Joe Elliott on why Def Leppard won't be retiring any time soon
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On February 7, 1984, Def Leppard’s year-long Pyromania tour ended in Bangkok, Thailand. Forty years on, the British hard-rock institution had no fewer than seven songs from that record - plus brand new 2024 single Just Like ’73, featuring Rage Against The Machine guitarist Tom Morello - in the setlist for their recently completed Summer Stadium Tour, a co-headlining run across the US with Journey.
Below, Leppard Frontman Joe Elliott gives us the lowdown on that and more.
We didn’t have a ‘Def Leppard ft. Tom Morello’ single on our 2024 bingo card.
How did that come about? We share a lot of business stuff, like publishers, and Tom was talking with one of the guys at our publishing company who played Just Like ’73 to him, and he went: “Oh my god, this is great. I’d love to play on it.” And we went: “Great!” Tom is an astonishing guitarist, and a bit of a fan, so happy days.
I read a quote from Phil Collen recently, where he said: “This is the seed for a new album.”
Absolutely. We’re actively writing and recording, under the radar.
Due to covid, you all recorded your parts for [Classic Rock’s Album Of 2022] Diamond Star Halos remotely. Could that continue with the next record?
Definitely, because doing it that way is far superior to us all camping out at Battery Studios, or Wisseloord, or Joe’s Garage, sitting around for hours. We don’t record live in one room like you’d see in some Netflix film, we haven’t done that since High ’N’ Dry. So for the foreseeable future I can see that this is going to be the way to go.
Leppard are about to go back out on the road for the Summer Stadium Tour. Does the prospect of a summer in America excite you as much as it did back in the day?
I think it actually excites me more. We have a devil and an angel on our shoulders pinching us, going: “Can you believe you’re still doing this?” Because it’s a gift, a joy and a privilege. There’s always some trepidation – as a singer you only have to catch a cold, and then you’re all over YouTube and it’s: “He can’t do it any more.” So you’re always on edge a little bit, but that edge is actually quite cool.
We’re human beings, and things do happen; Vivian [Campbell, guitarist] is still battling cancer, we’ve still got a one-armed drummer. But these are obstacles that we just mock. Waiting to go on stage every night is like waiting to go out on to the pitch for a Cup Final. So yeah, ‘excited’ would be an understatement.
Did last year’s tour with M?tley Crüe pan out as you’d imagined?
It did, it was a really great time. We’ve known those guys for a long, long time, and whatever bitchy banter might have been printed in the press over the years, me and Nikki [Sixx] have been mates for ever. I don’t want to blow their myth, but they’re not the same people they were in 1983, and nor are we, so it wasn’t debauched madness, but it was all fun.
You mention 1983, and on the recent Pyromania reissue there’s an excellent recording of a December ’83 show in Dortmund, Germany where, halfway down a festival bill, the band sound positively feral.
What I remember about that particular gig is that we’d been off the road for about a month, so a little bit of pent-up youthful exuberance. It wasn’t really about who was headlining or opening, because it was two stages in an arena, filmed for TV. [Judas] Priest went on, then [Iron] Maiden went on, then [Michael] Schenker, then us, then Ozzy or whatever. We were filming for telly, so it was kinda irrelevant who went first or last.
Were Maiden and Leppard friends back then?
Yeah, we’ve known the guys in Maiden since they came to see us play Retford Porterhouse in 1979. And we were lucky enough to hang out with them a little bit last summer, when we were all in the same hotel in Copenhagen. You think back, and it’s like, wow, both of our bands still doing it. Because we were both just kinda starting off on our journeys in 1983.
You weren’t a pop star then.
Ha! It’s funny, the thing that sometimes polarises us with rock fans is that we cross over. When you saw the singles charts in America and we’re at number seven, with Michael Jackson at six and Janet Jackson at eight, some people look at it as a sell-out, but we always saw it as a win. So yeah, I look at that Dortmund gig and think, wow, we were definitely a rock band then, in the same way that I look at Queen at Hammersmith Odeon in 1975 and see a rock band. They were a completely different beast to the band that played Live Aid.
You mentioned guesting on records earlier. You did that Spillways collaboration with Ghost last year, but have you had anyone else reach out to you?
There was a request, but they haven’t announced it yet. I’ve done plenty. One of my favourite ones was doing Bob Dylan’s I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight on the [Ian Gillan’s] Gillan’s Inn album. It’s a brilliant duet. I’d love to do a duet with Elton John, or to work with [Paul] McCartney, obviously. I think the idea of retirement is comical, even though technically, in two months time I’ll be eligible for my free bus pass.
You’re a great advocate and supporter of new music. Is there anything you’ve heard in the last year or so that’s grabbed your attention?
That’s a bloody loaded question! The most recent thing I’ve been listening to all the time is Unreal Unearth by Hozier, and the new Slash album, with Demi Lovato on it, that’s pretty good. The new Stones album has got a lot of plays too. And I’ve heard some great new unreleased Ricky Warwick stuff. With him being the best man at my wedding I get certain privileges.
Pyromania 40th Anniversary Deluxe Expanded Edition is out now via Universal.
