Leppard hasn't changed spots Band prides itself on being Old Reliable By Mark Brown, Rocky Mountain News December 16, 2002 Fans expect the hits when they go to a Def Leppard concert, and the band is happy to play them. "They've come to terms with the fact that it's OK to like a band that's reliable," says singer Joe Elliott. "The idea of seeing the Stones attracts some people because they think one of them might die soon. They go and see Guns N' Roses - or used to - because they might implode onstage and beat each other to death. With us, we're on time and reliable. That may come across to some people as a bit boring." Not that they're mired in the past. The band's show is full of new material, but Def Leppard prides itself on its consistency. "You can have Axl Rose, who's going to blow his tour out. Or you can have us. Ninety-nine times out of 100, it's pretty obvious that we're gonna turn up," Elliott says. "That's what they paid for with us." Fans will get what they paid for Tuesday at Magness Arena - Def Leppard will turn up, play the hits and play songs from their latest album, X (which is intended as the Roman numeral for "10," Elliott explains, but everyone's calling it X anyway, so he's given in as well). Def Leppard got lumped in with short-lived hair-metal bands in the '80s on the strength of hits such as Pour Some Sugar on Me, Photograph and Love Bites. The band also had enough drama for a lifetime, be it Steve Clark's death from alcohol and drug use or drummer Rick Allen's loss of an arm in a car accident. But they've persevered, selling 45 million records in the process. The band caught a bit of flack on X because it brought in some new producers, particularly Per Aldeheim and Andreas Carlsson, who contributed the hit Unbelievable and are best-known for their work with boy bands and Celine Dion. Also on board is Marti Frederiksen, a hit-maker who worked with Aerosmith and others. Yet the disc still sounds much like classic Def Leppard. "At the end of the day it doesn't matter if you've got Mutt Lange, Marti Frederiksen or an adequate engineer. If you have half an idea of how you want your album to sound, it'll sound that way," Elliott says. "The extra ingredient is what the sixth person brings in. What we need to do is just break the routine. It's easy to just be awkward and bring a reggae song in there. But that's just being different for the sake of being different." Fans feared that bringing in outside writers could mean the band was drying up creatively, but X was actually a traditional Def Leppard album. "We definitely write to order. We make them up as we go along," Elliott says. Doing much of the recording in Elliott's home studio gives the band members the luxury of writing songs as they record, often coming up with the best cuts later in the session. Pour Some Sugar on Me was the final song written during the breakthrough Hysteria sessions, he notes. As for using outside material, "what we did was take a classic song that had yet to be released," he says. "It's not like we lost the ability to write; there are 13 songs on the album, and 11 of them we wrote." This time they planned on doing a more pop-oriented album than in the past. "We grew up where it was OK to do that. We hate the pigeonhole factor, that rock bands can't sing about love. I don't think it's mellow; I just think it's representative of where we are right now," Eliott says. The band loves playing but hates recording, he says, though X was "actually, almost - almost - a pleasure to make." The members felt some confidence going into the sessions, as harder-edge music was going away. "We were struggling in an era that we didn't belong in," Elliott says. "The '90s did not belong to us. "We sold a lot of records, but the perception was, it belonged to Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden. We had to ride that out. And then melody came back, toward the late '90s, and all of sudden we fit in again." Weren't they tempted to try a harder sound to try to fit in? No way. "We've been left to our own devices our entire career," he says. Producer Mutt Lange told them early on: "Don't let those people in. They will bend your vision." By hoeing their own row, Elliott says, they've managed to stay together. "The shelf life of most bands is five, seven years - 10 at most. The Beatles were eight. We've been around for 22, recordingwise, and we've sold a . . . lot of records." MUSIC Info: ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Name: Def Leppard Genre: Rock ShowTime: 7:30 p.m. Dec. 17 Location: Magness Arena Price: $38 and $48 Ticket Info: (303) 830-8497 or www.ticketmaster.com ========================= Mark Brown is the popular music critic. Brownm@RockyMountainNews.com or (303) 892-2674. 2002 © The E.W. Scripps Co.