http://www.spinner.com/2008/04/04/def-leppard-riffs-on-sgt-pepper-with-tim-mcgraw/

Def Leppard Riffs on 'Sgt. Pepper' With Tim McGraw

Posted Apr 4th 2008 4:00PM by John D. Luerssen

While many of Def Leppard's peers seem content to rely on their tired back 
catalogs as they hop from shed to shed this summer, the rockers will be 
augmenting fan favorites like 'Photograph' and 'Pour Some Sugar On Me' with 
tracks from its new album, 'Songs From the Sparkle Lounge,' due April 29, which 
features a collaboration with country star Tim McGraw, and a cover inspired by 
'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band'.

"We had initially hoped to really pay tribute to [Sgt. Pepper]," 
guitarist/songwriter Phil Collen tells Spinner, "but it was turning out to be a 
real hassle. Putting Elvis Presley's image on it, for instance, would have been 
$1800. And the same went for a lot of the other images we wanted to use. And we 
thought about people like Hitler and the Stones, but we realized how much 
effort it would have been to get the art work finalized. Instead, we just used 
different pictures of us, our families and road crew. Although there's a 
picture of Mona Lisa, and people like Ian Hunter, Abraham Lincoln and King Tut 
on it, for the most part it was a compromise."

As for the collaboration, Collen says it came about through the brother of Def 
Leppard's drummer Rick Allen. "Robert [Allen] is Tim McGraw's tour manager and 
through him we learned that Tim was a big fan of our band," he explains. "So 
when we finally met him backstage at our Hollywood Bowl gig, we just hit it 
off. What we came up with -- that's mostly what you hear on the album. We kept 
most of the demo. A few months later, I flew to Nashville to work with Tim on 
his vocal. The whole thing just came together with such ease. He's a very 
inspiring presence; he's got a wealth of ideas and he's just a musical dynamo."

Collen is quick to admit that their collaboration is much better, and shall we 
say, more authentic, than most. "Most collaborations are crap because they're 
usually suggested by a label A&R guy or a manager, or some other industry ass," 
he says. "Although it's considerably different stylistically, I liken this more 
to what Linkin Park and Jay-Z did together."

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