Def Leppard Atomic Mess News

Def Leppard's performance on today's Live 8 show in Philadelphia featured Rock Of Ages, No Matter What, and Pour Some Sugar On Me. I'm trying to get audo recordings of this to add to the site.

Thirteen years is a long time to be "the new guy," but Def Leppard guitarist Vivian Campbell is just that.

Campbell joined the English rock band in 1992, after the death of founding guitarist Steve Clark. He had played with Whitesnake and Dio, a couple of pretty well- known rock 'n' roll outfits, but he's found his home with Def Leppard.

"When I was in Whitesnake, there were five different guys from five different nations," Campbell, 42, said. "There was an age disparity of about 17 years between some of the guys and myself. We were from different eras and cultures. The only thing we really had in common was the music.

"With Def Leppard, there's a unity there. We're all within a few years of each other. We grew up listening to the same songs, and we all wanted to play guitar, drums, sing, be in a band. We had the same media and the same sense of humor."

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Now, over the years, especially with some of the things you have to do with the electronics that allow you to play your snare with your foot, etc.., I've always noticed that you have an incredible bass foot. Your right foot in "Answer To The Master" bounces to the tune of what a lot of drummers have to use two bass drums to accomplish. I've always been curious, especially since your heroes, Bryan Downey, Ian Paice, and Keith Moon were all double-kick players…why did you never play double bass drums?

Let's talk about the Raven Drum Foundation. It's a non-profit organization that you started with your wife that travels around and helps people. Fans of the band are familiar with this organization, but for those who don't know what it is, let's give them the skinny.

And you've proven that by just doing what you've done. You've influenced so many people just by continuing to do what you do, both physically and mentally. I remember everything about that day when they announced your accident. It was my senior year of high school and I remember it like it was yesterday. Just the fact that you kept on going was a huge inspiration to me. I don't think you ever even thought for a minute that it was going to affect you playing drums with the band. I mean you never gave up, bro.

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Naysayers who are not tuned in to Def Leppard may dismiss this veteran rock group as a has-been '80s group.

"You have to hang in there, and our whole thing has been like, this is what we do, we're not going anywhere," lead singer Joe Elliott said in a recent interview.

"We love what we do. We're philosophical enough to realize that having said that we could split up tomorrow, but it's unlikely."

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It has been 22 years since Def Leppard exploded into the world of rock 'n' roll with the release of its third album, "Pyromania." In that time, they've had a guitarist die, a drummer lose an arm and, in the mid-'90s, they saw the arrival of grunge briefly kick them off the public's radar.

No matter.

Lep rocks on, and though they do it to smaller crowds and with less fanfare, they are still a very good band blessed with a gift for combining cunning hard-rock riffs with terrific melodies.

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It's not that Def Leppard, which performs at the Chevrolet Amphitheatre tonight, wants to dwell in its illustrious past. The members would like to be perceived as a band that is still artistically viable, not a relic of an age gone by.

But during a 2002 tour promoting its last studio album, "X," the band learned that a catalog of hit songs sometimes overwhelms new material.

"We went out on tour playing 22 songs a night, seven of which were from the new album," says guitarist Viv Campbell. "That seven became six, became five, became four, became three. By the end of the tour we were playing one song from the album, and basically just for our own well-being."

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Be honest: which of the songs on the compilation are you sick to death of?

I have to [answer that] two ways. In rehearsals, quite a lot of them. In front of an audience? None of them. I can't justify not doing any of these songs until I hear about Pete Townshend saying he won't do "My Generation" for an encore. That's why 60,000 people go ape when the Stones play "Satisfaction." The songs are part of their legacy, and you fall back in love with them over the years. The most frustrating thing for musicians who want to play stuff from the new album is when everyone goes out to buy a beer. 'Why don't you stay!' you wonder. "Because I don't f*cking know that song!"

You've been at this for more than 25 years; how does one age gracefully in rock?

You don't. You're not supposed to, are ya? If you don't physically age gracefully, it's a bit sad. I think Steven Tyler can get away anything, because he still looks like he did in '73. Especially from row Z backwards in an arena. As long as the Stones keep their hair and don't get fat they'll get away with the wrinkles.

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Vivian Campbell isn't an original member of Def Leppard. He wasn't in the Brit band when Def Leppard recorded its signature songs in the studio with producer Robert John "Mutt" Lange.

He missed that first huge wave of popularity in the '80s, when Def Leppard dominated TV and radio with hits such as "Photograph," "Foolin'," "Rock of Ages" and "Pour Some Sugar on Me."

Campbell isn't defensive about it - on the contrary.

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Stalwart '80s rockers Def Leppard (tickets | bio)–in the Phoenix area Tuesday (6/7) to perform during the Rock 'n' Roll Doubleheader tour with co-headliner Bryan Adams –balked while attempting to pitch 25 years worth of hits.

Lead singer Joe Elliott, who appeared to be ill, lacked the enthusiasm of tours past. The leather-pants-wearing frontman sounded hoarse, relying on vocal help from his bandmates on songs such as "Photograph" and the ballad "Love Bites." He enlisted the crowd at Mesa's Hohokam Park to sing the chorus to "Animal," and the thirtysomething audience happily complied.

Def Leppard opened the show with "Action" before long, black curtains parted to reveal a screen that interspersed live clips of the band with video images.

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The greatness of Def Leppard can be summed up in four words, and not gunter glieben glauten globen. The four words are: Girls totally liked them. This was such a formal breakthrough in metal terms, it can hardly be overstated. Def Leppard delivered pop thrills for girls: They sang harmonies, they pumped up the beat to near-disco levels, they wrote songs as tight as their Union Jack shorts, they pranced in videos.

Who can forget Phil Collen's spandex-clad ass shaking back and forth to the beat in the "Rock of Ages" video? They took as much from David Bowie and T. Rex as they took from Led Zeppelin. As a result, Lep became arguably the first metal band to enjoy a sexually integrated audience, inventing a template that so many lesser bands spent the Eighties trying to imitate. Lep had it both ways — the boys wanted to be them and the girls wanted to rock them.

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After 38 years in the "Rock Brigade", Def Leppard are still ready to Rock Rock (Till You Drop).

Last month the English hard-rock quintet, which formed in 1977 in Sheffield, released a new retrospective, Rock of Ages: The Definitive Collection, featuring hits, favourite album tracks and one new recording, a cover of Badfinger's No Matter What. The group will promote it all summer on tour, mixing its own dates with shows at minor-league baseball stadiums that will also feature Bryan Adams.

An all-covers album is also in the works, and singer Joe Elliott says that, if all goes as planned, Def Leppard will succeed in bolstering its popularity, which has slipped since the 1980s heyday of multiplatinum albums such as Pyromania (1983) and Hysteria (1987).

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Veteran pop/metal outfit Def Leppard is showing no signs of slowing down, as evidenced by its jam-packed summer/fall schedule. First up is a double-disc career overview, "Rock of Ages: The Definitive Collection," due May 17 via Island. A few months later, an all-covers album will follow, in addition to a U.S. tour of minor league baseball stadiums this summer with Bryan Adams.

While the group will stick to the hits on the Adams dates, Leppard will likely dig up a few forgotten gems for its headlining gigs.

"We're actually going to do some other gigs as well — we'll probably throw a few rarities in," guitarist Phil Collen tells Billboard.com. "I've been listening to some of the old sh*t, so you never know. 'Mirror Mirror,' maybe, or even 'Ride into the Sun,' from the first EP — it'll be nice to throw things in like that. But we have a huge list of stuff to do."

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First they were rock gods. A decade later, Def Leppard almost became rock ghosts. Now the band that defined 1980s party rock can call itself a rock survivor. It's marking 25 years since its major label debut with the release of "Rock Of Ages: The Definitive Collection" and a much-anticipated summer tour.

"A lot of it is down to the natural alignment of the stars. What you have when you break it down is a band that signed a record deal more than 20 years ago and … is still making records," lead singer Joe Elliott recently told The Associated Press. "To survive, you have to adapt, go along with things."

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Rock of Ages: The Definitive Collection enters the Billboard charts at #10 after selling 66,000 copies in its first week. Def Leppard's last top 10 album was RetroActive in 1993.

The upcoming covers only album will be titled Yeah! and is scheduled for release on September 20, 2005.