http://www.leader.net/news/207defl.htm

KAOS2000 Magazine
June 5, 2002
Interview with:
Joe Elliott (Def Leppard)

If a band was ever deserving of
praise due to endless persistence and determination,
Def Leppard would be that band. First, by breaking the
age barriers when they introduced their first full
album - the members at the time were between 15 and 18
years old. Then they went on to score some major hits,
perform at some amazing shows, and as well suffer
through some serious hardships. Only one of these
hardships would have been enough to end the careers of
many other artists but Def Leppard has never known how
to quit. They went on doing what they do in order to
prove - to themselves, if no one else - that true
success means never giving up. No matter how things
may go - good or bad - the true test of character is
decided in how one reacts during the worst of
times.

Def Leppard has been around for
going on just over twenty-one years and there is no
slowing down in sight. We recently had a chance to
speak with Joe Elliott, lead screamer for the band,
about his career with the group, some background
catching up, and also about his collaboration with
ex-British Lions guitarist Ray Majors on Ray's new
album - which features Joe's vocals on one
track.

As always the consummate
professional, we were lucky enough to get the chance
to chat with him during some studio time. He was more
than happy to share some insights about the inner
workings of what he does.

(At this point, we
had been discussing song structures and how it applies
to what the band does when creating new
music.)

K2K:
In talking about song structuring... have you ever
thought about just writing without any structure in
mind?

JE:  Well, yeah. In
fairness, when you listen to things like "On The
Inside," it's structured... I don't think it's
possible to write a song that is not structured in
some form. Even by being deconstructed, it's
constructed in a different way. There's no such thing
as an unconstructed song because that would just be
musical anarchy. It would just be what you were
describing about the Neil Young thing. But there's no
way that you can go, "Well, let's do the chorus
first." I mean, you can, because... like on
"Make Love Like A Man" off of "Adrenalize," the chorus
is the first thing you hear. But, it's still sections.
Every song has sections, whether it would be Public
Image, Ltd., the Clash or Faust, there are sections.
When we try to write a pop song, we go for standard
pop arrangements, even to the point where we will go
to the key change at the end, which is really cheesy.
It's the kind of thing that "Sugar, Sugar" was based
on by the Archies, or the Partridge Family. Even
"Crazy Horses" is a good song, by the Osmonds. I've
known many bands who have covered that. It's just a
great song. I bought it in a brown, paper bag because
I didn't want anyone to know I had it.

K2K: My personal Osmond
favorite was "Burning Bridges" off of Donny's first
album.

JE: I don't know that one.
The only Osmond songs that I'm aware of are "Crazy
Horses" and "One Way Ticket To Anywhere," which I
thought was a good song. It was like, maybe
psychologically, the forerunner of "Two Tickets To
Paradise" that Eddie Money did. There are many songs
that have that riff.

K2K: What I'm kind of finding
from you though, is that - as a band - you seem very
business-oriented. More professional, I should say, in
the sense of thinking things out all the way through.
What I was getting at is - do you ever just get
together to jam, kind of like on the first album, and
then just throw a song together, and not think about
where it goes?

JE: Let me tell you
something. Every song on that first album was written
and rewritten and rewritten and come back to. We'd
play them live for six months and then someone would
come back and say, "I've got a better chorus for this
song." and we'd change it. "Summer Is A Woman" used to
be called "Misty Dreamer." There are songs on that
album that were written... "Wasted" was written in an
evening. "When The Walls Come Tumbling Down" was
written over about 2 1/2 weeks. You're inspired by a
riff, but you have to turn that riff into a song. I
wouldn't say "business oriented" either, but
professional for sure. We've always wanted to be
visualized, and seen on stage, as a band that go for
it, like the Stones, or even KISS, or Mott The Hoople,
or the New York Dolls, or Aerosmith, who just get up
there and do it. Whether we're in the studio or in the
rehearsal room writing songs, we have a sensibility
that's akin to Carole King, or Dianne Warren, or David
Gates, or Lennon and McCartney, or Jagger and
Richards. It's where the song is king. Then we flock
the f*** out of it later on. We always have this thing
about, "This is a fantastic chord arrangement. We
should try to get this into one of our songs." Then
we'd from James Taylor's "You've Got A Friend" if we
have to. 

We are just fans of music, we are
not fans of a specific kind of music. We just happen
to be a rock band. Until we explain ourselves,
sometimes people don't understand why we limit
ourselves to just being a rock band. It's because that
is what we like doing. When we get up onstage,
sometimes the songs that we've been laboring over in
the studio - and then you've got studio-head on where
everybody is laid back and writing these real clever,
clever songs... you get into the rehearsal room to
play them... when your real personality takes over,
when you're standing up at the microphone, not sitting
back in a chair playing guitar... and you actually
start performing these songs, they are too weak. They
don't fit the format of the personalities within the
band. Which is why "Personality Crisis" by New York
Dolls would be a much easier play for this band than
"Crazy" by Seal. "Crazy" by Seal is a fantastic song
to sit and listen to on studio speakers, but I
wouldn't want to stand up and play it at Madison
Square Gardens. So you get me in front of a microphone
and I'll do "Personality Crisis" and I'll give it
everything it's got. 

It's like, we always tried to make
records that would sound good in a live environment.
Of course, being from Sheffield, it was either this or
work in a factory until we're 65. That stage had to be
at Madison Square Gardens, not CBGB's. We weren't
going to be a club band. We were going to be the
biggest band on the planet. We were going to be the
next Who or the next Beatles or the next Stones, or
Led Zeppelin. That's what we had to do. We had that
bullish attitude. I almost doubted it, that we were
actually not good enough to back that up, for a long
time. Then it fell into place. By the time it fell
into place, everything else was already in place. The
only thing missing, and that came from the experience
of playing a lot, was learning the craft from people
like Mutt, in the studio. The craft on stage came from
our own DNA from the age of 12 onwards, watching 200
hundred bands and soaking up all the best of it and
spewing out the bits that we thought was cheesy. Then
you get up onstage and you become part Roger Daltrey,
part Jimmy Page, part Robert Plant, part Davey
Johanson, part Mark Bolin, and then part you.
Eventually the "you" comes out and you disregard the
other bits, but they got you to be somewhere. That's
the way that we've always worked. It's a case of -
until we don't feel comfortable doing that, then
that's the way we always will do it. We've never been
a band to stand there and play. 

I remember seeing April Wine at
Sheffield City Hall and they never broke a sweat in
two hours. All these wireless systems and none of them
moved. I never saw the point. That was 1981, 82. There
were wireless systems. When we go wireless, you
couldn't keep us on the stage. We were off into the
crowd and onto the PA stacks. We were everywhere.
These guys stood in front of their microphones all
night. I thought, "What is the point? You might as
well be on a lead. You'd have a better sound. You're
not doing anything."

K2K: The one thing that Def
Leppard gets knocked for is being "over-produced" and
slick.

JE: Yeah. That's right.
We've made one of the most over-produced records of
all time, and also one of the most successful records
of all time too. "Hysteria."

K2K: Do you like that
terminology used for you though?
Over-produced.

JE: I think what that is is
a journalist who had two minutes to finish his article
when he can't think of a better way of saying it. It's
big production. It's huge. It's using studio
technology to your benefit. You don't go in and play
live and then just take the tapes and get them
mastered. You have to create.

K2K: With the amount of
production that you do put in, I have always wondered
how much of that carries over to the live performance.
Is there anything that we don't see added to the
shows? 

JE:  The way that we do it
is... well, you take something like "Bohemian
Rhapsody" by Queen. There's no way that they can do
that middle section live, so they use a tape. Now,
we've never done that. What I respect Queen for is
that they had the vision, in the studio, to write that
song and they didn't say, "Well, we can't do this
because we can't possibly perform it live." That is
totally restricting yourself. They decided to write a
song and take it to its fullest extent, as far as it
can go. If it meant Freddie doing a million vocals
himself, then that's what he did. Queen could have
easily said, "Well, we can't do this." It's like sixty
people singing opera. Why not? It's a song. If it
takes four people to pretend to be eighty people,
that's using studio technology to your advantage.


When it comes to us doing things,
people might have listened to it and thought, "How the
hell are they going to do that live?" You do
alternatives when you play. The song "Hysteria" has
eleven guitar parts. What we did is made a hybrid of
them into two - the ones that people could really hear
and the ones that aren't that important to hear live.
Also, what we did do, which is the best thing we ever
did, was that we would s*** our pants when we heard
these finished mixes and we would go, "Holy f***, this
is going to be hard." And we'd have to rehearse twice
as hard. It made us a better band, unto the point
where - I could pull out a dozen reviews that said,
"Def Leppard, whose backing vocals are so obviously on
tape..." No they weren't. We have never used tape.
Never, ever. The only thing that we've ever used that
you could deem "not real" are drum loops, because Rick
basically, with one arm, I think moreso than anybody
else has got an excuse to use them. Any drummer you
see who has headphones on is playing to drum
loops.

Now, we've used loops because...
on the song "Rock It," there are these Burundi black
drum beats - these huge drums with loads of toms. It
would take sixteen people playing tom-toms to play
that sound live. So Rick sampled those drums into a
trigger and that's about the only thing that we cheat
on. We sing every word. We don't use anything except
drum loops. Sav uses bass pedals if he needs to
embellish something when he moves onto acoustic
guitar, or the bass goes out, he plays the pedals.
That's just like [Led Zeppelin's] John Paul
Jones used to do. He played bass pedals and keyboards
when he wasn't playing the bass. We utilize everything
that we can to get it to sound good. I don't believe
that we are that good that people would think we are
[a taped band]. I hear the harmonity when we
play live. They are good. Everyone in this band can
sing. In fact, I'm probably the bottom of the f***ing
pile. They really are good singers. We rehearse and we
work them out. We practice. We sing every day, on
tour. We do vocal exercises in the dressing room
before we go on stage, every single day. It's the only
way we can sound... If we want to sound better than
anybody else, we want people to think that we're using
tapes. At first, I thought it was an insult and then I
understood that it was a left-handed compliment. The
more people who think that, the more I can say,
"Sorry. You're wrong." I can say that with my hand on
any Bible.

K2K: It's funny that we would
be talking about this. KISS has been going on the road
this time around talking about how "real" they are and
then I just found out that they are playing to tapes.
One of our writers actually saw and heard when a
guitar went out but the sound didn't.

JE:  People should know
better, or they should do their homework. After you've
come and seen the band, maybe two or three times, they
stand down in front, in front of Vivian or in front of
Phil. Immediately they know we're playing live,
because there isn't a gig we've done where somebody
hasn't made a bum note or wrong word or been slightly
out of tune. We're not the most perfect band. That's
one of our biggest deals. We come back to the dressing
room and go, "Did anybody hear that hollering on 'Rock
Till You Drop'?" and then it was, "Yeah, that was me.
I was looking at a girl's tits." You know, that's the
way we are. We make mistakes but when we get it right,
there ain't anybody better. At least in my
eyes.

K2K: When we're talking about
doing one's homework... I don't think that people look
back to respect or remember that you guys - for the
amount of hard work that you've done - have had to
work infinitely harder than other bands due to the
problems that you've had occur.

JE: All these problems?
Only really two. Steve died. Rick lost his arm. Pete
Willis wasn't a problem, Pete Willis was a relief.
We've had no more problems than anybody else. You want
to talk about problems, you talk to Lynyrd Skynyrd.
Talk to the Grateful Dead as to why they've had four
keyboard players die. We haven't had the problems that
Guns 'N' Roses have had. There's four guys who used to
be in that band who really wish that they still were.
They've got a singer whom they can't deal with.
There's a load of people out there who may be over it
now, but throughout, I'd say, the mid-90s, were just
dying for G'N'R to come back. Believe it or not,
amongst all the Nirvana and Pearl Jam euphoria that
was going off, there were a lot of people in America
who didn't care for it. They wanted G'N'R or Motley
Crue or Rolling Stones or something that was
alternative to the alternative. 

Most problems, other than what
I've just mentioned, that this band have had, we've
brought on ourselves. Like spending so long in the
studio and having to start from scratch. People forget
that "Hysteria" was a big-selling record. When it
first came out, we had no momentum whatsoever. It was
four years since "Pyromania." We had let six million
album sales go. We had record companies saying, "You
have to have a record out by 1985." Well, in 1985 we
didn't have a record. We didn't have anything close to
a record. It would have been the worst disaster of all
time if we would have released what he had finished by
1985.

K2K: What did take you so long?

JE: We weren't happy with
the songs. We weren't happy with the direction we were
going in. We had these songs, they kept constantly
getting changed. Technology was moving along so fast,
and things were moving along so fast that, by the time
we had a song finished, early on in the project, eight
months later when we would listen to it, it was out of
date already. So we'd constantly feel dated. So we
were basically refreshing the songs all the way
through. The basis of the songs were there, but we'd
go back and change bits because the sounds were
getting old. There were new ones coming along that
were great. We just had the inner strength to deal
with it and had the producer who was willing to deal
with it, who was pushing us along to actually further
it. The opening lines at the beginning of the project
was, "Why can't a rock band do an album like
'Thriller'?" The answer was, "There is no reason why."
It had six hit singles. Why can't a rock band have six
hit singles off of an album. So that's what we tried
to do. Luckily we achieved it. So that was like, "Why
can't you get to the moon?" It was like, we were
looking further than to climb a tree. We wanted to do
something that nobody else had ever done. We wanted to
make the heavy metal "Sgt. Pepper" or do "Surf's Up"
in a more rocky way. We wanted it to be an outstanding
record that people could put a Def Leppard record in
their Top 100 of their all-time albums and actually
sit comfortably there and not embarrass anybody,
journalists or band. That's always been the
yardstick.

K2K: What I'm hearing from you
is that you still have the love of
music.

JE: Absolutely.

K2K: I read an interview with
Vivian last year. Somebody had asked him a question,
like I did to you, about just going in to jam and
write a song. He made a comment about "Slang" being
your 'alternative' album. He said something along the
lines of, "We tried writing for ourselves, but it
didn't work and didn't sell as well, so we're going
back to what we are, which is formula. It's not about
the music, it's about the formula. We have a formula
and that's what we do." Is that really something fair
to say, as a musician?

JE: Well, I can't really
get inside Vivian's head, but I know what he's trying
to get across. I think it depends on how the question
was worded.

K2K: The question was, "Do you
write music for yourselves?"

JE: If we'd have sat down
and said, "Oh, this is what the front row wants." What
I think he's trying to get across is... What we did
with "Slang" was we tried to make a record that didn't
sound like anything that we had made in the past. It
was 1994 when we started it. It was 1995 by the time
we got going. We were aware that what was going on in
the industry at the time was so removed from what had
made us successful. It would have been as warranted in
the music business as another Dokken album. We knew.
We actually sat down once... We [Phil Collen and
Joe] were having dinner while we were making
"Slang" and he said, "You know, it's a real shame that
songwriting has gone out of fashion. I'm too good to
play my instrument." If you actually listen to a lot
of the bands that came out in the 1990s, the couldn't
really play very well. They were more akin to The
Clash than to Van Halen. But they went more for the
feel. It was more of a Neil Young thing than it was a
Van Halen thing. 

Once you have enough of that
thrown down your throat, that becomes the yardstick
and everybody's standards drop, and people forget.
They want to hear new stuff, but the new stuff is not
as good, or maybe they thought some of the older stuff
was overdone. I don't know. That's down to
individuals. What we did when we did "Slang" was we
tried to make an album that was more like a mid-period
Led Zeppelin record with a bit of unusual stuff added
into it. Like when we did "Breathe A Sigh," it's very
much... Boyz II Men could have done that song. We did
"Slang" and it's very hip hop. Then when we did the
song called "Truth," it's almost like a pop version of
Nine Inch Nails. We did, on that record, what we've
done on every album. We listened to what was going on
at the time and we stole the bits that we thought were
relevant. When we did "Pour Some Sugar On Me," it was
only written because Run DMC and Aerosmith had done
"Walk This Way." All of the sudden, rock and rap did
mix, so we wrote our own. 

When it came to doing "Slang," the
current music trends and the things that you could
steal from weren't from the same bag that we'd been
able to choose from before. It was such a radical
explosion. It was very similar to when punk took up in
Britain. It just blew Supertramp and Rod Stewart and
all that rock right off the planet. Yet, as it
happens, the biggest selling album in Britain in 1979
was "Breakfast In America." So there were always
people there, but the one's that wrote - the Charles
Shaw Murray's - what's happening in the Clash and the
Buzzcocks, they didn't want to know about Supertramp.
Supertramp would sell records, but they wouldn't get
front page. Sid Vicious got the front page because he
would get his nose broken on stage. Things like that.
It was better press. That's what it all came down to.
It was, "This is better copy than the bearded twat on
the piano." That's what we were up against in 1996.
Rather than go, like bands like Styx did when we came
along and they rolled over and died, we stood up to
the challenge and said, "F*** you lot. We can do
better than that." So we used Indian string
arrangements on "Turn To Dust." We used dulcimers on
"Where Does Love Go When It Dies." We used hip hop
rhythms on stuff. We did one song with the drums in
the swimming pool so we'd get the John Bonham sound.
We literally stole from "When The Levee
Breaks."

K2K: How well did that album
sell?

JE: Worldwide, about 3
million. In America it did nothing. In Japan and the
Far East, South America and Europe, it was great. Some
people got it and some people didn't. Classic Def
Leppard fans - conservative type Def Leppard fans
would go, "Not really them is it." People who were
craving for us to do something different were going,
"Whoa! Yeah! Yes!" It was our Led Zeppelin "III." I've
read all the back stuff that Plant had said. Everybody
wanted Zeppelin "II" again, which is exactly why they
didn't do it. We like to be awkward as musicians
sometimes. We want to throw people a 360°. That
was our 360°. It was us expressing ourselves. We
had done three albums that were major epic studio
things. We were using studio embellishments to make
them bigger, larger than life. We were making albums
that were akin to a Steven Spielberg movie. Then, all
of the sudden, we wanted to make "Trainspotting," just
to say that we've done it. It was an experiment. I'm
not going to say that it was a failed one because I
enjoy the "Slang" record immensely. I stand by it
100%. I can understand why some people didn't get it.
It's very, very different. It's more punky sounding.
The rock still sounds more like it could have been
done by Aerosmith or New York Dolls. "Breathe A Sigh"
sounds like it could have been Mariah Carey or Boyz II
Men. It's a very mixed bag of stuff. It's just very,
very different, but it just didn't appeal to the
average Def Leppard fan.

What you have to understand is,
when we went in to start doing this new album, it
wasn't a case of, like, you could smell the burning
rubber from the backpedaling from having to make a
copy of "Hysteria." What we did was, we went in there
seven years after we last wrote standard pop songs.
Most bands don't even last that long. Those seven
years, for us to be away from our standard sound, was
maybe actually refreshing for us to go - I don't like
to say "go back" - but move into that territory once
again, and write songs that we'd written that were
based on the classics that I had mentioned
before.

K2K: We could call it "renewing it."

JE: Yeah. U2 had just done
exactly the same thing and they get razed for it. They
just have done an album that sounds like "The
Unforgettable Fire." It's got bits on it with the
classic edged "chika-chika-chika-chika" guitar. The
critics love it. They all say that they've gone back
to their sound. When people were saying that we had
gone back to our sound, they were saying it with a
negative connotation. When they were saying it with
U2, it was with a positive connotation. Now that is
what I find, within the industry, is to be bigotry
towards the fact that we are just a rock band and U2
is supposed to be the saviors of the world. You know
what I mean? And fine. U2 has that on their side, and
more power for it. I don't knock U2. I knock the guy
who doesn't give us the same amount of credit for
exactly the same thing.

K2K: On the other hand, how
many albums did the last one sell for
you?

JE: It sold almost three
times, in America, than "Slang" did.

K2K: So, in other words, who
cares what the critics think.

JE: Exactly. I don't care.
I'm just aware. I don't care whether it's raining, but
I can explain to you for an hour how it's miserable
because it is. It's just something I'm aware of. I'm
not holding any bitterness towards anybody. I also
understand that sometimes, if a journalist is given
six albums to review in four days, he can't possibly
get his chops down to the whole meaning of what
somebody's spent 18 months doing. He's given, by his
editor, 48 hours to review Alannis Morrisette's next
album. At the same time, he's got to hoover the
apartment, feed the cat, do his laundry, whatever, and
be listening to this record. I don't believe that
anybody ever sits down, locks the door, turns the
lights off, puts on headphones, and goes, "Right. I'm
going to listen to this uninterrupted."

(We got into talking about how
different reviewers may or may not listen to albums
all the way through, if at all. This takes us to a
discussion about the late, legendary Lester
Bangs.)

JE: The guy at least had
the balls to stand up, six months later, and say, "I
got this totally wrong." I just don't like these
idiots who buy a pen, and then they think they're
journalists. That's like me giving my guitar to my
f***ing babysitter, if I had one, and saying she's a
guitarist.

(This brings us to
talking about a certain nameless writer who is known
for changing his mind about reviews when and if he
decides to like an artist personally, or dislike
him.)

K2K: I thought, "How can you
change your mind just because this person was nice to
you?" He has no spine in his body.

JE: Well most of them
don't. Unfortunately, that breeds a type of musician
who will not be himself in front of certain
journalists, to gain further popularity. Everybody
does it. We're even guilty of it. You do things that
you don't feel comfortable doing. The one thing that
we don't do is, when photographers say, "I want you to
stand with your fists out." We just tell them to "F***
off." We do meet-and-greets. I have to go shake hands
with twenty people whom I've never met just because
they happen to be Def Leppard fans. It's not always a
pleasant experience, even for them. If I'm in the
middle of vocal warm-ups and my voice is a little bit
ropey and I know that that 25 minutes is going to f***
my gig up, I'm not happy doing it. It's not that I
don't want to meet these people, it's just that it's
an interference to the most important part of my day -
which is two hours on stage. Sometimes you have to do
it. But I've never sucked up to a journalist and I
never will, because I don't care what they write. It's
like you said, it doesn't really make any difference.
If they're at least honest enough to put my opinion
across, they can say what they want about me.

I must admit, when I was at
[photographer] Ross Halfin's house once, he's
got Enemy, Sounds, and Record Mirrors and Discs going
back to 1964, 1965. When you used to buy them back
then, they were like information booklets more than
anything else. It would be, "The Hollies have a new
album out. It's called 'blah, blah, blah' and it's on
the Parlaphone label and it's released on the 11th of
December. Interview with Alan Clark, page 12." Now
it's, "See the old, fat f***. Meatloaf has got a new
album out. Who cares? Review, page 31." Now they put
their opinions on news articles, not just on the
reviews. People have been doing bad reviews since
newspapers have been invented and you have to accept
that. It's a critics opinion. 

To be quite honest, I only read Q
Magazine because they're humorous, even when they're
slagging people off. They used to have a column called
"Who The Hell Does Such And Such Think He Is?".
Normally they used to pick on a journalist, or Cedar
Stringfellow, or some f***. They very rarely did it
with musicians. They did it with Cliff Richards and
with somebody who was overly opinionated. But they
normally did it with people like Margaret Thatcher. I
read Q Magazine every week. I think it's a great
magazine. For example, you can go through the review
column and there will be an album by W.A.S.P., they
get a four-star review because it's been reviewed by
Valerie Potter. Valerie Potter is a rock fan. Then
they give a four-star review for Tom Waits, done by
somebody else. They guy would have given the W.A.S.P.
album one star, but he's a Tom Waits fan. So what they
do is portion off their reviews to open-minded
journalists. They don't give a Tom Waits album to some
guy who's a speed-metal freak and vice versa. So if a
speed-metal album is given one star by somebody who
likes speed metal, you can probably believe that it's
crap. It's not, like, one journalist reviewing twelve
different types of music. Or even if it is, they've
got journalists on board who are brave enough to be
able to sit next to another journalist and say,
"Actually, I like Def Leppard." or something
ridiculous, like Boy Zone. Somebody who could
potentially give a five star review to Elvis Costello
and Van Halen is a good journalist to me. Somebody who
can't be bothered to listen to a Van Halen record
because he likes Elvis Costello can go to
hell.

K2K: Actually, it's funny that
you should mention that. I didn't review it, but my
review of the last Van Halen album ["III"]
would have been - Eddie doesn't feel like playing
guitar anymore and Gary Cherone is totally drowned out
by everything else.

JE:  Hmm... Well, my review
of that album, and fortunately I'm a Van Halen fan and
I believe that I'm a fair-minded listener, is that
it's absolutely the worst record that they've ever
made. I can't believe that record. It's just the
worst.

(We then got onto
talking about a previously article that I had written
predicting David Lee Roth's return to Van Halen and
all the hate mail that that got. From there we talked
about the fact that everybody in fact would like to
see Dave back in the band and that the tour would sell
out in twenty minutes.)

K2K: The only thing that is
sick is that there are a lot of people, mainly in the
Midwest of America, who are going to go to that
concert believing in their minds that they are 20
years old again, that all the women are going to be
hot teenagers, and that the men themselves are not old
and fat.

JE: Yeah, well that's true.
That happens everywhere. I mean, that's always the
way. My point is that there are certain elitist bands
within the industry that can't do a thing wrong. They
will do the exactly the same thing as another band who
can't do a thing right. For example, let's say Grand
Funk Railroad reforms with original members, it would
be, "Oh come on. Give it a rest." If Crosby, Stills,
Nash, & Young get back together, it's like the
second coming of Christ. To me, they're both going the
same path, but it's good if it's CSN&Y... That's
what happens.

K2K: Going back to talking
about Def Leppard borrowing songs... What is the most
original, actual Def Leppard song that is the least
borrowed from anyone else?

JE: Uh... least borrowed...
probably "Photograph." I can't think of any songs that
it sounds like.

K2K: And that was one of the
biggest sellers, if not 'the' biggest.

JE: Yup. Umm... "Have You
Ever Needed Someone So Bad," which was one of our
biggest ever singles in America. It's the ballad off
of "Adrenalize." "Let's Get Rocked" is pretty
original, as comical as it is, and as ridiculous as it
is. I've said in the past when the critics were
saying, "I can't believe that a band would do this." I
have a line in the song, "I suppose rock's out of the
question." They missed the point that it's supposed to
be funny. I've said in the past, of that song,
actually listen to that song. Strip all of your
negative things away and listen to it and tell me that
Prince couldn't have done that. I would say, "You're
lying." to anyone who says he couldn't have. It wasn't
a rip-off of Prince, but I don't see it a million
miles from "When Doves Cry" or "Little Red Corvette."
It's a basic, structured-down me singing over drums
and bass. It's just that our drums and bass were a
million times bigger than Prince's. It was way more
bombastic. I think that is the shield that most
journalists can't get through. They just see this
over-produced, big, massive sound. In fact, that was
exactly what we were trying to achieve. Don't knock us
for it because that is what we want. If you don't like
it, that's fair enough, but at least try to listen to
it in the way that it's been done. 

There's a lot of songs that we do
that are based around the idea that we really need a
"Satisfaction" on this album. We pull that title out
of the air. Like you turn on any AM radio anywhere in
the world and you'll hear it within a day. It's not
like we have to rip off the riff, it's catching that
energy and the attention of that song. That's what we
do. No architect has ever built a building without
blueprints. No journeyman ever took a journey without
a map. Except for our forefathers, but they kind of
knew what direction they were going in. You have to
have a game plan, otherwise you're not going to get
anywhere. It's good to have a reference point. You
hear an album and you think, "That's how I want my
music to go." and that's your reference point. You're
not going to rip the entire album off. But you're not
telling me that Malcolm McLaren didn't suggest to the
Sex Pistols that they listen to "Too Much Too Soon" by
the New York Dolls and "Raw Power" by Iggy Pop, and
"that's the direction you guys should go in." Glenn
Matlock and Steve Jones already knew that and were
already ripping off Stooges riffs and rewriting them
backward. 

It's a reference point. That's
what all things are. Listen to classical music. Some
Mozart sounds like Beethoven or vice versa. It's like
yawning. It's catchy. Somebody laughs, everybody else
laughs. Somebody yawns, everybody else yawns. You hear
a song, everybody starts ripping it off. What about
Creed? That's the next Pearl Jam. That's why we got
sucked into the mire, because there were nineteen
other Def Leppards. That's another reason we made
"Slang." We had to get away from the copycats. It's
like our career was mirror-imaging Led Zeppelin's.
Plant said, "We stopped doing all that stuff because
everybody else was doing it on our behalf." When I
heard "Cherry Pie" by Warrant, I couldn't believe my
ears. "That's us!" We've all done it. We'd have never
written "Rock Of Ages" if we hadn't have heard "I Love
Rock 'N' Roll" by Joan Jett. But we didn't steal her
entire sound. We took that one song and thought, "This
is very anthemic. We could get away with writing songs
of this standard and style." And that's what we did.
It doesn't particularly sound that much like her, the
chorus a bit. The actual structure of the song is
nothing alike. We'd feel like thieves if we stole
100%. We take ideas. We use phrases. Every word that
we speak, somebody taught us. We didn't invent it.
There are no cliches that don't belong to somebody
else. I've said it before, we are walking a very
well-known path but wearing a new pair of
shoes.

K2K: Just to get some old
questions out of the way... When is the 25th
Anniversary of the band?

JE: Well, you'd have to
tell me when it's technically day one, because if it's
the day that your first album comes out, then it's in
2005. If it's the day that we formed, which was in my
bedroom in my mom and dad's house - when we got
together and we picked the name, and it was six weeks
until our first rehearsal - I got the job because I
had a good record collection - that was Sept. 1977. So
we're looking at just shy of two years. To the world
out there who care, Def Leppard started in 1979. We
released our first EP in England and it got us our
record deal. In Sounds Magazine, and independent
record - which me and my mom glued the sleeves
together for - came in above "Another Brick In The
Wall" as best single in 1979. So I would say it would
have to be mid-1979 as the true English starting
point. We almost run parallel with U2. Their first
independent EP came out within six months of ours.
It's arguably. It's 2004 or 2005.

K2K: What's the title of the
first EP?

JE:  It's just called the
Def Leppard EP.

K2K: How many pressings did you
make of that?

JE: 1,000. It's selling for
$1,500. in Japan. I've got three left.

K2K: Will you ever include it
in a box set?

JE:  That's the whole
point. If we do a box set, one of the - how ever many
- CDs are in it, the rare and unreleased collectible
CD things, the first three tracks on there will be the
EP.

K2K: What songs are
those?

JE: Three songs. "Get Your
Rocks Off," the original version. "Ride Into The Sun,"
the original version again, because we did it as a
B-side in 1987 when we rewrote the lyrics. It ended up
as a remix again in 1993 for the "Retro" album. And
"Overture," which we rerecorded and put on the first
album, but I prefer the EP version. All within a
weekend, in Mick Ronson's hometown. Did it on a
Saturday morning. We left the at a quarter to four on
a Sunday afternoon. We took £150., which I
borrowed from my dad and I got £1.50 change. It
cost us £148.50 to do it. We had 1,000 printed
up.

K2K: Did it sell out right
away?

JE:  What we did was - Me
and my mum glued 1,000 sleeves together. [For]
the first 100, I photocopied the lyric sheets at work,
during my dinner hour, illegally, folded them up,
slipped them in the thing, and the first 100 went with
lyric sheets. They are the ones that are going for
$1,500. But unfortunately, what you're getting now is
photocopies of photocopied lyric sheets. We gave 100
away. We sent them to Radio One, John Peel, Sounds,
Melody Maker, Enemy, Record Mirror, local radio
stations, you name it. Anywhere that we could. We gave
them to people who helped our career. We gave them to
owners of clubs so we could get in and not have to
pay, because we didn't have any money. We did all that
horrid stuff.

John Peel played it on the radio.
I jumped up onstage - it was during a DJ session at
Sheffield University. I jumped up onstage and I
dropped it in his hands with my phone number in it. He
phoned me the next day and said, "I liked it." You've
got to remember that this is right in the middle of
the punk exposure, actually just after it. It was so
not like what John Peel would play, but because we'd
done it ourselves, he was kind of intrigued and he
liked it. He played a song every day for a week. He'd
play two of them twice, three of them twice. Of
course, by then, we have people - I had managed to get
Sounds to put an address where they could get copies
where they were selling them for £1. Yeah, they
were selling really fast. We were selling them at the
gigs. We were selling 30 or 40 copies at
gigs.

K2K: Why didn't you ever
reprint them?

JE: We did. What happened
was, there was two record shops in Sheffield where I
took them to. One of them was Virgin who wanted 25
pence per copy to sell them, then there was Revolution
Records, which was an independent record shop who gave
us the straight £1. and did it as a service
because we were a local band and [the record shop
owner] thought it was the right thing to do. He
became our manager. We went ahead and had 17,000
printed up. The original was 1,000 on the red label,
the next 17,000 - don't ask me why 17,000, I mean, God
only knows why we didn't go for 15 or 20,000 - was on
the yellow label.

K2K: I had only heard of the original 1,000.

JE: There's a yellow label.
I was on Bludgeon Riffola, which is what we still keep
to this day as our record label in Britain. The second
lot came out on MSB1, which was the management's
initials, on a yellow label. Between getting that
printed up - and they sold out too - and that we got
front cover of Sounds Magazine with no record label,
and the middle spread with no record label, because
our manager coaxed Jeff Barton out of London up to see
us playing in Sheffield. He got drunk and gave it a
very favorable review. He stayed at our mom and dad's
house and the whole bit. Sandwiches and tea - We
looked after him really well. We got great reviews and
all that kind of stuff off of him. And of course, this
just made all the record companies think that if we
could get front cover without a record company, there
must be something here. So eventually, it came out in
January 1979. That's when we started selling them
locally. By August of 1979, we had signed a record
deal. We had signed the record deal on the day after
Led Zeppelin played Knebworth. We drove down from
Newcastle Mayfair, where we'd just done a gig on a
Friday night. We drove down to Knebworth on the 4th of
August, we drove straight down. We got down there on
the morning of the 4th. We went to see Led Zeppelin.
We went back to Sheffield on that Sunday afternoon. We
signed the record deal at Rick's parents' house
because his dad had to sign for him because he was
15.

K2K: How old were you?

JE: I was just
[turned] 20. That's basically how it all
started out. The EP got everybody's attention and we
got the deal.

K2K: What song is it that you
would say "broke" you in America? Is it
"Wasted?"

JE: No, it was "Hello
America" I think that actually broke us. The first
person actually, you know this because it was in
Portland, OR... there's a lady DJ at a rock station in
Portland, OR. She was the first person to play Def
Leppard on American radio. She started playing "Rock
Brigade," I think it was. "Rock Brigade" started
getting tiny little bits of airplay, like everybody's
first record does. When we opened up for Pat Travers -
the first gig we did was in Santa Monica, CA - the
lights went down, we walked out onstage, and I heard
somebody shout, "Wasted!" I couldn't believe it. I
couldn't believe that somebody in America actually had
heard one of our records.

K2K: Oh, I can tell you that by
the time we saw you with Pat Travers on that tour, we
were already total Def Leppard freaks.

JE:  I remember when we
played Portland, OR, with Pat Travers. There was,
like, 11,000 people there. It was the first time I had
seen lighters. It was astonishing because we went down
really well.

K2K: Do you remember playing in
Oakland, CA on that tour?

JE: Yes I do, because we
went to a club afterwards. I remember the Oakland
thing, but not the gig. We went to a club afterwards
and Travers got up to jam. Pete Willis was so drunk
that he just wandered up onstage and then got to be
escorted off. Awful.

K2K: Are the stories about his
drinking exaggerated or are they true?

JE:  Oh no, they are
definitely true. Pete was a really nice guy when he
didn't drink, and he was a really good guitar player.
Pete probably still is a really good guitar player,
and he probably still is a really nice guy when he's
sober. The problem is that he was very rarely sober
after 7pm. When he was drunk, he went from 5'2" to
8'2". He would be picking fights, setting off fire
extinguishers, he's be drunk before he'd go out
onstage. He'd throw the best shapes you've ever seen,
but played the lousiest guitar you've ever heard. He
would start fights between the band. He would be
obnoxious and uncooperative. Just generally hard work
to be around. He'd alienate himself. We didn't hang
out with him until he was sober.

K2K: We all know somebody like
that, don't we.

JE:  Yeah. The difference
between Pete and Steve - Steve used to drink way more
than Pete, but Steve was a nice guy. Until he died, it
wasn't really a big problem. It was only maybe eight
months before he passed away that he actually lost the
ability to perform. He never got drunk on stage, he'd
get drunk afterwards. But he'd end up with the shakes
that wouldn't clear up until 8:55, if we were going on
a 9pm. He was just going through a stage that was so
unworkable when we were doing the "Adrenalize" album,
that we just had to say, "Look Steve, we're not firing
you, but go away for about six months and get yourself
sorted out." We just worked as a four-piece and we
ended up doing the whole thing as a
four-piece.

Pete, yeah, sometimes he was
funny, most of the time he was annoying. He's the only
time I've come close to physically beating the s***
out of somebody. With Steve, he'd just fall over you,
and started crying and hugging you, and telling you
how much he loves you. I think Steve just had a real
problem with the pressures. Pete had exactly the same
problems, but he dealt with them in a way more
obnoxious way. Nobody liked him. The management hated
him, the record company hated him, people who met him
hated him. He was drunk, then the next day they'd see
him, it was, "Wow, he's OK when he's sober."
Yes.

K2K: Do you still keep in contact?

JE: Not very often. He's
married to my best friend's sister, so I hear what's
going on, but I haven't seen Pete since he came to see
us at Sheffield Arena about four years
ago.

K2K: Was it ever considered to
have him come back?

JE: Never. You can't go
back like that. No.

K2K: Have you ever jammed with
him since?

JE: In fairness, when we
played Sheffield City Hall in 1987, Phil actually
suggested that we get Pete to play "Get Your Rocks
Off." But Pete wouldn't do it. He was scared. He's got
this immense stage fright. The only way that he could
get over it was to get drunk, so then the problem
starts again. He formed a new band called "Roadhouse,"
and he got a record deal with our label. The day that
the album came out, they fired the singer, and when
they went on tour to promote the album, Pete stayed at
home because his wife was pregnant and they got a
replacement guitarist in. 

So, anybody that was remotely
interested in seeing this band was going to go because
Pete was in it. He wasn't even in it. He didn't do the
tour and he fired his singer on the day his album came
out. So imagine what the record company thought about
that. Dropped him like a stone. He's a self-destruct
button. He brings it all on himself. He can't blame
the industry or bad luck or bad timing, which we can
all do when things don't work. Everything that went
wrong was totally and utterly Pete's fault, and he
accepts that. But recently he's been getting pissed
off at being blamed as a bad guy. But as I kept
saying, "You know what? You can't unwrite history."
Attila The Hun and Adolph Hitler are never going to
have good things written about them, because you can't
look back and tried to find a reason why they were the
way there were. Nobody would want to read it. Nobody
wants to know about Pete's good stuff. Whenever I get
asked about Pete, the only thing that I ever get asked
is, "Was he as bad as he really was?"

K2K: Well, if you have
something good to say, I would like to hear
it.

JE: Well I've said what
there is good to say about him. When he's sober, he's
really OK, he's a nice guy. He was always the odd one
out, but he was a nice enough guy. He was a great
player, a fantastic rhythm player. He had a brilliant
right hand. He could do "chuk-chuk-chuk" and never go
out of time.

K2K: Who did most of the leads then? Steve?

JE:  It was 50/50. It
always was. You can tell the difference. Pete's stuff
is way more funky. Pete used to want to be Pat
Travers. If you listen to the first album, there's a
lot of "wah" stuff in the Pat Travers' style. The
stuff that sounds like Brian Robertson and Jimmy Page
is Steve. The open "wah wah," the manic "wah wah,"
that's Steve. Like Steve does the solo in "It Don't
Matter," which is great. The end solo, in "Answer To
The Master," there's a breakdown section, that's
Steve, and the solo following that is Steve. The other
lick is Pete. Pete wrote that. He wrote that and
played it. Steve couldn't play it. He would always
say, "I can't f***ing play this s***." That side of
the songwriting that we were dealing with then, with
Steve and Pete, was the side of the songwriting that
none of us were really interested in.

K2K: That's why it's my
favorite album. I could never figure out how to play
half the stuff on that album back then. It was always
a challenge.

JE:  Yeah, well the thing
is, you can't figure it out because it was written to
be clever. What I mean by that is that Pete really
wanted everybody to know what a great guitarist he
was, not what a great songwriter he was. So,
consequently, we had all these really difficult riffs,
like the riffs to "Get Your Rocks Off." Steve could
never do that. He could play a version of it. His
fingers just couldn't get around it. I tell you, on
the stage, and on the record, it wasn't that important
that those "diddly-diddly's" were in there, but it was
important to Pete. That's all well and good, but it
was detrimental to the song and detrimental to the
furthering of the band. It was always a sticking point
as to why everything has to be so precise in the riff
department. It's like, other riffs are all good and
well, but "Smoke On The Water" is pretty simple to
play and it's the most memorable song. Things didn't
have to be so bloody complicated. We were verging on
going jazz rock. It was like, "F*** that!" I wanted to
be Hanoi Rocks, not Santana.

K2K: I still appreciated it as
did others.

JE: It was a learning
curve. To me, the better riffs, the way better riffs
were on "High And Dry." The reason was, when we came
in with complicated stuff, Mutt stripped it down to
the bare bones. He said, "Take the fat off and just
leave the meat." So, we slowed stuff down to have a
better groove. We slowed stuff down because we really
dug what he did with AC/DC. We loved "Let There Be
Rock" and "Powerage," but they don't compare to
"Highway To Hell" and "Back In Black." The
arrangements. Listen to "Shoot To Thrill" or to
"Highway To Hell," the simplicity of it, the openness.
A guy who's had six weeks worth of guitar lessons
could play it, but the fact is that he can get his
fingers around the chords, but he can't get his
fingers around the feel. That is something that you're
born with or you work very hard at. AC/DC were the
tightest outfit on the planet and we wanted AC/DC
meets Queen as our blueprint. We wanted the power and
the groove of AC/DC and the harmonies and production
qualities of Queen. The power and the melody. Beach
Boys meets Black Sabbath, whatever opposites you want
to take and meet in the middle. We knew that we could
do that. To a non-musician, there isn't a vast
difference between "Tie Your Mother Down" and "Highway
To Hell." They're just rock songs that groove along.
Guitar riffs over drums and bass. But AC/DC would
never put the harmonies on that "Tie Your Mother Down"
had, or any other Queen song.

K2K: I have a thought about
Metallica. They did an exceptional album with "Ride
The Lightning," but I always felt that there could
have been a bit more if they had added vocal
harmonies. They should go back and rerecord that album
with a new mix.

JE:  I think that the way
way they look at it is that harmonies are for
faggots.

K2K: But they do them
now.

JE: Yeah, but they do them
low and with so much attitude that they don't sound
like harmonies. The fact of the matter is, and I know
this because we've shared the same management for 16
years, "Nothing Else Matters" is one of the best
vocals I've ever heard. Not just by Hetfield, but by
anybody. The verses, he sings them. He absolutely
sings them. And I know that they had a problem with
that in the early days because, "Well, all our rock
fans are going to think that we've gone soft." But
he's not all, "BLEAGH!!" on every line, but only in
the choruses at the very end. But he sings, and it's
good. That's one of the reasons that that album has
sold 12 million. People that don't like heavy metal
have got that one album in their record collection. It
just caught their attention. The same reason that I've
got one New Age album in my record collection. I've
got Mike Oldfield's "Tubular Bells" in my collection
because it just caught my attention. It's the same
thing with Metallica. There are a lot of people who
bought that record who don't have any other Metallica
records. It's just very well done.

K2K: James made a good point,
that I've always liked, to all the people who called
them "sell-outs." He said, "We've grown up. Why don't
you?"

JE:  The difference between
Metallica and us is that, I think they like their
first album more than we like ours, which is why
they'll play more off of it. I'm sure that there are
certain songs off of that first album that they go,
"Oh God." maybe because they've played them too many
times or maybe they're just embarrassed by them now.
The fact of the matter is that we don't like our first
record. And I totally accept and appreciate anybody
saying that I'm full of s***, but they have to accept
my [opinion]. It's my record. I made it. I
don't like it anymore. You buy a shirt and say, "I
can't wear this anymore."and people think it looks
really good on you. You're sick of it. You don't want
it anymore. You want a new one. It's the same with
music. Maybe in three year's time, we'll all hit a
spot where we'll go, "Why don't we do 'Hello America'
or 'Overture' again?" We might all go, "Yeah, let's do
it." But until that moment happens, it's been
jettisoned. 

It was good for its day but it
didn't last. It didn't stand up. It didn't come close
to Van Halen's first album. It didn't come close to
Boston's first album or the first Montrose album. It's
like, my singing is terrible, the production is weak.
We speed up half way through the songs and change
directions. It was out of our hands. We dropped out
guard for a moment and let people dictate how it
should be. We were signed to a big, major record label
and we thought that's the way it was. It was only
afterwards that we thought, "Bulls***! We got this far
on our own. We shouldn't let these people take over."
We tried to get Mutt to do our first album but we
couldn't get him, but we managed to get him for the
second. As soon as we got Mutt, the decision was,
"Nobody interferes with this record except this guy."
That was it. If they don't like it, we'll take it
somewhere else. We didn't have to do that. To this
day, we have never had an A&R man interfere with
our music. They can bugger off.

K2K: I respect your opinion,
but still I was wondering about that comment you made
on VH1. (Joe had made reference to the fact that the
band didn't need the first album because it was "like
a booster rocket" that dropped off and wasn't needed
anymore. Also he said that it wasn't worth playing
anything off of that album for "the 12 of you out
there who like it.")

JE: The only way that I can
really describe it is, and I know it's not a good
comparison, but imagine if you go on to your parent's
and your mom pulls out a school annual, from when you
were 12, and there's a review that you did, and you
think, "Holy s***. This is really
embarrassing."

K2K: Yeah, but as a musician,
I've got music from when I started playing that I may
not like now, but I do think it's workable and should
be released just so that it's out
there.

JE: Well, that's where the
comparison is equal. I can tell you right now that if
the incentive, and I don't mean financial, to rerecord
that first album ever reared its head, I wouldn't
object. The only way that I would ever feel
comfortable listening to that record, sober, is if I
rerecorded all my vocals and we remixed it and all
that kind of stuff. And I dare say that if they were
both in the band, Steve and Pete would want to redo
some of the stuff and Sav would want to redo some of
the stuff, and Rick would want to redo the drum sound.
I have rough mix tapes of that first album that s***
all over that finished version, because Tom Allen
tried to make it sound too American-radio friendly. He
took all the power out. He just took all the energy
out of the record. On "High And Dry," we went probably
over the top, because we were so intense on making a
record that was so much more in the direction that we
wanted to go. We wanted all the power there and all
the energy of the guitars and the drums to sound
massive and not polite. We didn't want to sound like
REO Speedwagon. We wanted to sound like "Cashmiere"
and "Rock And Roll."

K2K: For your age at that time,
you were a huge inspiration for all of us growing
up.

JE:  Absolutely! I couldn't
agree more. The one good fact about that record is
that it inspired a whole generation of people that it
is possible for five kids 15 to 19 to actually make a
concisive attempt at an album with songs that were are
original and very unique, as much as they may be
faulted, they were very unique. There were bits that
sounded like certain bands. There were obvious
influences. You can hear Rush, UFO, Thin Lizzy, and
Judas Priest. But overall it sounded like a new act.
It was, for its time, what Nirvana was in 1991. It was
very much based on previous works. Nirvana was very
based on nothing that had gone past that the Americans
were aware of. 

I listen to Nirvana and giggle
when people say, "so unique." I pull out some punk
from 1977 and go, "Really?" Have you heard Killing
Joke from the 1980s? It's "Come As You Are." You can't
blame them because they didn't know it existed, but I
do. It's the same way that when a kid at 16 heard "On
Through The Night" and thought, "Ah, this is so unique
and fresh." when kids into Judas Priest have a snicker
on their face because they know full well that we
ripped off half of "Sad Wings Of Destiny" album. The
intro to "Overture" is a rip-off of [Boston's]
"More Than A Feeling." "It Don't Matter" is a total
hybrid of every Thin Lizzy pop song ever written.
That's what we did, but we disguised it better than
anybody else. That in itself was an amazing talent for
a bunch of guys whose combined age was less than two
members of Aerosmith. This is why, for all that people
maybe laugh and joke about them, I was very impressed
with the very first Silverchair album. I was very
impressed with the Hanson album. "Mmmm-Bop" is one of
the best pop songs ever written, and they wrote that
themselves. It wasn't written by a bunch of
songwriters. It was a 10 year old drummer, a 12 year
old keyboard player, and a 14 year old guitarist. It
was a fantastic achievement. Great structure, great
singing, great performance. Brilliant. Really, really
good. And the following songs could have sat on any
Black Crowes album. You know, it's very, very
good.

K2K: I absolutely recommend
that first Hanson album.

JE: I love good pop music.
I like it when somebody like Neil Young will say in
the press, "Why is everybody laughing at Hanson?
They're great!" What that does is like the Emperor's
New Clothes. Pretty soon somebody's going to go, "He's
not wearing anything." And to hear the opposite of
that... everybody in these metal bands who want to
beat Hanson up... for somebody as credible as Neil
Young or Lou Reed say that. Lou Reed, for example,
will turn around and say that Duran Duran is one of
the best pop bands he's ever heard. I think it's
fantastic that they have the balls to do that, because
people will listen if they like them. If I say it,
nobody's going to listen. If Neil Young says it,
people go, "Hmm..." That's why we go back to the
Lester Bangs thing... I have much, much, much respect
to anybody who can stand up and say, "You're all full
of s***." The fact is that youth is a major factor in
why [Hanson's first album] was so good. We all
have to admit that if "On Through The Night" had been
made by seasoned veterans of 32 years old, it wouldn't
have done s***. My point is that it does get judged
for its youth, not for its content and how good it is.


My big argument back then is that
back then people would always say, "God, you guys are
so young." I would get so annoyed at that. I would
say, "That's not the point. Listen to the music." Then
when people started saying, "You're old." I would say,
"You know what? We had the same problem when we were
young." So, nobody's listening to what we're doing,
they're just looking at our birth certificates. That's
bulls***.

K2K: It's funny, I never
thought about how old you are now, but that's because
we're about the same age.

JE:  The parachute that we
have is that Aerosmith and the Stones are still doing
it and they're 15 to 20 years older than we are. Have
you also noticed another thing? Solo artists don't get
this grief. Sting, Tom Petty, Neil Young, even Billy
Idol, Eddie Money, John Mellencamp, they don't get
this age s***. It's only bands. So far, the only way
around it is if you're so big that you're beyond
criticism, like Aerosmith two years ago. They could
get away with murder and they're in their 50s. Steven
Tyler's writing lyrics that would embarrass a 15 year
old. I'm not saying that as a slag of Steve. He's not
attempting to grow up and I respect that in him. He's
not trying to be a politician. He's writing sleazy,
Jaggeresque lyrics about shagging and how many dicks
sucked and blah, blah, blah. He can still do a "Living
On The Edge, " and a "Jaimie's Got A Gun," which is a
pretty radical subject. But he can still write "Eat
The Rich" and belch at the end of the song. That's
what rock 'n' roll is, it's being
obnoxious.

K2K: When we're talking about
age and the current punk stuff... how old do these
kids think the Dead Kennedys are? Or the New York
Dolls? Or MC-5?

JE:  The Dolls are older
than me. The Clash are five years older than me. The
Pistols are four years older than me. It doesn't
matter how old you are.

K2K: People forget their roots.

JE: Yeah. Townsend's bald,
but he does the windmill and people go mental. It
doesn't matter.

K2K: Can you tell me about an
old song of yours called "Medicine
Man?"

JE:  "Medicine Man" was a
song that we wrote while we had some down time in
England. After we had done the first American tour, we
went back to Britain to play the Redding Festival in
August. We wrote the song and we wrote "Lady Strange"
and we did them both. "Lady Strange" got changed
somewhat, but it's pretty much the same
song.

K2K: I remember you doing
"Medicine Man" on the Pat Traver's
tour.

JE:  "Medicine Man" was
written on down time. Your memory's better than mine,
I thought we wrote it after that tour. Basically, what
happened was that we played it live a bunch of times.
We took it into preproduction for the second album and
Mutt didn't like the finished article, but he liked
bits in it. So we changed the music to the bridge and
the lyrics and the top line and everything got
rewritten. But the intro and the riff were used. It
became "Rock Till You Drop."

K2K: Is there a version of
"Medicine Man" out there?

JE: There's a bootleg
version of it on some CD. If you ever get a chance to
pick up a Def Leppard bootleg that has us from the
Redding Festival in 1980, it was a radio broadcast, so
it's a relatively decent recording. It's not the best
performance you've ever heard. I was f***ing flat as a
pancake. Whatever, it's there. You've really got to
look in bootleg shops. Internet is always good for
that stuff, E-Bay and stuff like that. I've bought
s***loads of Mott The Hoople stuff off of
E-Bay.

K2K: How was it touring with
Pat Travers and also with Blackfoot?

JE:  We were young and we
were very accommodating as an opening act. They gave
us one light, we didn't ask for two. We didn't fight
with any of these bands - we did fight a few times
with Blackfoot, but most of the time was with the
production manager. The bands we got along fine with.
Pat Travers was going through a bad cocaine period at
the time and a little difficult to get to know. After
the tour finished - you know, we had the usual pie
fights on the last night of the tour and all - Pat was
good to us. We always got a soundcheck, he didn't f***
with us, he didn't pull the power on us if we went
down well, so he was alright. I had gotten on really
well with Mars [Cowling], the bass player, a
really nice guy, and with Tommy Aldridge. I got on
really well with Mars and, when we got back to Florida
in 1983, after we had gone ballistic with "Pyromania,"
we were headlining some arena, Travers came down with
his girlfriend to say "Hello." He walked down to the
dressing room and said, "Hi guys. I just wanted to
come down and say Hi. This is my girlfriend. Introduce
yourselves. I don't remember your names." Fair enough.
I'm sure that I've done a similar thing where I've
forgotten everyone's names, but I would at least have
the sense to check a CD sleeve before I went to a gig.
I wouldn't say something as throw-away as he did. But
Mars came down to the hotel and, "Do you want to go
out on my boat?" and off we went. It was a totally
different kind of thing. And I like Pat Travers, I'm
not knocking him.

K2K: Yeah, unfortunately he had
still been trying to kick that coke habit for the next
ten years.

JE: Oh, I know. But with
songs like "Stevie" and all that, I loved "Makin'
Magic." I thought it was a fantastic record. I'm
really pissed off because I lent my copy to Pete
Willis and it was scratched so badly that I can't play
it. I can make a DAT of it and have to listen so that
it can't get any worse or ruin my needle. I have to
listen to this crackling copy. Believe it or not, in
Japan they re-release everything, but they haven't
released the first two Travers albums. I've actually
asked them to go into the vaults and make me a copy on
a multi-track. Travers was fun. Blackfoot was a really
strange bill. It was the only bill going that summer
and you talk about wrong... Southern rock boogie band
and this glam, pop metal, British scallawags. When we
went down South, talk about a mismatch. It's like the
ex-boyfriend turning up at the wedding. It was really
not a great bill for us because there were all these
"Ya-hoo" cowboys looking at us wearing red spandex
trousers and whatever the f*** we were wearing. We
were these fag English guys, you know. It was a weird
tour. They had a brown P.A. and I could never get my
head around that. I mean, black. Edgar or Johnny
Winter with a white one, yeah, that's a statement, but
a brown one. It was like some radio from the 1940s. It
was old, falling to bits. The band was great but the
whole production was so Mickey Mouse. Ozzy was a lot
more fun. We went on to Ozzy from Blackfoot and it was
a total relief.

K2K: So to bring everything
around to today... How many different side projects
have you done guest vocals on?

JE: Me and Phil did guitar
and vocals on an Alice Cooper tribute album last year.
We did "Under My Wheels." In 1991, I sang half lead
vocals and backing vocals on Ronnie Wood's solo album,
"Slide On This." Before that, I did a couple of vocals
in Holland on a couple of albums. There's a girl
called Laurie Speed. We did a song called "Those
Faces" that me and Phil did backing vocals on. I did a
song called "Lonely Road" with a band called Ricky And
The Frog, but it never got released. Other than that,
the Mick Ronson stuff in 1993 is the only other stuff
that I've worked on.

K2K: How did you get involved
to do the one guest vocal on the latest
[ex-British Lions guitarist] Ray Majors
CD?

JE: Ray phoned me up. My
connections to Ray are the fact that I was a huge fan
of Mott The Hoople and the spin-off, Mott, of which
Ray was a part of. Then obviously British Lions. I
kept following the career as it splintered more and
more. How I met Ray, me and Phil went down to his
place in 1982 when we were doing "Pyromania." Then I
didn't see nor hear from him for years. Then I saw him
last year or in 1999 at the Mott The Hoople
convention. He did an acoustic set with
[ex-British Lions vocalist} John Fiddler. We were
backstage talking and all that stuff. We kept up on
the phone and one day he said, "I've got this song and
I think it would sound good if you sang it." I said,
"Wow. OK. Send me the tape." Then I lived with it for
a month and finally listened to it and went to do
it.

And about there is where the tape
decides to end and we go on to discuss some other
projects. Keep an eye out for the Ray Majors CD as
well as the next Def Leppard CD, whenever that project
is finished.

Written by Phil Anderson / All
photos © 1984 Phil Anderson

------------

Phil Anderson is
a musician as well as a writer. He has performed as a
multi-instrumentalist - primarily guitar and vocals -
in several bands in the California area over the past
20 years. As a writer and photographer, he has been
published by several known magazines and television
shows as well having several books of his works
out.