Back in September, when the Leps played in Portland, one of the local 
radio stations did an interview with Joe, backstage before the show.  
I missed it the first time it was broadcast, but they reran it as 
part of their end-of-the-year, best-of-the-Morning-Zoo retrospective. 
I've transcribed it below.

Enjoy!  (And note that Joe is not critical of any other bands--quite 
the opposite)

Happy New Year!


Janet

=======================================================

Intro: The [Z100 Morning] Zoo talked to Def Leppard front man Joe Elliott 
about having K.C. and the Sunshine Band open up for Def Leppard.

JE: Excellent.  You see, I've always been a fan of pop music as well
as rock music.  When I was growing up, as a kid, you know, I
remember all those, you know, [sings] "Do your boogie man, make a
lit tle love, get down tonight."  I remember all that stuff, you
know, and "Please Don't Go, I Love You So."  It's fascinating.  I'm
going to get his autograph later on.

Interviewer: Are you really?

JE: Yeah, I've got to get one for a friend of mine as well.

Interviewer: Well, that's great, and maybe you can offer him some 
makeup tips, because he needs some foundation and some spackling, I think.

JE: Well, I haven't seen him yet.  To be quite honest, I wouldn't
even know what he looked like.  We never saw them.  You see, KC and
the Sunshine Band weren't... anything... I never... they were nev er
on Top of the Pops in England.  I wouldn't know what he looked like,
and, obviously, it would, what, be nearly twenty years ago as well,
so people change in twenty years.

Interviewer: If we slip you a hundred dollar bill, will you just run 
onstage and sing "Get Down Tonight" with him?

JE: No.  

Interviewer: I've got to ask you about the current tour and Slang, a
completely different direction for Def Leppard compared to the 80's
records that you produced.  What made you decide to go with th e
stripped-down production that you have?

JE: You just summed it up there straightaway--the 80's.  There's a
stigma around certain bands from the 80's that were just forever
going to be called an 80's band, which I think is a little unfair,
seeing as no one throws that tag on, like, U2 or REM.  But we needed
to make something that sounded like 1996.  And we've always tried to
make modern records.  Hysteria was modern in '87, and to try and
recreate something like Hysteria or Pyromania would be an
old-fashioned record.  So we tried to make something that was a
little bit more, you know, contemporary and a little bit more now.

Interviewer: You've been rocking and touring for close to near
twenty years.  Are you getting tired of the grind, or are you still
enthusiastic about it?  I know you started your tour in May and you'
re going all over the world.

JE: Not at all.  It's about sixteen [years], actually, and, believe
me [laughs], sixteen is a long way from twenty, even at my age. 
Yeah, I love it, you know, it never gets tiring.  You know, someti
mes it gets a bit annoying when the voices go down, 'cause there's
nothing you can do about it.  The only way for a voice to get better
is to take time off.  Once you've got schedules booked months u p
front, you can't get the time off, so you have to, I don't know,
perform miracles.  You have to be like a circus dog sometimes to get
my voice fired up.  You know, you go to bed early, you don't ta lk to
people, you just avoid contact with anybody.  You can't be the
social animal that you want to be.  Other than that, you know, once
you get up on the stage everything's forgotten then, 'cause th at's
such a cool thing to do.  

Interviewer: Now, you guys are on tour with your wives and kids and
stuff.  Do you still get in the groupie thing, because Kiss was in
town here Friday night, and they were tearing the place up, and
groupies were coming out from all over the place.  Is that still
part of the big rock star mentality these days?

JE: Well, the word "groupie" has a kind of a very negative
connotation.  To me, the word "groupie" [refers to] the ones that
try to get in bed with you, and the fans are the ones that just hang
aroun d the lobby looking for an autograph.  I'd say there's a
distinguishable difference.  Yeah, there's still a lot there, and
there's always the odd one that, you know, comes on with a bit of a
wink and a wiggle.  But you tend not to... you know, I mean we've all
got...  [like] you said, we're all either married or got
girlfriends.  They're traveling with us, you know, and you can't
really sneak of f for ten minutes with somebody else.  I mean, you've
got to be some really low-down snake to do something like that, you
know.

Interviewer: What's in your CD player at home right now, or in the 
Lear jet, or whatever you travel in?

JE: Um... My warmup tape at the moment is in the machine in the 
dressing room.

Interviewer: Your vocal warmup tapes, or...

JE: Yeah.

Interviewer: Give us some warm... give us some Joe Elliott Def 
Leppard warmup.

JE: Well, you start off with E, 'cause that's easy, and then you
just go like [sings scale].  And then you just go up and up in
pitch, until you get as high as you can, and then back down, and
then you do all the vowel sounds, a, o, oo, as in foot, and you just
do all that for, like, half an hour.  It's like, if you're a
footballer, and you don't stretch before you go on, you're going to
pull mu scles.  It's the same thing with a voice, it's a muscle.

Interviewer:  You know, I think a lot of people, especially with the
groups like you and AC/DC, where you have maybe a kind of rougher
edge to your voice, people don't understand what it takes to go out
there, perform sixty, seventy, a hundred dates, keep that voice
maintained, and the exercises that you guys... and the shape that
you have to be in to do this.

JE: Well, yeah, it's hard work, you know, but it's fun, but it's
sure work, you know.  But it's better than working in a factory,
which is what I used to do.

Interviewer: Well, you know, KC and the Sunshine Band, your opening
act, is on the stage right now, so we should probably let you go
warm up those vocal cords of yours.

JE: Well, I think we should be respectful and go watch them.

Interviewer: Joe Elliott [from] Def Leppard, thank you very much.

JE: My pleasure.

Janet Crum
jcrum@teleport.com