Fireworks Magazine interview with Phil Collen, Joe Elliott, and Rick Savage
There has been much discussion on the noticeboards concerning the release of 'X', Def Leppard's tenth studio album. While many long-time fans have been bemoaning the lack of power to be heard on the album, others have leapt to their defence proclaiming that it's the quality of the songs that is important, not how heavy they are.
Paul Flanaghan caught up with the guys just prior to the UK Top of the Pops appearance and began by asking Joe if it was their intention to make a more commercial album, working with the likes of Andreas Calrsson Per Aldeheim and Marti Fredrickson.
Joe: Yeah it was. We discussed it, say about a month before the last tour finished, about getting multi producers in. We were even thinking of using five or six different people and making it like a 'Now That's What I Call Music' album, where it's all different you know. That was never going to pan out because it was really too far fetched. We got it down to three different teams: ourselves, Pete Woodroffe, Andreas and Per, and er Marti as well….of course we wanted to work with Marti after we all kind of enthusiastically grasped the Aerosmith thing 'Just Push Play.' And what he did with 'Jaded' was great, he made Aerosmith sound like they were about 23 years old. We thought, somebody said to us 'You guys are starting to get,' - excuse the pun - 'a bit jaded'. We thought we would mix it up a bit ourselves, and throw a bit more ingredients into the pie, just to jazz it up a little bit, that's why we did it.