Def Leppard Atomic Mess News

Vivian Campbell's not sure what happened - maybe it was renewed interest in all things '80s - but whatever it was, he's thrilled.

"We noticed a change about four or five years ago," the native Irishman said by phone from his home in Los Angeles. "All of a sudden, it's OK to admit you like Def Leppard."

Campbell and the rest of Def Leppard will rock Haymarket Park on Tuesday as co-headliners with fellow '80s hitmaker Bryan Adams.

The show is part of a summer tour of minor league ballparks.

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The seemingly odd pairing of pop-metal band Def Leppard and middle-of-the-road crooner Bryan Adams can be explained by one guy, superproducer Robert "Mutt" Lange.

Lange, best known these days as Mr. Shania Twain, was the man behind both acts' biggest albums.

"Because of Mutt, we've known Bryan for ages," said Def Leppard frontman Joe Elliott during a phone interview from a tour stop in San Francisco. "In 1990, Mutt was working with both of us at the same time. Bryan got up onstage with us in Paris one night. We know each other - we don't have to get to know each other. So it makes sense."

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Quick, name the year: Def Leppard's latest album debuts in the Top 10. Its new pop-rock tune is blasting out of radio stations around the country. The band is touring with Canadian rocker Bryan Adams on some dates, and on others with Tesla.

The year? You're living in it.

Def Leppard in 2005 looks a bit different than it did in, say, 1985. The new album, which debuted at No. 10 last month, is a two-disc anthology called "Rock Of Ages" (Island). And that new recording, "No Matter What," is actually a cover of the 1970 Badfinger hit. The radio play is coming mostly from classic-rock stations. But singer Joe Elliott, 45, is still savoring the success of his nearly 30-year-old band.

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Some residents near Campanelli Stadium fear a Bryan Adams-Def Leppard rock show may be, as Adams' 1991 Grammy-nominated album states, "Waking Up the Neighbors" on Wednesday night.

That's why Thomas Crowley of Gordon Street might not be around when the two performers - stars in the 1980s and '90s - play back-to-back in the stadium's first concert of the year.

"I'm going away this weekend," said Crowley, a Gordon Street resident for 47 years. "Maybe I'll stay away."

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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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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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Was sich in freier Wildbahn höchstwahrscheinlich als unhaltbarer Zustand erweisen würde, bewahrheitet sich im internationalen Showgeschäft. Zwar erreichte die 1975 in Sheffield gegründete Formation "Def Leppard" ihren kommerziellen Zenit schon Mitte der achtziger Jahre, als Alben wie "Pyromania" und "Hysteria" weltweit in zweistelliger Millionenzahl abgesetzt werden konnten, doch zehrt das fidele Quintett noch heute von seinem einst legendären Ruf. Dabei weist gerade die Historie der nach einer Verballhornung des Anglizismus "Deaf Leopard" benannten Band einige eklatante Schicksalsschläge auf: Schon in der Frühphase wurde Ur-Gitarrist Pete Willis wegen seiner chronischen Alkoholprobleme durch Phil Collen ersetzt.

In der Neujahrsnacht des Jahres 1984 verlor Schlagzeuger Rick Allen bei einem Verkehrsunfall seinen linken Arm, was ihn aber nicht davon abhielt, mittels einer Spezialanfertigung weiterhin seiner Pflicht nachzukommen. 1992 schließlich starb Gitarrist und Gründungsmitglied Steve Clark an einer Überdosis Drogen.

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Es ist erstaunlich ruhig vor dem Kölner Palladium, als ich gegen 18:30 Uhr überpünktlich vor der Halle eintreffe. Zwar gelten Skid Row und vor allem Def Leppard immer noch als Hard Rock- Ikonen, dennoch ist nicht von der Hand zu weisen, dass ganz offensichtlich einige Jahre der Dürre für beide Bands ins Land gezogen sind, zumindest seit den erfolgreichen Endachzigern. Grundsätzlich geht mir sowas natürlich am Allerwertesten vorbei, allerdings wirft der recht mäßige Besucherandrang die Frage auf, warum das große Palladium gemietet wurde und nicht etwa das E-Werk oder die LMH. Vielleicht sind die mittlerweile explodierten Konzertpreise (heute Abend sollen es dann auch schon wieder 40Euro sein) auch mal wieder nicht ganz unschuldig an dieser Tatsache, who knows…

Drißegal. 19:00 Uhr ist dann pünktlich Doors Open und nachdem wir uns zur geistigen "Stärkung" die erste Hopfenkaltschale an der Bar geholt haben, lassen sich auch schon die ersten Maßnahmen des Veranstalters erkennen, denn das Palladium ist zu einem Viertel mit einem schwarzen Vorhang verkleinert worden, was dem Ganzem eine durchaus gemütliche Atmosphäre verleit - kann man nich´ anders sagen…Müßig noch zu erwähnen, dass auch die Merch- Preise an diesem Abend (25Euro für´n Shirt 50Euro für´n Kapu…) nicht gerade (öhöm…) zum Konsumrausch anregen…

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A lot of bands that were big in the '80s are now having trouble getting booked into bowling alleys, but Def Leppard's not one of them. The British melodic-rock quintet–which hit its commercial peak in 1987 with Hysteria, which has sold 16 million units worldwide–is still on the arena circuit, with a gig lined up for Tuesday (September 23) at the Pacific Coliseum. As lead vocalist Joe Elliott explains over the phone from a midtour break in Phoenix, he wouldn't have it any other way. "There is the odd person who it's always nice to see in an intimate setting," relates the 44-year-old singer. "I don't think Tom Waits would work too well in Madison Square Garden; you'd rather see him in Carnegie Hall. But there's a novelty factor about a band like us in an intimate setting. Other than sittin' down on a stool doin' like the VH-1 Unplugged­type stuff, Aerosmith, Zeppelin, us, Bon Jovi–whoever you wanna name–kinda gravitate to the larger-than-life persona. I think if you aim big and think big you actually end up just being big.

"Some people like that intimacy of stayin' small," continues the talkative rocker. "Maybe Norah Jones is going through a bit of a headfuck at the moment. She probably always wanted to just be Billie Holiday, but now she's Alanis Morissette, you know. And she's gonna be wanting to do intimate stuff, but 10,000 people per town are gonna want to see her do it, which means holding up in a residency for a month or just biting your lip and going with a big gig. For us, when we got offered the big gigs, that's what we were looking for. And as long as you put a value-of-the-money show on, the fans would rather see you in a bigger venue most of the time, anyway."

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It will be more than a blast from the past as Def Leppard brings its old and
new music to the Prince George Multiplex.

Some rockers say video killed the radio star. Guitarist Phil Collen says
video helped boost rock'n'roll band Def Leppard into superstar status.

"It (MTV) certainly helped. We embraced the whole video concept in the early
1980s," said Collen, on a break from Def Leppard's 10-month long road trip as
the band stopped in Saskatoon. "In the long run though, it (videos) did hurt
us I guess because it took away that mystique. They became very candy-coated
and did nothing to display our passion for the music."

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The latest chapter in the headline-friendly Def Leppard story had Joe Elliot, the lead singer for the mega-selling metal band from Sheffield, England, arrested last week at a West Hollywood hotel for spousal assault.

Elliott and his girlfriend, actually, who both were later released on $50,000 bail each.

But guitarist Phil Collen says the incident hasn't affected the band's equilibrium as they rehearse for their upcoming tour, which hits Molson Amphitheatre on July 10, and promote the release of their new album, Slang, in record stores last Wednesday.

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If you're going to have a row in a hotel room, says Def Leppard's Joe Elliott, "make sure the doors are locked so no one can hear you."

Sage advice from a man who unwittingly found himself on the wrong side of the law in Los Angeles in May, when he and his girlfriend Bobbie Tolsma were both arrested and charged with assault. Charges were dropped the next day.

The singer is on the phone from a hotel room in Oklahoma City, frantically packing for the next jump on the band's Slang tour. It hits the Edmonton Coliseum Saturday.

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Having just embraced - or endured - aging glam-metallers Poison and former Motley Crue frontman Vince Neil, E-Ville is now throwing open its doors to another band that's as synonymous with the '80s as Members Only jackets and Miami Vice.

But make no mistake - Def Leppard isn't some novelty reunion act, stumbling out of rehab to make a fast buck off the resurgence of interest in all things big-haired and tight-Spandexed.

"All these other bands from the '80s are re-forming and doing package tours, and we never went away," said guitarist Viv Campbell.

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Def Leppard is back in the spotlight. Well, kind of.

A Def Leppard song is back in the spotlight at least, now that Mariah Carey has covered the 1981 power ballad Bringin' On The Heartbreak, with the accompanying video getting heaps of play on video stations such as MuchMusic and MTV.

Carey's diva-fied version of the tune is not sitting well with some of the Leps's hardcore fans, however.

"They've really reacted weirdly to it," Def Leppard guitarist Phil Collen said Friday in a phone interview to promote the U.K. hard rock band's concert tonight at the Pengrowth Saddledome.

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Last month, Def Leppard celebrated the 25th anniversary of its first gig, which took place at Westfield School in the band's hometown of Sheffield, England.

The group has sold tens of millions of records with its fusion of pop and rock, and squashed it's own "it's better to burn out than fade away" adage by lasting the quarter century largely intact.

In fact, guitarist Phil Collen is downright excited to be on the road this summer, even though the group has been touring behind its latest disc, "X," for some time now.

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