Def Leppard

Tue 27th Sep, 2011 in Features

Get excited because Def Leppard are returning to Australia in October with support from Heart who are touring the country for the first time. This tour commemorates the release of the live album Mirrorball which features three new tracks and a bonus DVD of live footage. The spirits are high as Joe Elliot talks to me from the tour bus an hour and half after their “fucking awesome” show in St Louis.

After a few beverages and winding down after another great show on the tour Joe takes a minute to reflect. “I’ve literally walked off stage in to the back of the tour bus after playing St Louis Missouri. The show was fucking awesome, excuse my French. The crowd was around fifteen thousand, pretty much a sell out, great audience and great gig. I absolutely loved it and being able to say that after thirty years and mean it is a good feeling.”

The Def Leppard career has spanned some thirty years and they’ve experienced the highs and lows and seen so many other bands come and good. I asked Elliot if there is a secret to staying energised and excited about music. “It is hard but probably a little easier for us when we took 2010 off. We’ve never had a break in thirty years and I actually put my hand in the air and said no more! Taking a break is probably the best thing we’ve ever done because it re-energised everybody to be quite honest.”

After starting discussions for a live album talk started on writing new songs? “When we started piecing this live album together the suggestion was made to do a new song everyone started throwing their hand in the air saying I’ve got one. We got two, then there was three and then we got four so then when we were playing demos of these new songs the feeling and positivity, just on the lyrics alone because I knew musically they’d be great, was really something. If we wrote the lyrics for these songs a year ago they would have been more negative just being tired or just going through the motions. Playing show after show after show for five years is hard work and to comeback after eighteen months off having a new live album with three new songs, one of which is getting played live and on radio has energised us a lot. It’s like chocolate, it’s like everything in the world in that too much of it becomes an annoyance. Step away from it and then you ease back on it until it’s all gone. Vivian {Campbell, guitar] went and played with Thin Lizzy, Phil [Collen, guitar] did his Man Raze thing, I did the Down ‘n Outz and everyone just got to do whatever they wanted as we weren’t tied to the Leppard clock. It was good to do that and get away from it and I think we’ve come back as better people and musicians as result.”

Undefeated was the first taster of their new material and it did seem like they had the magic pen out to write this cracker. “Song writing isn’t like carpentry where you just turn up in some building and by five o’clock you could bang out five cupboards. Sometimes song writing just happens and you channel it, anyone can just sit down and write a song but nobody can write a brilliant song. That happens by accident, by default or by practice as there’s a million ways of looking at it. We’ve always found when we’ve done albums that one song comes easy and the other nine are like pulling teeth.”

“We spent a lot of time doing Kings Of The World which was a complicated piece of work and Undefeated I had going around in my head for months, driving me crazy, which made me accept that officially it was a good idea. From that moment on I built on it. If someone said get that song finished by five o’clock Friday night it would have been rubbish and because I didn’t have to do that as well as not having a record contract we are essentially free agents writing songs for the fun of it again. Getting to do these songs at our own pace was great and they have their own energy and we haven’t had that freedom since we were writing for the Hysteria album.”