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'Yeah!' It's Def Leppard

Friday, August 25, 2006
ALAN SCULLEY for The Columbian

Def Leppard has spent the better part of the past two decades trying to explain 
in interviews that the band has been miscast as a heavy metal act, and its real 
roots are more in the pop and glam rock era of rock 'n' roll.

It's been a rather futile experience. But with the release of the new covers 
CD, "Yeah!," singer Joe Elliott hopes Def Leppard has finally found a way to 
set the record straight on exactly the kind of music that shaped the group's 
sound.

"We've gone through a tedious amount of time trying to explain to people that 
we're not strictly a heavy metal band," Elliott said in a recent phone 
interview. "You're explaining (this) one tour, and 18 months later you go back 
on the road and the same journalist will headline an article that we're an '80s 
heavy metal band ... So what's the easiest way of making the headline 
irrelevant is to make an album that's in the shops, in your hands, in your 
head, on the radio, that says more than a thousand words ever could."

Whether "Yeah!" will put Def Leppard's music into what the band members would 
consider the proper light remains to be seen. But it is notable that not a 
single heavy metal act is featured on the new CD.

"The one thing we weren't going to do was make an album of Sabbath, Zeppelin 
and Deep Purple covers," Elliott said. "That's too easy and wrong."

Instead, "Yeah!" features Def Leppard's versions of such songs as David Essex's 
"Rock On," the Kinks' "Waterloo Sunset," Thin Lizzy's "Don't Believe a Word," 
Badfinger's "No Matter What" and the Faces' "Stay With Me."

On the vast majority of the 14 songs on "Yeah!" Def Leppard sticks pretty close 
to the most famous versions of the song. Elliott said there was an obvious 
reason for that approach.

"It's the old cliche: if it's not broken, don't fix it," he said. "When we 
heard 'Stay With Me,' and when we still hear 'Stay With Me,' we just go, 'wow, 
what a song!'"

Only two of the songs actually differ significantly from their signature 
versions: "Rock On" still has much of the character of the Essex original, but 
uses a guitar solo instead of strings; and "Waterloo Sunset," which gets a 
rocked up treatment.

"Both of these songs, if we wrote them, this is what we would have done," 
Elliott said. "With the others, there's nothing that we would have changed too 
much, so we didn't."

The only criteria in choosing songs for the CD, Elliott said, was that the 
songs had to come from British acts and had to have been recorded before the 
end of the 1970s.

That's when the group from Sheffield, England, got signed by Mercury Records. 
Def Leppard debuted in 1980 with the album "On Through the Night."

But it wasn't until the third CD, 1983's "Pyromania," that Def Leppard made a 
major impact. The band which at the time included Elliott, guitarist Phil 
Collen, guitarist Steve Clark, bassist Rick Savage and drummer Rick Allen made 
its mark in a big way, as "Pyromania" eventually sold more than 10 million 
copies behind hits like "Bringing On A Heartbreak" and "Photograph."

The 1987 follow-up, "Hysteria," was even more popular, and today more than 13 
million copies of the CD have been sold.

Sessions for the next CD, "Adrenalize," were interrupted by the death of 
guitarist Clark, who had fought a long battle with substance abuse. Vivian 
Campbell came on board as the replacement before "Adrenalize" arrived in stores 
in 1992 five years after "Hysteria."

As the '90s arrived, though, Def Leppard's catchy brand of hard rock fell out 
of favor as grunge became the dominant style of rock music, and CDs such as 
"Slang," (1996) and "Euphoria" (1999) failed to come close to the popularity of 
the previous three CDs.

Still, Def Leppard has remained popular enough to continue filling arena-sized 
venues, and this summer's tour, which features Journey as the opening act, is 
no exception.

Fans can expect Def Leppard to play a set filled with hits from a catalog of 
nine studio CDs that has sold 65 million albums overall. That sort of set is a 
necessity for a tour like this, Elliott said.

"I'm sorry if it kind of rubs people the wrong way, but in a live environment 
other than a small club, familiarity is a major ingredient," he said. "People 
walk out of stadiums when U2 plays nine new songs. They walk out of stadiums 
when the Rolling Stones plays nine new songs. If you indulge your audience that 
much, they will go 'I don't get it' because they're coming to pay homage to 
what they know."

If you go
Who: Def Leppard, Journey in concert.
When: 7:30 p.m. Aug. 30.
Where: The Amphitheater at Clark County, 17200 N.E. Delfel Road, Ridgefield.
Cost: $29.50-$95.50 through Ticketmaster, 360-573-7700.
Information: Call 360-816-7000 or visit www.ampatclarkcounty.com. 

©2006 Columbian.com