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FEATURE - X Marks The Spot

08/05/2002

By Lyndsey Parker

As any casual viewer of VH1's Behind The Music knows by now, few bands 
have had to face the kind of hardship and heartbreak that has dogged 
Sheffield, England's finest, Def Leppard, throughout their career. And 
even fewer have survived to tell the tale on Storytellers. Weaker-willed 
Behind The Music bands like the Bangles and Quiet Riot splintered simply 
because the didn't get along, but Leppard lost both their original 
guitarists (one, Pete Willis, was fired because of his alcoholism; the 
other, Steve Clark, drank himself to death) and their drummer, Rick Allen, 
lost his arm in a brutal car accident--and yet, the mighty Lep kept on 
rockin'. Glammy Londoner Phil Collen took Willis's place, Dio/Whitesnake 
veteran Vivian Campbell replaced the dear departed Clark, Allen learned 
how to drum with one arm, and now, a whole quarter-decade after Lep 
started, they're releasing their 10th album, X (the Roman numeral for 
10).

One would think that after such trials, the beleaguered band's music would 
be bleak enough to make Leonard Cohen sound like Aqua. Guess again. 
Building on the comeback they launched with their 1999 effort, the aptly 
titled Euphoria, on X Def Leppard offer up feelgood rockers like "You're 
So Beautiful" and "Four Letter Word" that boast the original 
beer-commercial hedonism and crossover appeal of classics like "Rock Of 
Ages," "Pour Some Sugar On Me," and the anthem of an entire 
Union-Jack-T-shirted generation, "Photograph." There's even one 
undeniably catchy and cheerful number, "Unbelievable," co-penned/produced 
by Andreas Carlsson and Per Aldeheim from Cherion, the Swedish hit 
factory that's cranked out smash singles for *NSYNC, the Backstreet Boys, 
and Britney Spears--and it somehow still sounds like Def Leppard.

LAUNCH's managing editor Lyndsey Parker recently met up with Collen and 
Campbell at their San Fernando Valley rehearsal space, where they took a 
break from polishing their famously fun stage show to discuss their roles 
in one of rock's most tragic and triumphant sagas. Here's how it went:

LAUNCH: Neither of you are original members of Def Leppard. What was it 
like when each of you joined, and how do you think you changed the course 
of the band?

PHIL: Well, I joined 20 years ago. All the songs were written. I knew the 
guys--Joe had asked me to come out on the Ozzy tour, because Pete Willis, 
the original guitar player, had a few problems with the whole drinking 
thing. I was in this band called Girl at the time. He said to me, "You 
think you could learn 16 songs in three days?" I said, "Oh yeah, sure!" 
But it didn't happen--Joe phoned up and said, "Oh, it's all right. We've 
smoothed it out and Pete's sobered up, it's cool." Then about two years 
after, they phoned up and said, "You think you could come down? Pete's 
gone weird again; we've thrown him out of the band. We need someone to 
play solos, we don't want there to be just one guitar player." So I went 
down and played the "Stage Fright" solo first, then "Photograph," 
"Foolin'," "Rock Of Ages." Then I started singing a bit and finished the 
album off. Before we knew it, we were rehearsing to go on tour! [laughs] 
I hadn't actually joined, I was just kind of helping out. My first gig 
was the Marquee Club in London. Then we came to America and supported 
Billy Squier; while we were doing that tour, the whole thing f--king blew 
up, just went nuclear. It was very quick. It went from playing the Marquee 
Club to--BANG!--playing stadiums. It was pretty trippy. As for changing 
the band, one way I changed the band was I could sing--the guys wanted to 
do harmonies, but they weren't very good. Steve used to pretend to sing! 
Pete Willis didn't really sing either. And they were working with 
[longtime superstar producer/collaborator] Mutt Lange, who's big on the 
vocal thing. So that changed things. It also got a lot more aggressive 
when I joined as well. The playing was a bit light before, I think--it 
was cool, but a tad light.

LAUNCH: What about you, Vivian?

VIVIAN: Well, I've been with the band "only" for 10 years.

LAUNCH: Yeah, do you sometimes feel like the "Ron Wood" of the band? Like, 
you've been in the band a long time but you're still considered new?

VIVIAN: Yeah, I'm the "new guy." I joined after the band had already 
recorded Adrenalize; my second show with them was at the Freddie Mercury 
AIDS awareness show at Wembley Stadium. But we did a club show in Dublin 
three or four days beforehand, and I felt very comfortable with the band 
from the get-go. The process was comfortable. I'd known Joe socially, 
because he lives in Dublin and we have so many mutual friends.

LAUNCH: You never felt uncomfortable taking Steve Clark's place?

VIVIAN: No, I never felt that at all. A year had passed since Steve died 
when they finished the record, so the rest of the band were clear in their 
minds that they were going to look for a replacement. I didn't have a 
problem with it. I felt right for the band because I'd always been a 
fan--I'd bought Getcha Rocks Off way back when, and "Wasted" when it came 
out as a single, so I was very familiar with the band. So it felt right 
for me. And unlike Steve, I like to sing! So I actually looked forward to 
a band where they involved me more vocally. I remember when I was with 
Dio, I wanted to sing background--and he wouldn't let me! He said, "Guitar 
players play guitar; singers sing! Ritchie Blackmore never sang backing 
vocals! Tony Iommi never sang backing vocals! Get over there and play your 
guitar!" But that's more the kind of thing I'm into. I'm actually more 
into vocal and pop music, as opposed this big rock stuff.

"There are distinct points in your career: I remember meeting Boy George 
in 1983...and we're still here! It blows my mind that that little incident 
was 19 years ago."

LAUNCH: So how much credit is Mutt Lange due for the Leppard sound? Most 
people refer to him as if he's a sixth member of Leppard.

PHIL: He's the best. We owe so much to him. The whole [rock/pop, 
multi-layered vocals] thing was really his idea. Hysteria was taking it to 
another level. Songs like "Rocket," "Pour Some Sugar On Me"...everything 
was a buildup to that moment, and that's really when we became stars, 
because that's when everyone started copying us, from R&B bands to all the 
pop stuff--*NSYNC, Backstreet Boys, all that. It was multi-tracked backing 
vocals. Queen did that, but it was in a different way; Mutt just took it 
really over the top and made the style different.

LAUNCH: You and Mutt developed a reputation for taking a long time in the 
studio...

PHIL: Yeah, Pyromania was about 11 months. And Hysteria took a long time 
because we had a lot of problems with that--Rick had his accident, we 
didn't know what the bloody hell we were doing. But now technology is 
helping us. The whole ProTools thing is like, "Ah, thank God!" Now we 
pretty much take a year for an album, which is what everyone does these 
days.

LAUNCH: 1996's Slang was very different, though--it was much rawer and 
more stripped-down, almost lo-fi by your usual standards.

PHIL: Yeah, it was good to get that out. I think it's a great album, very 
inventive. The style was different: We wrote the songs and recorded them, 
and that was the end of it. On the album after that [Euphoria], we figured 
that everyone wanted to hear the classic Def Leppard. Now listening back 
to [Euphoria], I think, as good as it was, that we made a few mistakes. So 
this time, we pretty much made a hybrid collage, or whatever you want to 
call it, of our career. This new album is the perfect thing in between.

LAUNCH: Slang wasn't very well-received, if I recall...

PHIL: Well, music was dark and miserable then. It was trying very hard to 
be "cool." The artists were trying so hard to be cool and angsty, but 
there were only a couple of those bands that were really real. Like, 
Nirvana were great, as real as you can get. So in the '90s, we were so 
"uncool." We were the anti-Christ at that point. People looked at us and 
said, "This is everything that we're against!" Then, we thought Slang was 
a great album, but people said, "Oh no, we wanna hear Def Leppard." And we 
were like, "We've just done a Def Leppard album [1992's Adrenalize], and 
you hated it!"

LAUNCH: Do regret making Slang?

PHIL: No! That was really good. If we hadn't have done that, we wouldn't 
have gotten to this point. Plus, I think there's some great stuff on that. 
I think it's got some earnest stuff--some basic, really brave songwriting. 
It was brave because we didn't do the "Def Leppard thing."

LAUNCH: Do you think you've been overly associated with all the '80s 
hair-metal bands?

PHIL: Yes, we were unfairly lumped in with a lot of bands that we really 
had nothing to do with. Our thing was always based on substance, music--it 
wasn't about image.

LAUNCH: Image was important to your early success, though, you have to 
admit. You were one of the first hard rock bands to break big via MTV. 
Did you know MTV would be so influential?

PHIL: Yeah, we totally embraced it. We didn't know whether it would be 
that influential, but we thought we looked cool--we didn't, but we thought 
we did--and we wanted our look out there. It was like, "We look really 
cool, we look better than these guys! We look different. You must see us! 
We're younger, we're way more what it's about." We actually thought that! 
I guess it was partly true. I know a lot of bands didn't do that--they 
were like, "It's about the music, it's not about the visuals." But 
obviously, times were changing. People did want stimulation visually as 
well.

LAUNCH: You seem to have come full circle: You got your first break on 
MTV, and you experienced a revival via VH1. Def Leppard's practically the 
VH1 house band nowadays. What did you think of VH1's biopic, Hysteria: The 
Def Leppard Story?

PHIL: It's funny: VH1 nailed a lot of it, but they really missed people's 
identity and personality. They interviewed us all, so they got bits of our 
characters, but they didn't the whole thing. You know how in the movie Pet 
Sematary, they bring back these animals, but the animals don't have a 
soul? Well, it was like that--it was us, but without our souls!

LAUNCH: The movie depicted your singer, Joe Elliott, as the dictator of 
the band--he's not really like that?

PHIL: No! His character was so miserable, all solemn and dour, and he 
ain't like that at all! He's completely goofing around the whole time.

LAUNCH: Going back to the backlash you experienced in the '90s...don't you 
think after putting out an album as phenomenally huge as Hysteria, it's 
like the Alanis Morissette or Hootie & the Blowfish syndrome? Like, even 
if your next album had sold 7 million copies, it would have been 
considered a "failure," because Hysteria sold 17 million?

PHIL: You know why the next album doesn't do so well, right? Everyone else 
burns your sound out. The album is so popular that everyone copies it. 
It's like other artists have done your next album for you. So Alanis puts 
her next album out, after Natalie Imbruglia and all these copycats have 
come out, and everyone goes, "God, I'm sick of you, you bitch! I don't 
want to hear that anymore!" And Alanis hasn't done anything wrong, she's 
just doing her thing. You can overthink things, but you do have to be 
aware that other artists can burn your sound out. So yeah, that's what 
happened to us with Hysteria.

LAUNCH: Speaking of a sound being burned out, what's your take on the 
whole nu-metal thing going on right now?

PHIL: I think if it's good, it's good. Linkin Park's fantastic, I think.

VIVIAN: We did reference Linkin Park a lot in the studio [while recording 
X]. You know--someone who can sing, and someone who can write songs, and 
a lot of cool production. That you can listen to. God, I sound old!

PHIL: No, really, there's not a lot out there. I don't know if we're 
overqualified--we come from the '80s, and we were lead guitar players. 
We're still valid, and we're still doing our thing and it doesn't sound 
wrong or out of date, I don't think, which is for us very lucky. 'Cause 
you hear a lot of players from our era, and you hear their playing and you 
think it's really good playing, but it's so out of date! A lot of that 
wasn't even the guitar playing--it was the crap songs they were doing and 
the awful singing!

VIVIAN: Yeah, Yngwie Malmsteen is mind-blowing, but I can't listen to it! 
At the time I couldn't listen to it! But I grew up wanting to be like 
that. I remember thinking, "Why can't I play like that?" and practicing 
and practicing. And then after while I thought, "Well, I can't because I 
don't want to, because my heart's not in it." Now I find myself going back 
and listening to guitar players that I sort of bypassed growing up, 
because I thought that they weren't "technical" enough--like Dave Gilmour, 
Eric Clapton. These guys are great for reason! They play a couple notes 
and you know it's them. That's always a sign of quality. Whereas in the 
'80s, you would hear some track on the radio and you'd hear the guitar 
solo and you'd think, "Well, that could be anyone."

PHIL: They were showing off, not listening to the song. But we're not just 
trying to impress people. We've got to be fans, too; it's got to sound 
cool to us.

LAUNCH: You made a lot of inroads with Euphoria, which went gold and got 
you on the radio again. Do you think the musical climate right now is a 
good one to make a full-fledged comeback with X? It seems there's a lot 
of diversity in these charts these days--everything from Kylie to the 
Strokes to David Gray to OutKast.

VIVIAN: Well, music has diversified a lot, but unfortunately the conduits 
through which people hear it are shrinking. It's really hard to get 
through to people. And it doesn't matter how good a record you make--if 
you're not playing to the masses, they're not going to know about you. I 
still have people saying to me, "Oh, you're still together?" They don't 
realize Leppard's been around this whole time, because people just don't 
get to hear us.

LAUNCH: You've obviously been through a lot, and seen many trends come 
and go. Does it ever trip you out how long this band has been around? 
It's been more than two decades now...

PHIL: It really does. There are distinct points in your career: I remember 
meeting Boy George back in '83...and we're still here! It blows my mind 
that that little incident was 19 years ago.