's pretty obvious
that the people who are coming are people that would have come if we had a new
album or not. I mean, a lot of them may have bought the album but we are not
really promoting the album any more as such. Certainly as far as the public are
concerned. They're just coming because it's Def Leppard, not because it's Def
Leppard and they've got a new album to promote or whatever.


GS: What about the numbers?

RS: The numbers have been good. We're averaging probably around 6 thousand,
maybe a little more, which is great.


GS: So the idea of coming to arenas has been vindicated then?

RS: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. It's totally been vindicated. It's great because we
now know that we can do these sorts of numbers by just us coming out at the drop
of a hat. It's not like we're riding on the back of a hit single or anything
like that. So you kind of know that anytime we want, we could do a tour without
even an album to promote, which is kind of reassuring, cos that's what most
people are coming to see - just us doing the old classics.


GS: I've tried (along with many others I might add) for quite some time to
'encourage' you to touch more on the very old stuff. Joe has always maintained
that everyone's forgotten them except sad old gits like myself, but here you are
playing "WASTED" at some gigs and more impressively the fact that you're doing
an entire side of the "HIGH 'N' DRY" album as an opener in some of the gigs and
they've gone down a storm. Has that surprised you that so many people react so
incredibly well to the very old stuff?

RS: What it is with the old stuff - I mean the really old stuff, I mean a lot of
the stuff's old now, but to go back as far as the "HIGH 'N' DRY" stuff - is that
the people who do remember it and do have an affection for it, they're
overly-enthusiastic about it and they make up for the few people that weren't
really around when that album was out. It's always hard to gauge it from an
audience reaction type thing because you can see people going absolutely mad
enjoying themselves when we play stuff from "HIGH 'N' DRY" but they make up for
the guys that go, "Well, I've kind of heard this but it's a bit before my time"
sort of thing. At the end of the day, they're happy if you do the obvious songs
towards the end of the set and you've got to try and make yourself happy by
doing certain songs at the front end of the set. As long as you do the last hour
of basically anything from "HYSTERIA" onwards then they go home happy.


GS: Conversely, then. How has the general reaction to the newer stuff been?

RS: It's been good. Especially, for some reason "LONG LONG WAY TO GO" goes down
great every night. "FOUR LETTER WORD" is up and down -- in certain markets it's
really strong because the radio play was quite heavy, and then in other markets
it's never filtered through. So you never really know from night to night how
that will go down. And "NOW" goes down great anyway because it was the first
lead-off track and most radios got that. So, it's great. The only slightly
disappointing thing about the whole tour - and I've said this to many people -
is that if we'd've had a hit single we'd be dangerous. You know, because
everybody that comes now is our core audience basically. And a hit single is
just the fairy dust on top. We could be playing in front of 12 or 13 thousand a
night with a hit single -- or a hit album, which you only get through a hit
single these days.


GS: Does it feel kind of odd that you've been on the road for quite some time
and as yet there's only been four songs from the new record that you've actually
played live?

RS: It's odd because it feels we've been out for a long time, but in reality we
haven't. Because a lot of what we did last summer after the album came out was
promo, a lot of one-off gigs, and the tour actually didn't start for real until
November over in Japan. So it feels like we've been out for nearly a year, when
in actual fact, we've been out for five months. That's the weird thing. We're
getting to the point where you're a little jaded some days and normally you're
not like that after five months. It normally occurs after ten - which is
basically what we have been doing.


GS: Would you not love to be able to freshen things up and bring in some more of
the ones that you've never played yet?

RS: There is room for that. In fairness, we have rehearsed "TORN TO SHREDS" and
we are thinking about rehearsing "EVERYDAY". But it's hard when you get into a
routine on tour, especially 'cos obviously you've used your rehearsal time up
prior to the tour. So, the only time you can do it is in soundcheck. And it's
sometimes difficult learning and rehearsing a new song in soundcheck -- partly
because every day we have soundcheck parties where the local prizewinners come
and they just want to watch us play songs.


GS: Do you have soundcheck parties at every single show?

RS: Pretty much. It appears that way, yeah. I'm sure a lot of them would find it
interesting watching a band actually rehearse a song. But from our point of view
it's a little uncomfortable trying to do that because you don't want to blow the
mystique of the final product.


GS: But if you consider what happened at the West Palm Beach soundcheck where it
was so incredibly intimate and revealing when the mics were isolated at
individual times and you were all effectively doing solo vocals. So these people
were getting to hear a very raw product and then it all came together when all
the mic channels were open and you played as a band again.

RS: If I was a fan of the band I'd find that really interesting to actually see
what can go off and what goes on in a soundcheck and seeing the band in a
different light as opposed to the obvious scenario of turning up to a show and
seeing just the full live thing. That's why I think the soundcheck parties are
good. I just think it may be taking it a stage too far if they're watching a
band actually rehearsing a song from scratch.


GS: It would be magical for the die-hard fans, if you think about it.

RS: Maybe. It's a bit intimidating though.


GS: Can you imagine if you told them you were gonna try it for the first
time.....just for them? They'd get to see how it's all pieced together. It'd be
an amazing experience for them to see it evolve and then later that night they'd
actually get to hear it played, having seen you create it.

RS: Maybe so. You might be right. I know as a fan if I was there..... Say if I
ever got to see a Queen soundcheck, I would've loved to see them do a different
version of something or just a version of a famous song without the lead vocals
so you could actually hear other things, so you could focus on the backing
vocals. I'd find it interesting. It's worth thinking about for the future
soundcheck parties.


GS: Presumably then, you don't find it all that difficult to understand the way
that the people react and what makes them tick in terms of you can remember what
it was like for you and you can identify with it?

RS: Oh God, yeah. If you're talking about a hard core fan of a band, which the
people that come to the soundcheck parties are. To me, that would be more
special than getting a free ticket to the show. I mean, if you buy a ticket you
can go to any show. But this is something that people very rarely get to see and
it's probably pretty amazing for them. That's why I think they're very valid
prizes for a competition winner.


GS: You're doing quite a few festivals on this tour and they are very different
types. You've got the ones which are very much your audience, like Rockfest in
Wisconsin, where you're on with Twisted Sister, Alice Cooper and Night Ranger.

RS: Oh Christ. I knew Alice Cooper was doing it. I didn't know it was bloody
Twisted Sister.

GS: Sammy Hagar, Boston and Heart are there.....

RS: You know more than me cos I've not been told about all this. I'd be an honor
to play the same stage as Heart.


GS: You're headlining over Alice. Heart are playing a different night. Then
you've got very eclectic mixes like Music Midtown on Sunday in Atlanta, where
you've got Everclear on your stage, but Joe Cocker is playing the same day.....

RS: Really? You know, we've never actually seen him.
    [Leppard and Joe Cocker are probably Sheffield's most famous sons]


GS: Then you've got the type of festival that you had in Tampa, which was pretty
extreme, but you were considered to be the Special Guest act. I guess this is
metal the way it is now and I suppose you kinda showed where some of it
originated and how it's diversified now. You've also got the one in Pittsburgh
with Blink 182, Puddle Of Mudd and Sum 41, which I guess are kind of the market
that you would be looking at hitting - the ones that are into modern heavy rock
but don't know much about you. Which are most appealing?

RS: All of them. With the last two you mentioned, I suppose that's probably the
modern day equivalent of the market that we dominated in the late eighties,
early nineties. The music's quite different and the attitudes have changed --
for the better. It's like anything else. Whenever anything gets tired - like the
sound of the eighties got tired - something comes along and improves the
attitude, and then that gets tiring and then something else gets along. So the
evolution is ever-changing really and I think that's really good, because it
allows us to still do what we do but internally we are influenced by the
attitudes of the young kids. The attitude of a twenty year old is different from
era to era but it has the same effect on the era that they're trying to get away
from. You're trying to create your new era when you're twenty and it's valuable
to have that.


GS: Do you feel you want to be attacking the new markets by showing how shit-hot
you are live? You get the core fans at your gigs but at the festivals you get
the ones that would never come to see you and you can blow them away. Cos you
certainly blew them away at Tampa and I certainly didn't expect you to go down
that well.

RS: I don't know whether we blew them away. I think we've got to the stage in
our career where even if people don't like us and they may have good reason to
knock certain things around the image of the band, it's understandable. One,
because we're fifteen years older than most of them - or certainly ten years
older than most of them - but we've been there just long enough now so there's a
certain respect there. I think that counts for quite a lot -- to the point where
it's kinda cool. They may not necessarily like everything Def Leppard stood for,
but there's certain songs which were part of their upbringing and because of
that, there is a certain amount of respect. We can never try and be like any of
these bands. It'd be ridiculous for us to even try. But there's nothing wrong
with going on the same stages as those guys and just proving in your own little
world that what we do, we do it to a very high class. And that's all you can
ever do. And hope that people, including the audience, give you the respect.
That's all you can ask for. And, so far, I think it works.


GS: With "X", what went wrong? What happened to it?

RS: From our point of view, we don't think anything went wrong, musically. When
we finished the album - and it's the same even now - we thought that it was one
of the best albums we've done. But then again, artists always think that.
There'd be something wrong if you finished an album and went "It's all right,
it'll do. It's not as good as some of our other stuff, but it's another album".
Most artists don't think like that. They totally believe in what they're doing.
So consequently, you have to look elsewhere as to the many, many different
reasons why it didn't take off the way we wanted it to. When I say 'the way that
we wanted it to' I mean that we're not happy until we've sold 6, 7, 8 million.
So when you're struggling to get past the one million mark, then it hasn't come
up to your expectations. There are a million tiny little reasons that all have
to go right for an album to go big and a lot of it is down to the perceptions of
the people that are working with you, like the record company. They can only do
so much, in fairness, but they have to believe in it and they have to promote it
to the best of their ability. And even then it's not a guarantee, because the
radio stations have to like it and the whole marketing ploy has to be in place.
There's so many things, and all of them have to be right just for you to stand a
chance. And if the majority of those things aren't right, then you're never
going to get anywhere.

Case in point, the single "LONG LONG WAY TO GO" was actually picked by our
record company. They sent us the song, asking us to do it because they thought
it was such a hit - this is the people in America. While we thought the song was
good - and it is a good song - we didn't necessarily think it was something
overly fantastic over and above what we would do anyway. But we played the game
and we did a Def Leppard version of the song, which everybody loved and
everybody thought was great. Then, lo and behold, 8 months later, the same
people at the record company are suddenly going, "We don't really want to put
this out as a single". That's the confusing thing. People change. In any walk of
life, people can change opinions or they have to cut their cloth accordingly,
maybe people are under pressure budget-wise, and some things have to change. And
it appears to us that we're the ones who've got pimped a little bit.

Maybe it doesn't help that our American record label is the same label that
handles Bon Jovi, and I know for a fact that the record label has problems
promoting both bands at the same time, because it's essentially the same sort of
market - always has been, apparently. That may be an excuse, I don't know.
Because Def Leppard are signed to an English record company, the money we make
in America through record sales, the Americans only see a small percentage of -
we're an English-signed band and the money all goes back to the English. So my
take on it is that the people in America are more inclined to promote the bands
that are signed to the American label - i.e. someone like Bon Jovi - than the
band that could still probably sell as many records but they ain't gonna see any
money for it since it's gonna go back to all the English. So you feel like
you're getting pushed away a little bit, in that context. That may be true, it
may be a complete load of old bollocks. But that's my take on it. That's the
impression that I'm getting. The only other explanation, and I'm trying to be
kind here, is just sheer incompetence or people telling you one thing and
basically lying to you.....


GS: A few months on, can you listen to the album a lot more objectively now? Or
are you still too emotionally tied to it to ever be in that position?

RS: Personally, I think I was pretty objective all the way through. I listen to
it now and I still think, "Fuckin' hell, this is great". I think with some
albums we've done in the past - like "EUPHORIA" - by four or five months
afterwards I was starting to see little chinks that I didn't see before that
could have been better. We probably tried to spread ourselves too thinly over
the vast different styles of music that are apportioned to Def Leppard. I don't
see that with this album. I see it very much as a modern-day equivalent to
"HYSTERIA". I really do. Because of that, you hope that you can get the same
sort of response. We don't expect to sell 10 million albums, but we did think
there was a chance of having 2 or 3 hit singles which would've pushed the album
up. We never expected "NOW" to be a top 40 single, but certainly the biggest
song I thought potentially was "UNBELIEVABLE" - I just think it's a fantastic
song. Obviously "LONG LONG WAY TO GO" had the more mass appeal. Then you
could've had "EVERYDAY". I thought "TORN TO SHREDS" could've been a big song in
England. But it just never happened, one way or another.


GS: Teaming up with the Swedish songwriters and certain others, what was the
theory behind that? Were you trying to get into the untapped gay market or
deliberately appeal to a younger market, or just a different song writing
perspective totally?

RS: 'Untapped gay market'!!! I'll tell you what it was. When I first heard the
songs and I heard some of the other songs that those guys had written, they just
sounded like mini-Mutt Lange's. The ideas, the way they structured the songs -
Andreas Carlsson, Per Aldeheim and obviously Max Martin. They used to be in
hardrock bands when they were younger and were very much influenced by what Def
Leppard were doing in the eighties. And they've taken that on to such an extent
that Max Martin made Backstreet Boys very famous. A lot of the Backstreet Boys
stuff, if you listen to it, is very much like a lot of stuff Def Leppard do,
minus the guitars. "POUR SOME SUGAR ON ME" could've been a Backstreet Boys song.
The big Backstreet Boys song - "LARGER THAN LIFE" I think it's called - but,
given to us, we could've done it and people wouldn't have thought it was
completely different.


GS: Given the way the album has gone, is there a thought of doing something with
Mutt? Maybe there's a missing ingredient that you can't see.....

RS: I don't even think that there's much that Mutt could add at this stage in
our career. I think it's gotta be somebody new that's very much influenced by
what Mutt did. Mutt will continue to have great success, mainly with his wife
'cos he tends to only work with her now. It needs someone who's almost identical
to Mutt but has a fresh spin on it naturally. Somebody like Andreas Carlsson, or
a younger version of Max Martin - 'cos Max Martin's been around for quite a
while writing and producing hit records.


GS: With Mutt you created utter magic.

RS: Yeah, and we can always do it again. But it would be very much like the
magic we created first time round. And whether that would be credible in this
day and age as regards to hit singles.....? It'd sound fantastic, don't get me
wrong.


GS: He still has massive hit singles with Shania so why the hell not?

RS: 'Cos Shania is a lot more marketable than we are. That's the problem.


GS: And she has better tits.

RS: That's certainly true! No, Shania doesn't have the stigma of a band that
were part of an image that has become slightly laughable in this day and age.
I'm not suggesting that Def Leppard were ever laughable. It was the other
hundred bands that were on that bandwagon that made the whole scene pretty
laughable. You saw it yourself on VH1 classics today, some winners, some big
losers.

[We had watched the programme on the way to the gig and they basically showed
you how some artistes can produce one truly great song and then within a certain
period of time follow up with a truly awful one]

I don't want to mention any names because I'm not that type of guy but I think
you know who I'm talking about [laughs].


GS: Could you see yourself being content with the kind of situation you have
now? Still doing good business on tour but not pushing many copies of the album?
Would you settle for that? Could you ever? Look what's happened to the Stones,
for example.

RS: They're a classic example of a band that don't sell any records at all and
go out and play to 30 or 40 thousand a night. It comes down to your perspective.
I wouldn't settle for it if somehow the chemistry started to be eroded away
because there was no ambition. Then it would become a problem. If we still felt
the same way about it and still enjoyed it on stage the way that we always have,
then it wouldn't make any difference. You'd come out and do it, knowing that you
still have a career in a slightly scaled down way to what you used to do in the
past. I don't think that would be a problem, it just may affect you in a certain
way.


GS: So what is it which still drives you then?

RS: Probably each other. The respect we've got for each other and the love of
doing what we do and the knowledge that, whatever happens, we created something
from nothing. I remember a point in time when me and Joe first met when Def
Leppard were nothing - they hadn't even played a gig. So to take it from nothing
to millions and millions of people's living rooms and in some small way affect a
lot of people's lives, is quite profound when you think about it. So it's the
knowledge of that and knowing that it is still worthwhile to do in whatever
context, then it's still worth doing.


GS: I've always felt that your legacy isn't the adoring fans or the money in the
bank, the fame, the being able to get on stage and do what all of us dream of.
The main thing, as far as I'm concerned, is that you've actually touched or
changed or influenced people's lives. You have made people happy and helped
people get through some hard times.

RS: Absolutely.


GS: How does that feel?

RS: On a very strange level, it's probably your biggest achievement. And it
probably means more than all the obvious stuff. We've had it on good authority
that we've actually saved a few people's lives through certain circumstances
because of what me and Joe started - and obviously the other guys too, but it
started with me and Joe. That in itself makes it all worthwhile. (pauses) Can
you imagine what it's like to have been told that people are still alive because
of you?


GS: People are more inclined to want to end their lives after coming into
contact with me so.....no, not really.

RS: I can believe that! But if there's three or four more people living on this
planet that wouldn't have been..... And hopefully nobody's died because of us --
well, you could say that Steve died, but he was an individual that made his own
decisions. I think that'll mean more the older you get, 'cos that's when you
start looking at your legacy and thinking about the importance, over and above
the immediacy of playing in front of a sold out audience, or making loads of
money, or whatever it is.


GS: It must be kinda amazing to be in a world where you are spreading happiness,
creating unbridled joy or just giving people a way out of whatever existence for
a few hours.

RS: It's fantastic. Utterly fantastic! But there's a price to be paid because
you're always struck in that bubble of entertaining people. It's like a
comedian. He goes on stage and he has to make people laugh. There's times when
he doesn't want to make people laugh. He doesn't want to make himself laugh.
He's fuckin' depressed. But you're stuck with it. You're working when people are
getting entertained so it's a strange world. It's a strange life to get used to.
Your job is other people's enjoyment.


GS: So what happens when you're feeling like crap? Or you've just had an
argument with someone before taking the stage and the last thing you want to do
is project this image?

RS: You need a lot of help from the people on stage and, more importantly, the
crowd. The minute you get into a song and you see that it's having a positive
effect on people, then you're happy. You somehow get out of that mood that you
were ever in. It could be for valid reasons, like you've just said, or you could
be genuinely tired and you really don't feel in the mood to portray this person
that people expect of you. The minute you get out there it's like putting your
work clothes on all of a sudden. It's like being KISS -- you put the make-up on
and all of a sudden you become a different person. A lot of that happens without
you realising it once you get up there.


GS: So you've never done an entire gig where you've felt really pissed off for
the entire thing or you've needed a shit or something?

RS: No. There are points in certain shows where if it's not going very well for
you personally, you can get angry with yourself, or your tech, or the production
people or somebody. But even while you're feeling that, outwardly, whether you
realize it or not, you're still doing the same things as you would if you were
having a fuckin' ball. So it would be very rare and very hard for the audience
to look and go "He's really not enjoying himself tonight". That happens so very
rarely. When all's said and done, that's just one individual out of 5. Most of
the time if one guy's having a bad time, if he's had an argument with his wife
or he's had an argument with his friend or whatever, it very rarely happens that
the other four are in the same boat. It's only ever one person that maybe isn't
having a great gig cos the other four of us are fine.


GS: What happens if two of the band have had an argument?

RS: That's very rarely happened.


GS: Never before a gig?

RS: Well, it can happen before a gig because everybody's human and everybody's
got emotions, but it would always be cleared up before we went on stage. It'd be
one of those three minute things and you'd make up before you got up there.


GS: What challenges or goals do you still have?

RS: Well, mine change. Having children changes you a lot. Your perspectives
change. A lot of it is not a conscious thing. You don't suddenly sit down and
think, "Right, I've now got children. I have to become more responsible or I
have to act in a different way". You don't do that. You just find yourself in
that mental environment where you gravitate towards that. It's a lot harder for
me being on tour for 6 weeks, whereas in the past it didn't really matter. You
have a lot more freedom because even if you missed your girlfriend, generally
she could come out and see you whenever you really wanted to. Now you can't. So
everything gets a little harder because the distances and the time apart make it
harder as you get older. And there's a certain amount of guilt 'cos you feel
that you should be with your children bringing them up, even though they may be
only very small. And in the grand scale of things, when they're ten years old,
you may not have been away from home that much and you still feel that you
should be there. But you also know that you have to do a job and you have to do
what you do.


GS: But you don't have to.....

RS: Well, you've got commitments to a lot of people - not just your children or
your wife or girlfriend. You've got commitment to the rest of the guys and
without that commitment, it's worthless. It's part commitment, part respect and
it's also knowing that any of the other guys and a certain point in time feel
like they want to go home but you hang in there and you get through it.


GS: Any regrets? Anything you'd change?

RS: No, none whatsoever. I've never felt regret. I know we've made mistakes in
the past so you could look back and see that there's certain stuff we could've
changed for us to've been more successful, or for us to've made more money, or
been more popular or whatever. But I believe that even the mistakes you've made
are part and parcel of where you are at that one point in time. It's good to
have the mistakes so you can never say, "We'd be in a better position if we'd
done this four years ago" or whatever. Hypothetically that could be quite right,
but one, you'll never know, and two, we're at a good stage in our lives now
anyway so why change it? For all the good or bad, it's where you are.


GS: Any point where you were just plain lucky?

RS: Oh, God, yeah. It's never just due to talent.


GS: So what was just pure and total luck? Maybe MTV coming round?

RS: That was good timing. You could put that down to luck to a certain extent.
If there's any one thing, I think it's when we went in to record the "GETCHA
ROCKS OFF" EP in '79. We happened to record 3 songs where, for some reason, we
just did really well on that weekend. We probably sounded better than we really
were on a general level. We were lucky to come out of the recording session with
such good sounding songs. And that was a big kick-start in our career. So I
think that was luck. We could've gone in and not played very well and you don't
go back and change it. There was no opportunity for third or fourth takes -- you
record the songs and that's it. And the songs sounded good and they actually
sounded better than we were at that particular point. So yeah, we got lucky that
day.


GS: Getting a bit more personal -- everywhere you look there are potentially
hurtful remarks aimed at everyone in the public eye. You are no exception to
this and in some cases, every thing you do gets analyzed to the tiniest detail.
How do you deal with particularly hurtful things?

RS: It doesn't bother me. I can divorce myself from it because I know that it
happens to a lot of people. While it's directly at you, there is the possibility
that you can take it so personally. But if you look at it from the other side of
the fence, the people that read this stuff or hear this stuff, they're not as
close to it as you are, so they're never as affected by it, as you would be. So
I've never been overly bothered about it. The only time it affects me is if it
affects people close to me. If people say something bad about me and it upsets
my mother, then I get a little bit affected by it because it's people that you
love that come into the equation. If it's just me in isolation, people can say
what they want. I don't mind. I know what I do and I know I try and do it to the
best of my ability and I try and do it with honesty and I'm happy with that. It
may not always be right. It may not always be very good but that doesn't matter.
It's me. And I'm quite content with that. So people can write what they want or
say what they want. I know the real truth. They're entitled to their take on it.


GS: What about when you developed your Bell's Palsy?  [Sav contracted this
disease in the 90s, causing his facial muscles to weaken / become partly
paralyzed]  Did that change the way you dealt with things? Lots of gossip, lots
of comments. I could imagine going from the position that you were in - from
ultimate rock sex god to.....

RS: It was hard to come to terms with and to understand why. I found it was easy
to get into the 'why me?'-syndrome. Partly because of the disability. Not so
much on a vanity level. It was more not being able to eat properly or not being
able to sleep without putting a patch on your eye because your eye wouldn't
close and things like that. That was the most affecting point. The effect that
it has on your everyday life was the hardest thing. But you come to terms with
it. It does improve and you kind of get used to it. In a way, we've had the best
precedent ever with what Rick has dealt with. In comparison, it was a very minor
debilitating disease. It keeps you humble seeing what Rick went through and how
he had to deal with things. So, I would rather have not got the disease, but I
did and you make the best of what you got.


GS: No real problems being photographed and in the public eye? Are you
completely comfortable with your self-image?

RS: No, even now, I'm a little self-conscious when having my photograph taken on
a candid level. If they're posed shots then it's a different thing because you
adopt a pose which you would probably adopt if you didn't have Bell's Palsy.
It's the candid ones where the camera will just snap a split-second and they'll
capture things that people don't see in real life. So there's certain shots
where my mouth or my face can look slightly distorted or slightly uneven, when
it's just a shot that you're not really ready for. Those are the things that I'm
a little wary of. But that is purely just down to vanity more than anything
else. I've also learned that the way that you see yourself in such detail
compared to how the rest of the world looks at you, that it's really not worth
getting too upset about. As an individual, you'll notice things about yourself
that other people will just go, "What the fuck are you talking about?" They just
don't see it. So it's not worth worrying about at all.


GS: I remember a fabulous comment attributed to [Duran Duran's lead vocalist]
Simon Le Bon. He was asked, "Why do rock stars always go out with supermodels?",
and he answered, "Because we can!"

RS: [Laughs]


GS: How come Leppard never seem to have been associated with any celebrities or
models?

RS: We've never been the type of band to even worry about image. Duran Duran
wrote some good songs in the early eighties. But they were part of the music
industry that had one foot in the fashion industry as well. They were that type
of band -- the clothes they wore. A lot of it was about style.


GS: Yes, but your Bon Jovi's and your Motley Crue's, they still are with celebs
and they're certainly not in the fashion industry.....

RS: Back in the eighties they probably were. They were much more conscious of
their image. I mean, Poison had a very strong image -- stronger than their
music, many would say. And it's all valid within the music industry, because you
need the image as well. Some people survive on image alone so it has to be that
way. Def Leppard were either never clever enough or just didn't have the
inclination to really work on that side of it. When you do that, you don't put
yourself in the position to be attending premieres and stuff. At one stage we
could've done, but it wasn't in our nature, and when you get into that frame of
mind then you put yourself out of a lot of possibilities for meeting people that
are celebrities or the celebrity set. We've never really gone down that route.


GS: Celebrities are meant to understand the life more, so are therefore more
compatible. They're not after you for who you are. That in itself can be a very
difficult position to be in.

RS: It's an occupational hazard. What can you do? You have to follow you heart
sometimes. You make mistakes. It's part of growing up. There's no guarantee that
you're not going to make the same mistake again. Generally speaking I'm pretty
confident that I haven't made the mistake again. My girlfriend is with me in
spite of what I do, not because of what I do. She flippin' hates it. She knows
nothing about music. She never had a radio. She never had a stereo. She doesn't
know bands. She doesn't know anything about music history or what's happening
today. But it's always possible that one of us could fall into the deep end
again. You take that risk.


GS: In the TV show FRIENDS, there's an episode where Ross has a laminated list
which contains the names of five celebrities who he's allowed to shag, with no
repercussions 'cos 'they're laminated'. If you were to have your laminated list,
who would be on it?

RS: I don't think I can answer that.


GS: It's hypothetical. I'm not asking you to go out and actually shag them! So
you have no famous women who you'd put on a pedestal?

RS: Well, that's different. I've always had a soft spot for Michelle Pfeiffer. I
think she's wonderful. And Renee Russo also. They're just actresses. When I was
a kid, Sophia Loren and Raquel Welch. There's four of them. Can I have my
girlfriend?


GS: No!

RS: She'd have to be in there. She's famous in my eyes.


GS: Hopes for the future?

RS: We've learnt to take it one day at a time. To have flexibility and still do
what we do but not compromise my private life. I didn't mind it compromising it
in the past because there wasn't much of a life. There was just me. Now I'm
involving people that didn't ask to be involved as such. So I have to dedicate
myself to them because that's what they want me to do and that's what I want to
do. So, the flexibility to be able to do what we do, with the life that I've now
found myself that's going to be with me for the rest of my life.


GS: Are you still going to be on stage when you're 50?

RS: Yeah, why not? It sounds ridiculous, but 50 is no longer..... It happens
now.


GS: Ronnie James Dio's 63, apparently.

RS: If he enjoys it and he still is valid in front of his fan's eyes, then why
stop? Fair play to him. I personally don't like his music but if people do, then
I'm wrong and they're right. Fine. Let him do it till he's 73. Let him go on to
103! If you still love doing it, you should do whatever you want. Do what you
makes you happy -- that's the key for all of us.