Def Leppard Atomic Mess News

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.

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Def Leppard have just released their tenth studio album, entitled "X", easily their best since the ground breaking "Hysteria" album. While the music on "X" is instantly recognisable as Def Leppard, it represents a fresh approach with new directions, resulting in an album with great crossover appeal. Roland Oei met up with vocalist Joe Elliott and guitarist Phil Collen on their recent promotional tour to find out more about the record that will undoubtedly put the band back at the top of the rock world.

How did you get interested in music?

PC: It was my cousin. My cousin was two years older than me. I was in London - I was born here. He just got these American bootlegs and this weird shit that no one had ever heard of in England. My cousin ended up messing himself up 'cos he got into acid very young. I bypassed that bit and I got into the music. He got me into it, actually. At 14 I saw my first gig, which was Deep Purple or something at Brixton. That was it. But it was my cousin Dave that actually really got me into it.

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What year is it again? While Def Leppard are quite literally working in the present tense with their single "Now," the song's video plays upon their status as '80s survivors by tracing the journey of a classic LepT-shirt. The Sheffield boys are smart enough to know that there has always been a need for metal riffs and catchy choruses. And judging from their new album X, the band can still serve up both. Singer Joe Elliott and guitarists Phil Collen and Vivian Campbell spoke with VH1 about guilt-free mullets, the junkyard known as eBay, and how recording X almost turned into Barry White.

VH1: The "Now" video has a great concept, with the Def Leppard T-shirt changing owners and traversing eras.

Phil Collen: Getting a treatment for a video is like people giving you demo tapes. Most of the time they aren't great, but occasionally there's one that's cool." We chuckled about this one and thought it could really work! Then we met the Malloys, who had done Blink-182's videos. We said, "We don't really do the comedy thing like you do with Blink-182, but we can see where you're going to go with the video. It's goofy and funny but also nostalgic." It worked perfectly.

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The launch of a new Def Leppard album is always an event, but when it re-unites the band with "sixth Leppard" producer and co-writer Mutt Lange, resposible for some of their greatest recorded moments, the prospect suddenly become even more exciting.

Having spent much of the day at the TV studios running through their performance for TFI Friday with transmission scheduled for the same evening, Bassist caught up with Rick for a well deserved break to find out how things were going with Def Leppard these days.

"We're playing better now than we've ever played in our lives," Rick delights in stating, "I don't know whether it comes with experience but we've honed the craft down to a fine art now. The biggest thing for us was always playing and singing at the same time 'cos when you're in the studio you do it seperately, but all the practicing and rehearsals we've done have paid off and it's becoming second nature now. It should be after all these years."

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Joe Elliott is a cool dude. I'm not going to sit here and try to tell you he's "just a regular guy" because he's not - he is, after all, a mega-rock star many times over. But talking to him about music is easy, and fun - as I found out recently when I had the good fortune of being able to ask him as many questions as I could cram into a thirty-minute interview. I spoke to him about everything from his band's latest album "X" to whether or not he secretly listens to Slayer, and he pretty much tackled everything I threw at him. Now don't tell Joe this, but, going into our chat I was really keyed up, and I damn near puked. I mean… this wasn't some ho-hum so-and-so that allegedly used to be in the Allman Brothers, this was Joe freaking Elliott, lead singer for Def Leppard!

"It took about a year for "X" to be written and recorded - was it a blast, or was it a long year?"

"Did any of the stuff that you recorded in your home studio make it to the album?"

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This is Part 2 of our interview with Rick, where he talks to us about recording Def Leppard's new CD, X, tapping into "basic knowledge" with the Raven Drum Foundation, VH1's version of the Def Leppard story, and much more!

MD: What kit did you use on the new album, X?

Rick: I used this beautiful old vintage Ludwig kit that sounded wonderful. Producer Marti Frederiksen also brought some snare drums with him that were quite interesting, including a Pearl free-floating snare drum. The main snare we used was a Ludwig Black Beauty of mine from '83 or '84. My tech, Jerry Johnson, brought this 14×22 bass drum, and there was a 14″ hanging tom, with 16″ and 18″ floor toms. This kit just sang. I felt like I was John Bonham.

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Q: Rick, you have sold over 46 million records, yet every single time you release a new album, you almost have to prove yourself again — how does that make you feel as an artist?

Well, I think it's good and that's how it should be. I don't think you should relax and say that the last album was big so we do not have to prove anything anymore. You want to get totally behind new albums and you should always want to have something to prove because there are always new people that can listen to the band.

Q: Quite true. This is the fourth album written with the current lineup of Phil Collen and Vivian C ampbell. Can you compare the dynamics of this lineup with the one that included first Pete Willis and Steve Clark, and then Steve Clark and Phil Collen?

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Rick Allen has been playing drums all his life, and nothing was going to stop him from doing what he loves to do. Nothing.

By now we all know the story about Rick's terrible car accident on December 31, 1984, which resulted in the drummer losing his left arm. One could only imagine the horror. The future of Del Leppard started to look mighty cloudy.

But only a few short months after his accident, Rick miraculously began a whole new approach to playing, with the help of family, friends, and a special electronic kit made for him by Simmons. Two years later, he was out playing live again.

MD: What is your current setup?

Rick: My current setup is an acoustic kick and snare, with a snare sample that I can fire with my left foot as well. From left to right it's snare trigger, hi-hat, kick drum, snare drum, and tom-tom on the floor–all on pedals. And then the top tier is pretty much a carbon copy of that: I've got pads that correspond, sound-wise, to what I've got on the floor pedals. The cymbals are all real, but I've got a couple of tricks that nobody's really figured out yet.

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What year is it again? While Def Leppard are quite literally working in the present tense with their single "Now," the song's video plays upon their status as '80s survivors by tracing the journey of a classic Lep T-shirt. The Sheffield boys are smart enough to know that there has always been a need for metal riffs and catchy choruses. And judging from their new album X, the band can still serve up both. Singer Joe Elliott and guitarists Phil Collen and Vivian Campbell spoke with VH1 about guilt-free mullets, the junkyard known as eBay, and how recording X almost turned into Barry White.

VH1: The "Now" video has a great concept, with the Def Leppard T-shirt changing owners and traversing eras.

Phil Collen: Getting a treatment for a video is like people giving you demo tapes. Most of the time they aren't great, but occasionally there's one that's cool." We chuckled about this one and thought it could really work! Then we met the Malloys, who had done Blink-182's videos. We said, "We don't really do the comedy thing like you do with Blink-182, but we can see where you're going to go with the video. It's goofy and funny but also nostalgic." It worked perfectly.

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As any casual viewer of VH1's Behind The Music knows by now, few bands have had to face the kind of hardship and heartbreak that has dogged Sheffield, England's finest, Def Leppard, throughout their career. And even fewer have survived to tell the tale on Storytellers. Weaker-willed Behind The Music bands like the Bangles and Quiet Riot splintered simply because the didn't get along, but Leppard lost both their original guitarists (one, Pete Willis, was fired because of his alcoholism; the other, Steve Clark, drank himself to death) and their drummer, Rick Allen, lost his arm in a brutal car accident–and yet, the mighty Lep kept on rockin'. Glammy Londoner Phil Collen took Willis's place, Dio/Whitesnake veteran Vivian Campbell replaced the dear departed Clark, Allen learned how to drum with one arm, and now, a whole quarter-decade after Lep started, they're releasing their 10th album, X (the Roman numeral for 10).

…LAUNCH's managing editor Lyndsey Parker recently met up with Collen and Campbell at their San Fernando Valley rehearsal space, where they took a break from polishing their famously fun stage show to discuss their roles in one of rock's most tragic and triumphant sagas. Here's how it went:…

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Just some of the questions that were asked by readers of The Sun:

What has been the high point of the last 25 years for Def Leppard?

Does it feel sometime while writing a song that you can predict each other's ideas?

Are you going to release a Def Leppard boxed set at any point with rarities, live tracks and other interesting stuff?

After all this time in the business, are you guys still blown away by the fact that you have actually managed to achieve your dream of becoming such a hugely successful band? Do you still say to yourselves "I can't believe we've achieved all of this"?

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I have been listening to your new album. I find it has a distict thread in the lyrics of find and keeping love. Since many artists write about what they know or experience I was wondering is this a response to the band or your current experiences?

How many videos are you guys planning to put out for the new album X?

Are you concerned that the commercial and pop-rock nature of X will alienate your core audience and rock radio at the expense of aiming for more of a Top 40 crowd, which seems highly unlikely? I've talked to several rock-radio PDs, who won't play "Now" because it's too soft while Top 40 radio thinks of DL as an 80s act. Aren't you risking losing fans on both ends?

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Audio versions of two recent interviews with Joe Elliott and Phil Collen have been added. The first interview was with Q107 on July 17, 2002. The 2nd interview was with CHOM 97.7 at the Hard Rock Cafe in Montreal (July 19, 2002). Both interviews are available from the Audio Section in MP3 format.

K2K: In talking about song structuring… have you ever thought about just writing without any structure in mind?

JE: Well, yeah. In fairness, when you listen to things like "On The Inside," it's structured… I don't think it's possible to write a song that is not structured in some form. Even by being deconstructed, it's constructed in a different way. There's no such thing as an unconstructed song because that would just be musical anarchy. It would just be what you were describing about the Neil Young thing. But there's no way that you can go, "Well, let's do the chorus first." I mean, you can, because… like on "Make Love Like A Man" off of "Adrenalize," the chorus is the first thing you hear. But, it's still sections. Every song has sections, whether it would be Public Image, Ltd., the Clash or Faust, there are sections. When we try to write a pop song, we go for standard pop arrangements, even to the point where we will go to the key change at the end, which is really cheesy. It's the kind of thing that "Sugar, Sugar" was based on by the Archies, or the Partridge Family. Even "Crazy Horses" is a good song, by the Osmonds. I've known many bands who have covered that. It's just a great song. I bought it in a brown, paper bag because I didn't want anyone to know I had it.

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Joe Elliott was with USA Today doing an online chat promoting the upcoming VH1 release of 'VH1's Ultimate Albums: Pyromania'. The chat transcript is available in the Interviews section.