http://www.canada.com/search/story.aspx?id=16b2bdf0-b8cd-496d-9c43-a428ef372d3c Def Leppard earning respect again Jordan Zivitz Montreal Gazette Thursday, August 21, 2003 In July last year, Def Leppard vocalist Joe Elliott and guitarist Phil Collen were holding court in a studio, telling a roomful of journalists that their new album, X, was made with an ear for the charts. A year later, in advance of the band's Canadian tour, what does Collen say about the disc that was meant to find a place beside 1987's mammoth Hysteria in every home? "Some you win and some you don't." Collen still holds up the album as "the best thing we've done since Hysteria," but with scant radio or label support, X didn't mark the spot it was intended to. If 1996's Slang was Def Leppard's identity-crisis album -- meant to curry favour in the afterglow of grunge -- X was meant to curry favour by being unabashedly pop. As in popular. Hopefully. The fist-pumping choruses were accounted for, but the band's trademark sea of harmonies and bulletproof production values were also applied to at least one ballad worthy of the Backstreet Boys (Unbelievable, written and produced by Britney/'N Sync hit-makers Per Aldeheim and Andreas Carlsson). Collen makes no apologies for this. Rather than try to gain credit by distancing his harmony-driven rock band from harmony-driven teen pop acts, he proudly said, "When I first heard the Backstreet Boys, I heard us in there." "There was some stuff on the Millennium album ... that sounded like Human League with Def Leppard singing over it. It was weird no one really picked up on it." Considering his not-so-latent pop side, it is not surprising that Collen is all for Mariah Carey's recent revival of Def Leppard's Bringin' on the Heartbreak (from 1981's High 'n' Dry) -- a cover that some fans have considered an act of high treason. "You get e-mails from fans, and they go, 'It's disgusting, it's terrible.' I said, 'No -- you've got to realize that she's on our side. Someone's actually out there promoting one of our songs. You should give her all the help she can get.' "Ultimately, it's just a great honour for us (if) anyone does that -- and does a real genuine version, not recording the song and making fun of the band, like the Michael Jackson thing by Alien Ant Farm (Smooth Criminal). With Mariah it was a genuine version of our song. I actually think that's a huge compliment." It's not the only pat on the back that has come Def Leppard's way. After spending the 1990s waiting for the '90s to be over, the band has attained respected elder-statesman status among the new wave of hard-rock groups. "We just did a festival the other week with Godsmack and Powerman 5000 and all these bands. We went down so well -- and not just [with] the audience, but all the other bands that were there. They actually came in and shook our hands. One guy said: 'You guys are men amongst boys.' It was really nice to get that back. "During the '90s that wasn't the case. The reason that the whole alternative scene even started was because of bands -- I don't want to say like us, because they weren't.... These kind of crappy, big-hair bands that had these awful ballads. We didn't really want to be associated with them, but we were." If Collen were rock critic, the only 1980s contemporary Def Leppard would have been associated with would be Bon Jovi. "We had about as much to do with all the others as we did with Tom Waits," Collen said. The Leps and Jon Bon share more than shiny happy harmonies and a pop-metal genetic hybrid: Both acts have reputations for punishing tour schedules that, for Collen and company particularly, see them reach rarely visited outposts of the rock-star itinerary. Logging stage time in Winnipeg is a notable feat for most international acts; Def Leppard goes one better with coming dates in Grand Prairie, Alta., and Kamloops, B.C. Some of the band's shows aren't in such teeming metropolises. "You should have seen where we played the other day. There was Grand Funk Railroad, the Little River Band, and then we headlined. And it was totally in the middle of nowhere. We thought, 'Jesus Christ!' It was dusty, it was 104 (degrees F), and -- it was fantastic. If there are going to be people who will show up, then it's worth going (anywhere)." If anything, Collen says, the band's recognition factor has increased lately, thanks in part to a slew of U.S. TV specials, including an episode of VH1's Behind the Music. Def Leppard plays the Regina Agridome on September 13. © Copyright 2003 CanWest News Service