http://www.bravewords.com/features.html?id=1000343

DEF LEPPARD    Best Before: 1987      [04.11.29 12:00:26]
By Carl Begai

I used to be a Def Leppard fan. I admit to owning a copy of the band's Hysteria
opus from 1987 - an album fellow Knucklehead Martin Popoff so accurately
describes as "tasteless and devoid of all life" in his Collector's Guide To
Heavy Metal. It was the beginning of the end of my fanboyship, although their
first three albums kicked my ass and continue to do so to this day. Gritty, raw,
bare bones hard ass rock-to-metal packages, On Through The Night ('80), High 'N'
Dry ('81) and Pyromania ('83) were laid down by a band with stars in its eyes,
grateful for every pancake they sold because it meant an extra round of pints at
the pub. The gazillion-selling hit that was Hysteria changed all that, of
course, with each album that followed offering up more and more ultra-layered
processed cheese based on producer Mutt Lange's original blueprint of How To
Make A Better Sellout, which incidentally, actually began to take shape during
Pyromania. Present day feedback and sales suggest that I'm not alone in my
thinking, as Def Leppard hasn't had a major blow-the-doors-off hit since
Adrenalize ('92). Their last album, X, sewered out worse than Ashlee Simpson on
SNL, yet the band's label recently saw fit to release a Best Of compilation
featuring, lo and behold, lots of older pre-hysterical material.

Needless to say I was surprised. I mean, the schmalz-loving Top 40 cuddle-rock
contingent that keeps Def Leppard afloat today either doesn't know, or more
likely doesn't care about the old classic songs. Given the chance to speak to
guitarist Phil Collen and ask him what gives - could this perhaps be a sign that
times and sound are changing? - I jumped at the opportunity.

"The Best Of was the label's idea," Collen reveals. "The reason being that Vault
(the band's greatest hit compilation from '95) sells fantastic even now - it
just went triple or quadruple platinum, actually - and every Christmas
throughout the world it sells like crazy. The thing is, Vault doesn't have that
classic vibe, those classic songs, so I think that's why they wanted to release
another one."

Uh-huh. So what's it like dealing with one of the old guard like me, a fan of
the High 'N' Dry era who wouldn't touch a 'Let's Get Rocked' or 'When Love And
Hate Collide' mp3 with a free DSL link? Makes a present day Best Of package
loaded down with both pre and post-Hysteria material seem kind of pointless.

"There's this whole thing that we were a metal band, and we never were, not even
on the old albums," says Collen, something we've all heard before and I disagree
with. "I think the first couple albums - the ones before I joined - Def Leppard
was trying to find itself. I don't want to say the sound was misdirected or
anything, but the band found its identity on Pyromania and it really kicked in
on Hysteria. The big problem with Hysteria, and even with Adrenalize, we created
a definitive sound that ended up being copied by a lot of other people, which
really made that kind of sound become very lame. If we had put Slang ('96) out
when we released Adrenalize I think things would have been much different in the
end. Hysteria made Def Leppard because it had a lot of pop elements and was able
to cross over. There are people that say they want to hear the older stuff when
we play live, and that's all fine and dandy until we actually do it. We've done
older songs in concert and there are 8,000 people sitting there going 'Where's
'Pour Some Sugar On Me'?' So, that's the problem we made for ourselves with
Hysteria."

"It's really weird, though," Collen continues. "When we went to Japan on the X
tour we decided to throw some weird songs into the set like 'Ring Of Fire',
which was a b-side, and 'Stagefright', and the fans loved it. They went nuts so
we thought 'Hey, this is the way to go.' We took it to the States, did the same
set, and you could have heard a pin drop. Throughout the tour we ended up having
to do more and more hit-based stuff. So, despite all the complaints we get, when
the fans come to see us live it's the hits they want to hear. Unfortunately, we
could play 'Mirror Mirror' and stuff like that until we're blue in face but it's
only a small minority that's actually going to enjoy it. Either that or a
Japanese audience (laughs)."

It was this minority (and likely the Japanese fanbase) that chose the classic
cuts that appear on the new Best Of package. Collen explains:

"The track list of the Best Of is actually based on requests, downloads and
stuff like that, so it's made up of the stuff people really want to hear.
Personally, I wouldn't have put 'Billy's Got A Gun' on there - I would have put
'White Lightning' or 'Gods Of War' on instead - but whoever they are, there you
go (laughs)."

It also sounds like Collen, personally, would very much like to see Def Leppard
alter the way it writes and records. Take, for example, his preference for the
Slang album.

"That's kind of the band's favourite album because of the way we approached it.
It was a very free album and we did a lot of the backing tracks live, which is
how we really sound as opposed to all this studio bullshit we normally do with
layering the vocals and using a click track for the drums. It was like, 'This is
how the song goes; let's do it,' and we had great fun because we weren't working
in a particular format. Slang was very uncommercial in that sense and it was a
lot of fun to do. I think people dismissed that album because we were really
uncool at that point."

And some would say that Def Leppard is still uncool. As previously mentioned,
the band's last album, X, is probably their least successful offering to date.
I'm trying to imagine what Popoff would give it in light of having rated
Hysteria a big fat "0".

"It didn't do well," Collen agrees. "We like the fact there's a very different
mix of songs and ideas on the album. It isn't too hard-rocking an album but I
think the writing is good. Every time you do an album you have a concept and
it's usually different from the one before it. With Euphoria we were thinking,
'Let's make an album that sounds like every song on Vault, a real greatest hits
package.' On X we were looking at what was current at that moment, which is what
we've always done, and things that were very contemporary at the time we were
writing for it."

With that in mind, given the current day preference for more aggressive forms of
MTV fodder, it seems to me there's a call for Def Leppard to become a metal band
(again).

"Okay, but metal how?" laughs Collen.

Pre-1984, pre-Hysteria hysteria.

"Right. Well, I don't know if a bunch of 40 year old guys could pull off a
'Rock, Rock ('Til You Drop)' or 'Let It Go' kind of thing (laughs). There's a
point where you can't sing some of those lyrics, you just can't stand behind
them. Like 'Wasted'; I haven't had a drink in 18 years so it would be kind of
weird singing about getting hammered. On every level you have to think about
that sort of thing. Of course we can play anything, but you have to draw the
line. But yeah, I'd love to do an album that didn't have ballads and shit on
it."

Okay, so I guess what I'm saying is that Def Leppard should go into the studio
and make an analog rock record.

"That's a different thing," says Collen, "and I think you just summed it up. An
analog rock record would be great. I would love that, and in fact I'm going to
quote you on that because that would be a really good thing for Def Leppard. It
would be neat to hear us doing things that way because of what we've gotten into
with the whole studio thing; it's time for us not to do that, to do something
different."

Something Collen has already been experimenting with, as it turns out.

"I've actually been recording with a couple buddies of mine," Collen reveals. "I
was over in England this summer and I met up with Simon Laffy, who used to be
the bass player in my old band, Girl, and Paul Cook, who was the drummer in The
Sex Pistols. We've got this new band called Man-Raze. I'm singing and playing
guitar, and it's kind of like The Police, real edgy stuff. When we've been
recording it's been one take stuff and I've been having a blast. Obviously if we
made a glaring mistake we'd go back and fix it, but otherwise we left things the
way they were laid down, and I think that's how Def Leppard should be. When we
record an album there's a tendency to lose the original vibe of the song because
we're recording things over and over again. The songs become shadows of their
former selves. I'd like to do a one take Def Leppard album, sure, but I don't
even know if we're actually capable of it. I do think it's essential that
whatever we do next, it's not the same old business-as-usual approach."

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