http://www.thetimesonline.com/articles/2003/03/28/features/on_the_go/f6d5c4aa45c1e8cc86256cf500825d29.txt

Friday, March 28, 2003

For Def Leppard it's about writing, recording and promoting

BY TIM SHELLBERG 
Times Correspondent
Northwest Indiana News

Calendar years and Def Leppard have made for heated discussion among fans
and music scribes over the course of the band's career.

Since the gap between its 1983 breakthrough, "Pyromania," and 1987's
"Hysteria," Def Leppard has been notorious for the multiyear spans between
studio albums, be there inter-band setbacks and tragedies or not.

Yet such criticism is unfounded to Def Leppard frontman Joe Elliott.

"In the old days, people would say 'Why does it take you five years to
make an album?' but it doesn't take us five years to make an album," he
said.

"First of all we have to write it, then we have to record it. Then (in the
case of 'Hysteria') we took it on the road for two years. After that we're
writing and recording the next one for a year-and-a-half."

Scheduled to perform at Chicago's UIC Pavilion tonight, fans of the band
had to wait three years between the release of its appropriately-titled
10th album, last summer's "X," and its predecessor, 1999's "Euphoria."

With the firing of original guitarist Pete Willis, the loss of drummer
Rick Allen and the alcohol-induced death of guitarist Steve Allen well
documented, the Def Leppard story has become that of rock 'n' roll
folklore cou rtesy of VH1, which has given the band's triumphs and
tragedies airtime in everything from a "Behind the Music" episode to
featuring "Pyromania" as one of its "Ultimate Albums." The band also was
given the biopic treatmen t by the channel in 2001 with "Hysteria: The Def
Leppard Story."

While Def Leppard's reign of selling eight-figure albums ended with the
release of "Adrenalize" in 1992, the band managed to withstand the grunge
and alt-rock heavy '90s with albums such as 1996's "Slang," "Euphoria" and
"X" moving in respectable numbers out of record stores across the globe.
"X" also has garnished no small amount of respectable reviews from
critics.

Yet it's not billboard charts or record sales that concern the band from a
commercial standpoint these days.

"The most important thing for (the band) today is radio play," Elliott
said. "If you've got a (radio) programmer that says that this (song) will
fit the format, you'll get people making up their own minds. If they hear
it maybe six or seven times, they make up their own minds ... there's two
types of music, there's good and there's bad, and it's all subjective."

Recorded between Elliott's home studio in Ireland and at studios in Sweden
and Los Angeles, the band decided to turn its songwriting tables on "X."
Its first album to feature songs penned or co-penned by outside collabora
tors, Def Leppard took the rock-heavy song schematic of "Hysteria" and
reversed it with more pop-flavored songs.

"We always tried to have this fine balance between that credibility thing,
where you've got to have the album track factor to keep the rock fans
happy, then throw in a couple of pop songs that you hope will get through
th e radio," Elliott said. "With this one, it's the other way around.

"We put two rock tracks on there and like 10 things on there that could be
singles," he said. "There's only four songs on there with actual bona-fide
guitar solos on there."

Def Leppard has spent the better part of the last nine months traveling
the globe in support of "X." Its current tour of the states is scheduled
to wind down in Tupelo, Miss., on May 2.

"We've never been as good (live) as we are now," Elliott said. "When we
were at the top of our (commercial) game, when every show was sold out, we
were OK, and we were getting away with murder ... I'm as excited about it
now as I was when I was 18."

Def Leppard
When: 7:30 tonight
Where: UIC Pavilion, 1150 W. Harrison St., Chicago
Tickets: $35, $45
For more info: (312) 413-5740

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