http://www.defleppard.com/ Viv Talks October 18, 2003 The following is the raw transcript of a chat Gordon Shearer had with Vivian Campbell in the quiet room of the backstage area of the Edinburgh Playhouse on October 18, 2003. You've been on the road, on and off, for well over a year. Are you looking forward to it being over shortly or is it the case of the grass always greener; when you're on tour, you look forward to going home and when you're home, you crave being on the road? There is a lot of that but that's the human condition -- always wanting what you don't have. It is fun and the next couple of weeks will be even more fun 'cos it's something different than what we've been doing over the last however-many-months, which have been the arenas and sheds in the US and Canada...which of course, is all good but it's cool to be back in theatres for a bit of a change of pace. In general, because I have two young children, yes, I am looking forward to going home and it all being over. Perhaps if we had a bit more support from the label and we were actually selling records, that would be an incentive for a little bit more enthusiasm. I mean, we're touring on a dead record. We're not selling records at all and there's even stores in America which don't even stock "X" now. I'm sure it's the same over here too. So why are you still doing more dates on this tour? That was my question too! [laughs]. Basically the reason we're doing it is that we haven't done a mainland European tour since the "SLANG"-tour in 1996 and we need to make the effort to play to those who have supported us throughout, but who rarely get the chance to see us. Also, it gives us the opportunity to do Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Russia, which we haven't done in the past, which is really exciting. So basically this leg of the tour is a bit of an exercise in keeping our foot in the door in Europe, so to speak. We're certainly not making any money on this leg of the tour, in fact, we're only managing to keep our heads above water financially on this entire leg, so..... So why tag on the UK leg, especially considering you were here only a few months ago? Simply because people still want to see us here. The promoters and Rod McSween basically found there was a demand for it so asked if we wanted to do it. And frankly, any profit at all from this leg will come out of the British dates and will be put towards funding the European dates, so we wouldn't actually have been able to afford to go to Poland and Russia and such if it wasn't for that. But we've always been the sort of band who tries to take the shows to the people. We had a 10 date tour in February around the UK too, (as the title of the album was still considered to be pronounced "10" and not "X") and basically on this trip, we wanted to do another 10, but then go to the cities we didn't play on the first leg. London, of course, will always get two visits but we're going to the other side of the city too. Is it a thrill to be going to the Eastern Bloc? Yeah, I always look forward to the new experiences.....the places I've never been before..... I just wish I wasn't so exhausted. If you bear in mind we'd also been doing promo before the tour actually started. In July, August and September of 2002, we were flying around all over the place. We were in America for a while, Phil, Joe and I were all around Scandinavia, mainland Europe and the UK doing press and TV, so it's been a long, long schelp on this particular record. Do you feel then that it's time to kinda draw a line over this particular record and move on? Well, we are actually working out material for the next record and have been putting the wheels in motion while we've been on the road here, so we're already moving forward in that respect. Certainly with regards to the current record, I had been feeling like over the last two months that we'd just been treading water in terms of promoting the current record. Basically, all we do now is "FOUR LETTER WORD" and "NOW". We were doing "LONG LONG WAY TO GO" in Canada but we even dropped that in the States, so there were times I was just thinking ""Fuck this, we're just playing a greatest hits tour," and that's not what we're about. Does it hurt that there's less and less being played live from the new record? It only hurts because it's a really good record. It's certainly the best record I've made in my tenure with Def Leppard and it really sucks that it's basically buried because of record company politics and the overall tragic state of the industry. It has nothing to do with music.....that's why they call it the music industry. All it needed was a few extra radio stations playing your records, a bit more exposure on TV, a few more bits of publicity..... In America, even in the big cities, it even got to the stage that people were telling me "Why didn't you call me to say you were playing such-and-such a city....?" And you would think that if anyone was listening to the radio or seeing posters while they are driving their car or on the bus or whatever, they would see or hear something, but they're not, and its pretty depressing. But I guess it's all part and parcel of the fact that if your record company is out there pushing the record, it motivates the promoters and publicity machines and in turn, it takes you to the next level in terms of exposure and awareness. But if they're not doing it, you're fucked, end of story. Are you feeling that potentially, you're considered to be very uncool now? Even when you've put out what you consider to be such a good record, the public and possibly the people in the industry still pigeonhole you into that 80s band genre? We've always been uncool. Always! Ever since "HYSTERIA", the band has been considered uncool, as has every hard rock band from the 80s. But I think that conversely, in spite of lack of record company promotion, I get the feeling that quite the opposite is happening now and that, for whatever reason, we're actually getting our cool cred back. But no matter what, quality never goes out of fashion. Fashion goes out of fashion, but quality will always endure. And Def Leppard is a quality band, with quality players and quality songs and unlike so many acts of the era or genre, we haven't split up and then reformed for a comeback tour. And even in the eyes of the most begrudging rock fan, there is a certain credibility to us as we haven't gone through the multiple line-up changes like Whitesnake. Nor are we attempting to cash in on the nostalgia thing or doing package tours with other bands of the era 'cos we don't want to be categorised with those bands. Because even as a guy who was actually in the other bands of the era and being a fan of Def Leppard from the outside, I always believed that Def Leppard was a notch above these other bands, in terms of the quality of the songs and the production. Obviously, Mutt Lange had a huge input in all of it, but it was the quality of the music that made me believe, and I still do believe to this day, that Def Leppard are the best band of their genre. And you know the infuriating thing is that we're playing better than ever, we've got the best record we've had in the decade and we're touring without support, promotion and a level of publicity that is needed to really make a difference. Don't get me wrong though, we are certainly blessed with a very dedicated fan base and in whatever way we can, mostly through goodwill and word of mouth, we are actually attracting a good number of new younger fans who are discovering this type of music for the first time and are actually finding how good Def Leppard actually are. Any particular highlights from this tour? Oh, there's so many. Certainly recently, there are plenty of very memorable shows. I mean, Montreal is always a stand out crowd for us and this year was no exception, but the one thing that amazed me was that we played Toronto a few nights later and they were equally as good, and I certainly don't remember Toronto having that kinda support for us in the past. But the entire recent Canadian leg was amazing; Edmonton, Calgary, Saskatoon, Kamloops, Vancouver and places like that, and they were brilliant. Most were sold out and there was a tremendous amount of energy in those venues. But the whole American tour was amazing too. Without mentioning any specific cities, because there were so many truly great nights. In fact there were very, very few which sucked, or certainly that I felt sucked. And for a show to suck it's not just that the band were having an off night or the audience wasn't great. It has to be a bit of both. But of course even the shows that sucked, they only sucked by comparison so I'm sure most bands would have been happy with them. Instead of it being 100%, it was in the very high 90s. But thinking more about it all, the biggest buzz for me was that on the leg we played in North America in May/June, we were playing at our absolute best. I don't believe we can actually play any better than that. So what is the difference? I dunno, it's hard to actually quantify. It's like a race car where we all felt that we were firing on all 12 cylinders and there was the level of consistency which was evident in every one of the four shows per week, and every one of us were playing to the best of our ability. And I'm not saying that the July, August and September shows weren't good, in fact they were fantastic, but maybe we've had a little bit of bad fuel going through the cylinders and they weren't firing as well as we know they could. We're always striving for perfection whenever we take the stage and if we feel we haven't achieved it...... Could it be that you were getting blasé from July? I think it was. I think it was also general tiredness and fatigue. I mean having said that, I defy anyone to notice the difference. I think it's just within the band, more specifically, it's been me and Rick Allen who have discussed it recently so I think if you asked Sav, Joe or Phil, they'd have a different opinion -- but Rick and I both thought that May/June was when we absolutely peaked. Explain more about what it's really like for you on tour. We all know that the travelling is exhausting and that the time you are on stage makes up for it all, but what is it about touring that the rest of us don't really understand? Well of course it's all about the show. Those two hours are amazing and by comparison, everything else is a bit of a drag. It's great to meet new people and yes you do have a bit of a laugh. The fact that you're actually making people happy by just saying hello is a pretty amazing situation to be in. And I do try to have as much fun as possible. But in all honesty, after a while, you'd just rather be home. When I didn't have a family, touring was great but now that I have two small children at home, I just miss them and want to be there every day, seeing them grow up. So if you miss them so much, is there not the temptation to say "I'm financially secure, fuck it, I'm stopping doing this"? I couldn't even consider it because I'm not well enough off. I've never been part of a big record. I got pimped with Dio and since I've been in Def Leppard, we've never actually made money from "SLANG", "EUPHORIA", "X, or whatever because of the cost of making these records. We've never actually recouped the money we spent in recording these records because as a band we've spent so much time and money making each album. I've personally never made money from a record.....well, anything worth talking about above just beer money. My entire income has always been derived from playing live. It would have been different had Ronnie Dio coughed up what he owed me. Then I might have been able to say "Well you know, I'm well enough off to live off my investments," but I've never been afforded that opportunity. But surely there's that musical hunger burning inside which means that you'd have to make and record music and if you did, you'd feel you have to take it to the masses? Yeah, I'd miss playing live. It is really enjoyable and I've no problem with that part. I love playing guitar onstage and I absolutely love playing live with this band. I even love travelling. I just hate being away from the family so much. That's the dichotomy. It becomes just a bit of a trade off. Is there any guilt about not being a tourist when you go to so many fabulous places? I have a lot of guilt about that, yes, but I physically don't have the energy to go out. I mean, my times off-stage are taken up with two things. One is trying to sleep because I have a real hard time trying to sleep, especially when I'm on the road, and the other is working out in the gym because no one loves a fat pop star. So for me to actually see a city I'd need to set my alarm to get up early and do it then.....and to be honest, unless it's somewhere amazing like Prague on the "SLANG"-tour, I just don't have the energy. So what about Russia? Well we do actually have days off while we're there so yes, I'll most certainly be a tourist when we get in Moscow and St Petersburg. Is the show itself physically exhausting or is it the concentration that's the hard thing? The show itself is physically exhausting. It's not like a full workout but it is certainly impossible to do unless you're in good shape. But yeah, the mental part of it comes into it too, although mentally,during a long tour, you get to the point where you can actually do it on auto-pilot. However, that's when it gets dangerous because when you're in that mode and you realize that, the transition from auto-pilot to being totally focused is where you invariably screw up as you just lose the plot. However, the advantage of being in auto-pilot is that you can concentrate more on being a performer because the playing part of it takes care of itself. So that's when I can think "I'll go and make some kinda fuckin' rock star shape over in this part of the stage and entertain the public by making a fool of myself." I read recently that Led Zeppelin always tried to stretch themselves onstage by playing something different or variations of every night. I'd imagine that within the confines of your set, it must be hard to have any room for spontaneity or freeform, but then again, given the tightness of the band and the quality of the players, you could easily stir things about occasionally. But we don't. We're basically of the opinion that if it works, we stick with it. So really the only avenue for any freeform is with my guitar solo at the end of "LOVE BITES". I can make it as long, short or complex as I want. But other than that, even within the confines of playing the same notes in the same pattern, you can play them a lot better or a lot worse from night to night.....and that's all determined by how much passion you put into it which, in turn, is governed by the level of concentration. So if I'm well focussed, I play the way I'm supposed to and if not, it can sometimes be like I'm going through the motions. You know, it can be hard to maintain that level of concentration as we're effectively playing the same songs every night, but at least on this tour though we're chopping and changing the set around. On the "ADRENALIZE"-tour we played for 15, 16 months, some 200 odd shows, and we played exactly the same running order, night after night. And it was a long show -- over 2 hours. Talk about getting bored. That became boring after a while. Growing up in Northern Ireland against a backdrop of 'the troubles'..... Did you see guitar as a means of escape or wasn't it as bad as it seemed to us on the mainland? Yes the latter, it wasn't as bad as it was made out to be. Of course I'm sure it was as bad if you were in the wrong place at the wrong time, but for me it was never like that. So guitar wasn't a means of escape, it's just something I was born to do so it would have been the same if I had been born in Yorkshire or Yugoslavia. Was the scene pretty small and everyone musical knew everyone else? Yes, there weren't a lot of bands and there weren't a lot of people playing. In fact, when I was at school in the 70s, there weren't a lot of people who played instruments. Not like now, where it's quite ridiculous, especially in America where virtually every high school kid plays an instrument and everyone's in a band, and most of them even have their own CD with full artwork and everything. But back then, there wasn't anything like it. In my school of 600 pupils, there was one other guy who played guitar and he was older than me and was really good. Everyone else wanted to be a football player..... so did I until I discovered Marc Bolan! And you kept the hairstyle ever since! Yes indeed. Actually it's looking a bit shaggy so I think I need a haircut. How can you tell? When I find a small family of voles living in it, then I know it's time for a haircut! Looking back on your career, how does it feel now to have been in three of the biggest hard rock bands ever? With reference to one of your earlier questions, it certainly feels like I should be a lot wealthier. And there's a part of me that wonders why I'm not. You have made a huge contribution to hard rock history. I mean, there's so incredibly few people who've done what you have..... The real irony of that is I actually don't like hard rock music. I know it's a strange thing to say, but I don't really care about my past contributions. Even now I still get these guys coming up to me going 'Duuuuuuuude!', giving me the Dio devil sign and yelling "Holy Diver!!" and "Rainbow In The Dark, whoo hoo!!" and it's cool that they remember it, but that music never mattered to me - and still doesn't. But what about the writing of it? These are some of the most recognisable songs to a hard rock fan of the 70s and 80s. Again, they first thing that comes to mind, is why wasn't I actually paid for my contribution to it. Does that tarnish the pride in it? I suppose it does in a way, but only in a little way. I mean, it never did at the time but as years go by and you think about it, it seems a bit fucked up. I did a job for someone and wasn't paid for it..... and that's just wrong. But I must admit I really don't share your opinion that they were major bands. You can't really count Whitesnake as I really had nothing to do with Whitesnake. I just played guitar for one tour. You didn't write anything? No, no one in the band that I toured with had anything to do with the writing of any of it, except of course David Coverdale. He had gone through making that record with John Sykes and a bunch of studio guys and basically, he fired them all and put a new band together for the video and we then went on tour. So we were the face of the record without having contributed. And as with Dio, I don't think that we were that big a band and certainly not all that influential. I agree that the first two records I did with Dio were the best they've ever done. I feel he's yet to better them and I'd imagine there are a lot of people who'd agree but compared to bands like Zeppelin, Purple and Sabbath, they didn't have much impact. But you must miss the fact that in Dio you were the looker in the band. Well jeez, I was half the age of them so I'd be kinda worried if that weren't the case. I wasn't even shaving at that point....! So what were Dio and Coverdale like to work for? Dio is a horrible, horrible human being. And you can quote me on that. Which is strange 'cause all his fans seem to think he's the loveliest person ever. He will go out of his way for them. He'll stand in the pouring rain and driving winds for 14 hours to sign autographs so that every single person has had absolutely everything they wanted signed and he will look every one of them in the eye and shake their hand and thank them for being there. And then he'll go in and shout at the people who actually work for him and humiliate them in whatever way he can, and he'll do it in public, because he has this small man Napoleonic thing where he has to be the top sausage and he has to dominate them maliciously. If he ever had a problem with someone, he would choose to bawl them out onstage during soundcheck whilst he's on the mic so that he ensures that everyone else heard that he was putting someone down. And it didn't matter if you were in the band or in the crew, he just wasn't a nice person. Professionally though, he's a great, great singer..... Probably the best there's ever been in hard rock. He was very consistent. Oh yeah, night after night, he was absolutely on the money. An incredibly strong voice and within that niche genre of dungeons and dragons and rainbows and midgets..... You know, the sorta old school heavy metal, he's an incredible talent. But he's an awful businessman and way more importantly, one of the vilest people in the industry. Your sacking was particularly nasty. It was, yeah. It was basically that when we started, he had promised us that we'd be on an equal footing (financially) once Dio got established. He had said that by the third album it would all be sorted -- the third album came and we had had a couple of platinum records and done successful tours and all of which we got nothing of. I mean, we were salaried guys and it really, really hurt when we were playing the big venues like the Los Angeles Forum and Madison Square Garden and selling them out, doing massive business with a platinum record.....and to be paid less than the lighting designer or the sound engineer. That's just wrong, especially considering that you'd written the music as well. But surely you must have got royalties? We got none of the royalties from the record, absolutely nothing. And we had to fight to even get a meagre publishing deal. If you wrote all of the music of a song with Ronnie, you'd get 25% tops - not 50%, as he'd take the other 25% for arrangement or some other miscellaneous title he'd throw in to screw you over..... And it's just horrible! On top of that, to be treated like a bag of shit as well -- so I called him on it and he sacked me between legs of the tour and got Craig Goldie to replace me. Was it a relief? Absolutely! I've never had any regrets about it 'cause it was the right thing to do! And how long before the Whitesnake gig came up? Not long at all. Certainly within the year. And in the meantime I had worked on some stuff with some friends from Ireland, called Trinity, but we were basically clueless. We had a myriad of different musical styles and we were just way too experimental to be marketable. We certainly recorded some stuff together but around the time that we realized Trinity was going to have to change direction in order to be at all viable, I got a call from Geffen records asking if I was interested in the Whitesnake gig. So they sent me a copy of the record and as soon as I heard it, I knew it was going to be phenomenally huge, so of course I said yes. And the incredible irony is that I did three albums and three tours with Dio and then I did one tour with Whitesnake on the back of an album I had absolutely nothing to do with -- and I made probably made 8 times as much money as I had made in my 4 years with Dio. But basically David Coverdale is a more honourable, generous human being than Ronnie. Even with his revolving door policy? Yes. I mean he had his tantrums and it was clear that it was always his band, his baby, but there was never any pretence that it was any other way. With Dio, there was a pretence and promise never fulfilled. The Whitesnake thing just didn't pan out. So was there the opportunity to stay? Well, there were two issues with Whitesnake that led to my leaving. One was the songwriting issue, where I'd have the choice to stay in Whitesnake but never get to write a song. And that in itself was a dead end option. But he wrote with Sykes and Marsden & Moody.... What he basically wanted was a one-on-one. He worked well with John Sykes and he wanted to work with Adrian Vandenberg. They had the relationship and the chemistry going and I was fine with it and respected it. I just wasn't going to accept it. Also, the fact that I'd just got married that year, and my wife and Tawny Kitaen (who was Coverdale's fiancée, wife and then ex-wife) just didn't get on at all. It got to the stage where David said to me "If we're going on tour again, your wife can't come out when Tawny's there". And that was just like the push that made me say, "See you later!" 'cause it definitely wasn't going to work out then. And it makes me smile that here I am, 15 years later, still married, and his relationship with Tawny lasted about a year and a half and it cost him about 5 million dollars. So moving to your current 'employers', what was the audition like? It wasn't an actual audition, it was more like [adopts his best Julie Andrews singing voice] Getting to know you, getting to know all about you. I had heard that there were two people in the running, you and some guy from Birmingham who didn't even own a guitar. I think John Sykes was also in the running and there may have been a short list of names, but I knew I was going to play guitar in Def Leppard. I didn't care if they had got Jimmy Page to come and audition, I knew I was gonna get that fuckin' gig. I always felt it was right, and I remember going to see Def Leppard for the first time at the beginning of the "HYSTERIA"-tour, and then I saw them again at the end of it at Irvine Meadows in LA, and just thought what a great band they were and how I'd absolutely love to be in that band, 'cause you could tell it was a real band. It wasn't manufactured in any way. You could see that they had grown up together, that they were connected and had experienced the highs and lows together. You could just feel it and see it in the performance. And was it almost like ' I want a piece of that'? Yeah, I hadn't felt that since Sweet Savage, my first band in Ireland. I just felt like I would be so perfect for that band. It was about a year after Steve died and they had finished the "ADRENALIZE" record, when they decided to look for another guitar player. And actually, Joe called me, as he was the only one of the band I actually knew and he felt I was the right guy so he was the one who suggested me to the others. But with Def Leppard being such a democratic band, it had to go through the whole vetting process. So it wasn't so much an audition, it was more like a personality test. 'Cause they knew I could play, they just didn't know how we'd all get on. Joe knew it and I knew it, so it didn't really matter to me if they had somehow brought up the remains of Jimi Hendrix and had brought him to life and I was told I was up against Hendrix. I knew I was getting that gig and I knew that I was perfect for Def Leppard. I knew it was the kinda band I needed to be in. The first time you appeared in public as a member of Def Leppard was at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Show at Wembley Stadium. That's a pretty tough intro! You know it, was actually a piece of piss. It was so easy 'cause I was so well prepared. Even the first time I went down to see the band, I had listened to their records so much that I actually knew the songs better than they did! It had been a while since Phil had actually played what it was he had played all those years ago, whereas I had just played it the previous night, so I felt perfectly comfortable with all the parts. And then when I actually joined and had received the little instructions as to how Def Leppard sing, 'cause there is a certain vocal style where you fall off words and stuff, I felt very, very comfortable. In fact, it's easier for me to do the really big gigs. It's a personal thing because I can't not look at the audience and I can't not make eye contact. So if there's people looking at me, sooner or later I end up looking at them. Once you make eye contact with someone you have this awareness that you're really close to the audience. However at Wembley Stadium, the front of the audience was about 80 feet away. I was ignoring the photographers and the security, 'cause I don't look at them anyway, so all I could see was this mass of people and it made it more comfortable as it's not so intimate. However, I was knocked out of my comfort zone when we started having technical problems and then I think everyone became nervous. But I could tell that it was different for the other guys, because they had been so used to it being Steve where I now was, so it was very different for them and that was enough reason for them to be a little.....edgy about it. Twleve years down the line, do you still ever feel like the new guy? I'll always be the new guy. It's really weird but I always feel that someone's missing when we sit down in a room together to talk about something. I do a sort of headcount and go 'OK, who's not here? Bass, guitars, drums, singer.....oh, that's 5!" I dunno, I guess 'cause Steve's not there, there's always that feeling. Even though I was never part of that dynamic. How long did it take before you truly felt like an integral part of the democratic songwriting writing process in Leppard? You know, [manager] Peter Mensch once said to me that 'Everyone in this band is equal, it's just that some are more equal that others'. So yeah, it's democratic but it can also be very political. In politics, basically if you want something to happen, you have to have a lot of energy and you have to go out and stump and convince people. It's the same with songwriting within Def Leppard. You really have to believe in a song and have to go one-on-one and win over everyone else's opinion. It's not just a case of saying "Here, I think this song is good, what do you think?" You may be able to hear what it's gonna sound like in your head, but unless you have the technical chops to actually make it happen on a demo level, it requires a lot of politicising which is something I have never, ever been good at. Fortunately, one thing I am getting good at, is making it happen on the demo level as I'm becoming more technical proficient in the recording department and with technology being as it is with ProTools and such, it's getting easier for me. But how long did it actually take before you knew you had found your niche within the songwriting environment within the band? I still think it's in a state of flux. I mean, I still think every record has been different and I didn't feel that on the "SLANG" record because that record was such a departure. And I didn't agree philosophically with what we did on that one. I thought it was a mistake, and still think it was. What exactly was the mistake? I think you do things in a question of degrees. If you're Coca Cola and you want to change the taste of the drink, you do it slightly. Remember New Coke? It came out, it bombed and they had to go back to regular Coke -- that's what the people loved and wanted. Success can be a bit of a double-edged sword. If you have a lot of success, you're kinda expected to stick somewhat to that formula and there's only a certain amount that you can diversify from that. Did you really feel it was such a dramatic departure? I think it was too dramatic a change. I felt we took about a 90 degree change and I felt we should have been looking more at about 30 degrees. But it was still a Leppard album with rockier songs, ballads, harmonies..... No, there were no harmonies, they were banished. And big vocals, production, big choruses, melodies and hooks weren't as important as attitude. And I think that for a band who were known for hooky, melodic songs with big production and choruses, that we went just too far. Don't get me wrong, I like the way it sounds and sonically, I love the freshness of it. The real drums, the edgy guitars. Where I think we let ourselves down was by ignoring melody and song structure. We went more for attitude and the whole grunge thing. Was "WORK IT OUT" wrong for it, given that it was your major contribution to the album? I thought that if "WORK IT OUT" had been given the same songwriting process that we gave to all the songs on "EUPHORIA" and "X", if it had been given that kind of attention, it would have become a much better song. But it was accepted as a whole and we don't normally do that. It wasn't much different to the demo. It wasn't in terms of the song, but in terms of the way it was stylised, it was totally different, which was good. The sonics are interesting, but I think that as a song, it's lacking. The chorus falls down instead of rises up the way a great a great pop song chorus should, and I think that's where the other guys should have come in and Leppardized it. But it was accepted as it was and that's the way most of the songs on "SLANG" happened, because the band weren't in the headspace to be able to think about melody, since we were trying too hard not to be Def Leppard. And I think that sorta denial is unhealthy. You know, it's like you get up in the morning and look at yourself in the mirror, thinking "I wish my nose wasn't as big" or "I wish I had green eyes instead of brown", "I wish my teeth were straighter" or whatever. But you know, at the end of it, having self-acceptance is incredibly healthy and people have to come to that level of awareness in order to have a balanced perspective. And I think that as a band we didn't have that acceptance at that time. We were so busy denying who we were and I think that's wrong. I just think we went too far, and coupled with the fact that we spent an absolute fortune making it and the obvious fact that we were just pissing against the wind , as we knew we were gonna have a hard time selling the record no matter what it sounded like, that's a period of intense frustration for me. Are you prouder of it now? I can't say I'm actually proud of it. I still love the way the record sounds. I think it's energetic and sonically, I think it sounds better than "EUPHORIA" or "X", as I believe that sonically, less is more. But in terms of it being a Def Leppard album, no, it's not something I consider to be an great achievement. For me, I think it always sounds fresh when I play it. Yeah, that's because of the sonics. You can tell that there's an honesty to it in the way it's been recorded, which is maybe pummelled [smiles] out of every other Leppard record because we process stuff and multi-layer things so much, which is appropriate at times but there's always a balance that has to be achieved. You've got to know how much to throw into the mix and how much to leave out. But of course, you talk to every other member of the band and they'll all have different opinions on it, especially with regards to "SLANG". I mean, when we went off to Spain to record it, the only agenda was that it couldn't sound like a typical Def Leppard album, which I totally concurred with. But we seemed to be too ready to accept whatever we came up with, if it didn't sound like Leppard of old. So I came in with "WORK IT OUT" and it was like, OK, that's a song. Then Phil came in with "TURN TO DUST".....actually, scratch that cause that was a really, really good song which did have a good chorus. But we knew we were in a lose-lose situation, cause we didn't fit into the music of that time, so we knew we were gonna get panned whatever we did. The amazing thing was that we got a lot of critical respect for trying something new and I think that Q magazine even had "SLANG" as one of the albums of the year -- but I'll always take public acclaim over critical acclaim 'cause for me, the public are way more important than the critics. Is it strange even now when you get people who still can't accept you as Steve's replacement? I've never met any. Honest to God, I've never met one Def Leppard fan who told me he or she can't accept me as his replacement. What about reading it? I've never read about it either. Unless I'm living under a rock, I've never seen that stuff. I certainly occasionally see banners saying Steve Clark R.I.P. and that's fine by me. But even if I did see stuff, I couldn't let that affect me. All I can do is be the best I can be and try to contribute my best work to this band. And if it's not good enough for the Steve fans, I'm sorry, but I can't be another Steve. If they can't accept me now, they never will. I just have to be true to myself, to give everything I can and just hope that the most ardent fan of Steve's will at least give me the acknowledgement that I'm doing a pretty good job and I'm honouring his legacy. It's kinda like when Phil played Mick Ronson's solo on "MOONAGE DAYDREAM" (which was one of Mick's best known solos) at Ronno's Hammersmith Apollo tribute show with Mick's widow in the audience. She was crying 'cause he did it so note perfectly, that it reminded her so much of Mick's playing. All credit to Phil for pulling that one off and if people feel even a quarter of that when I'm doing one of Steve's solos, that's good enough for me. Has 12 years with Def Leppard affected your style of playing in any way, especially given that with many of the songs, you have to interpret someone else's style? I was definitely a more technical player before I joined Def Leppard, and I actually played more guitar. I don't actually play a lot of guitar within this band. In my previous bands, well, in Dio, I was the only guitarist. In Whitesnake, Adrian Vandenberg and I were very competitive with each other; if we played 20 songs in a Whitesnake show, I made sure that I had 10 guitar solos and he made sure that he played 10. And God forbid that we ever did a 21st song, because that would have meant that one of us would play one more solo that the other! [laughs] But you've got to remember that that was the 80s and people actually cared about guitar solos then. Not that I would give a flying fuck now though! It's not as challenging to me as a guitarist to play what I do in Def Leppard, but the trade-off is that I can sing now. I've become a much, much, much, much better singer since I joined Leppard. So professionally, have you reached the optimum scenario? I get to play in, and contribute to, one of the greatest bands there's ever been. I tour with four of the nicest guys in the industry and get to play to amazing audiences and meet some wonderful, interesting people. I mean, how good is that? But you can never be totally happy with it all and I've never been totally satisfied with anything Def Leppard does, because with satisfaction comes a certain degree of complacency. And you should always strive to improve everything you do because if you don't, there's always someone who will do it better. Does Clock [Viv's side project band] give you some creative freedom then? Yeah, I suppose that Clock is a much more pure outlet for me although it barely exists. Given that all the members professionally tour with other bands, it's hard to keep it going because we know there's no end result there. The only reason it exists is as something for us all to get our jollies from. We're never gonna sell records and everyone knows that we're never gonna tour other than a few club shows around LA, so there's this feeling of why are we doing it, and the only reason I can give is that it's fun. But when we started, none of us had children, and now three out of the four of us have them, so I don't know how much longer it will exist. But yeah, it is a purer expression of how I would hear a song. What I hear in my head invariably ends up as the finished product. I don't have to write things with a mind to make it a Def Leppard song. That's been a difficult thing for me, songwise, to actually write things in the Def Leppard mind-set 'cause I've never naturally done it that way. I notice that when Phil and Joe write, their songs just have that natural Def Leppardness to them. When I write songs, they never sound anything like that and it's only on the last record that I was actually able to manifest my actual ideas as Def Leppard songs..... Leppardize them, so to speak. And it's not just a question of production, but it's also a question of the actual songwriting and the song structure. So when I do write stuff and demo them and actually sing them, it's very difficult for me to try to structure things the way that Joe would sing them. I tend to write it the way I would do it, whereas Phil doesn't have that problem, since his and Joe's voice are actually very similar. So that requires a lot of mental effort from me when I'm writing. I also have to try to delineate things when I'm writing songs as to what could go into the Leppard bin and what would be so leftfield from what Leppard are ever going to do that I'd have to find some other outlet for it, be it Clock, or whatever third party. Would you ever want to see your songs with some other artist? I would love to! In fact, ultimately I'd love to spend more time being a songwriting producer. You know, to be able to develop other artists. I mean, I really do think I'd make a good producer, as I'm pretty good at that whole aspect of it. I think it's mostly because I've been in Leppard for the last 12 years and I've been forced to learn it because Def Leppard is such a studio band. So could that be in the unfulfilled ambitions category? Absolutely! That's not to say I'd ever consider doing it instead of being in Def Leppard. I'd very much see myself doing that in addition to being in the band. Best of both worlds so to speak. It's very exciting for me to potentially be able to share 20 odd years worth of experiences and knowledge of the industry.....what I've learned as a writer, a musician and in the studio with all the bands I've been in, especially with Def Leppard. And coupled with the teckie skills I'm rapidly acquiring..... It's a very exciting prospect for me. How weird is it having websites dedicated to you? It's very flattering, but it's a totally bizarre concept. And it leaves a lot of margins for error. Even in the printed press, there's so much shit that I've read over the years, which is so far off the mark. You know like "Vivian Campbell was quoted as saying blah blah blah....." and I look at it, and I've never said that in my fuckin' life -- in some cases I've never even met the person that had supposedly spoken to me. I remember right after I joined Def Leppard and I was rehearsing in Dublin for the "ADRENALIZE" tour..... I opened an English newspaper and it had a little article that said 'Irish guitarist joins Def Leppard - set to make 2 million pounds overnight'. I mean, where do they conjure up that figure from? Why would they think that anyone would get that kind of money from joining a band? I'll bet you're still waiting for your 2 million? Emmm, something like that..... [laughs] But there's a lot of trust there, considering that, more often that not, the people running the fan sites don't actually know you and yet they're presenting an image of you? Well you know, I never really go on any of the Def Leppard chatrooms or message boards, so I don't really know what they say about me there. There is a site about me, Vivian Campbell.com, that I wasn't even aware of until April of this year, which is run by a couple of girls, one of whom I think is from Texas and the other is from New York. So I did go on their site and I gotta say, it is very flattering and I think it portrays me in a very good light. So I was very impressed by that site, but I think that in anything you see written about me or attributed to me, it has to be taken with a pinch of salt. Even this interview? Absolutely! Especially this interview!!! And finally, your guitar tech, Dave Wolff used to be simply known as just a guitar tech. But now he's reached god-like status in the world of anal pyrotechnics. Are you proud? Embarrassed? Well, it's a whole new art form of perversity actually. Yes anal pyrotechnics!! [laughs]. It's a whole new kink. I thought it was an incredibly bizarre thing to do but hey, who am I to judge what he does on his night off? Tempted? Personally? NO!!! And you know what, the masochistic bastard did it without lube. You know, I said to him afterwards, "I hope you lubed it well", and he said "No, because if I had lubed it, it would have shot out of there when we lit it," so he had to shove it up there dry..... Ah, the things people do in the name of entertainment....!!!