http://www.manchesteronline.co.uk/entertainment/music/indieandrock/stories/Detail_LinkStory=52219.html

Manchester Indie
Preview
Putting the music first

Kevin Bourke

TO some it might seem as if Def Leppard are desperately unfashionable but
most of the dates on their current tour, including Sunday at the Apollo,
have been sold out for ages.  To this day in America, their back catalogue
- not even their new album X, you should note, but just the old stuff -
shifts an astounding 20 to 25,000 copies every week!

That said, 43-year-old Joe Elliott, who's been vocalist with the band
since they played their first gig for six Sheffield friends in Christmas
of 1977, doesn't sound as if he thinks the band have ever been taken
seriously by the sort of folk who vote people into the Rock And Roll Hall
Of Fame.

"I don't expect to get that particular call anytime soon, but at the same
time I'll be insulted if we don't," he said.

"Bands like us don't get that call. That's just the way it is. We have no
credibility in the eyes of the people who pick that kind of stuff. It
seems to me it's a clique, your Neil Youngs and your Springsteens. You're
not going to get Joe Elliott and Jon Bon Jovi in there. There's too much
"Spinal Tap" attached to bands like us. It's all perception, and we're
aware of that."

Speaking of perception, does he get offended when people refer to Def
Leppard as "that band with the one-armed drummer?"

"It's obviously very hard, like talking to somebody with a strawberry
birthmark," he concedes. "There's a person behind that thing, but you try
not staring at it. But it doesn't bother me one iota. If you don't want to
be talking about things that happened in your career, don't get a career,
because those are the things that are gonna come up."

Oh good, so does that mean we can talk about their wild days?

Reputation

"The reputation got way out of hand," he laughs. "We had a few crazy
moments in the eighties, on the "Hysteria" tour, but what might have been
two or three nights gets talked about as though it were happening every
night. There wasn't a mud shark every night like that Led Zeppelin story.

"We've always put the music first, which is why I think it always annoyed
us to be lumped in with those other "heavy metal" bands.

"It seemed to me that all they wanted to do was grow their hair, buy some
hairspray, move into some sleazehole on Sunset Boulevard and play The
Roxy.

"We wanted to play Madison Square Garden. And we want people to remember
us for our songs, not our trousers."

Trousers and Spinal Tap moments aside, they've had some pretty substantial
hit records. Does that, by definition, make them a "pop" band?

"Even The Rolling Stones had top 10 hits," he points out. "Pop is a
strange word, pop's become this word that you think of as pap. 'Pop' is
short for popular, and that can be anything from Black Sabbath to
Charlotte Church. We've never minded shifting with the times. We don't
want to be like Quo. We have not been that kind of band... we wanna do
what Bowie's done and what Queen did.

"We've always tried to move on. But pop music at the moment all seems to
be based around voyeurism. You don't just see the pop artist, now we see
him getting out of bed in the morning, having his auditions, squeezing his
zits, failing, falling down, crying and getting up again, and you know...
it's not my thing. I'd rather just see the finished article, that's much
cooler. I'm not a fan of this Popstar stuff at all."

Def Leppard play at the Manchester Apollo, Ardwick Green on Sunday,
February 23.. Call 0870 401 8000 to confirm ticket availability.

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