The Real Deal
Def Leppard not only had one of the first “VH1 Behind the Music” episodes, but also its very own made-for-TV movie, with actors playing the band members.
And all this drama without once breaking up.
“I can’t really understand why bands get so …” guitarist Phil Collen pauses to think of the right word “complicated. It’s not rocket science.”
The biggest strains on Def Leppard have come from outside forces: the 1984 car wreck that severed the arm of drummer Rick Allen, the alcoholism-related death of guitarist Steve Clark in 1991.
Those tragedies may keep the creative differences in perspective. Like other rock ‘n’ roll survivors, Def Leppard now has a polarized existence. The band faces an uncertain future in the record industry, but just finished its second summer of packing arenas. New management has been “trying to re-establish us as a live act,” Collen says. “You see the response, it’s great. Someone’s doing something right.”
This year’s packaged tour with Styx and Foreigner pulls into Mandalay Bay Events Center on Saturday. Of the three classic-rock stalwarts, only Def Leppard remains uncompromised by not having a replacement for its main singer. “It does make us appreciate that we’re still around and it’s the real deal type thing,” Collen says.
When not on tour, band members don’t crowd one another. Singer Joe Elliott lives in Ireland, bassist Rick Savage still resides in his native England, and Collen, co-guitarist Vivian Cambell and drummer Allen are all based in California.
They meet up in Dublin to record in Elliott’s ocean-view home studio. But they got a head start on the next album, tentatively titled “Sparkle Lounge” and scheduled for early next year. “We started writing the album on the last tour (with Journey in 2006) and actually recorded some of the demos.”
This solved a couple of problems, he explained. “The hardest thing about making a record for us was always the direction it was going to go. How we’re going to record, what kind of songs,” Collen explains. “This we kind of got out of the way, because we figured it out while we were on tour last time. That took about nine months of perspiration out of the whole thing.”
Def Leppard’s last studio album, 2002’s “X,” emphasized the power ballad side of the band’s history. Collen admits that was partly due to the record label pressure: “The only way you’re gonna get on the radio is to do this.”
But the radio-calculated single, “Unbelievable,” still didn’t take off. So the band did a U-turn and came back with last year’s “Yeah!,” an album of covers delivered with a looser, bar-rock feel. Collen says that vibe will continue for the next effort, which he calls “a rock album with a little bit more oomph” than “X.”
“What normally happens is you come off tour, you have a break and you really forget you’re a rock band,” he says. “You really forget the nuts and bolts of it, which is sweat and a bit of distortion and nastiness.”
But two years of hard touring makes that harder to forget. “When you start writing the songs and recording them backstage, (the songs) would have a certain element about them that was quite refreshing for us. We’ve never done that before. It gave it a vitality that I think has been lacking for a while.
“If the new stuff isn’t getting on the air it doesn’t really matter,” Collen adds. “We’re still trying. The key is that you’re still out there and you are moving forward or growing.”