A Leppard Can Change His Spots

“Taylor Swift is a huge fan, Pink is a huge fan, you’d be surprised.” Joe Elliot is sitting in the Westbury Hotel musing on the diverse club of admirers he has cultivated over the years. “Lady Gaga just said she was inspired by us too. I never wore a meat dress – so I don’t see how!” (Laughs)

Elliot must be one of the hardest-working men in rock. Not only is he busy with Def Leppard (coffee table book, new live album and tour on the way), he has just finished editing the new Down n Outz (his Mott The Hoople-inspired side-project) DVD, has a weekly programme on Planet Rock – and the dust has not settled yet on the wonderful Thin Lizzy re-issues he lovingly reworked with Scott Gorham. Phew!
“That’s what happens when you take a year off!” he smiles. “You decompress and you recharge your batteries and your brain unscrambles and all of a sudden it floods with new ideas. Well mine did anyway, and I’m over the moon about it.”
And did we mention the collaboration with Canadian singer-songwriter Emm Gryner?
“Yes, I’ve been been writing songs with Emm too. We’re going to do an album together,” laughs Joe. “The songs are like nothing I would ever do with Leppard. I don’t know what it’s going to sound like. It may turn out something like Hunky Dory. I’ve known her for years. She kept saying to me, ‘We should do an album like Plant and Krauss – but more glam than country’. And I was like, ‘Yeah that makes sense!’
“If you consider yourself a songwriter you’re just writing all the time,” he adds. “Sometimes I come up with a song. I think Leppard could never do this. Me and Emm can. Or Down n Outz can. I’m not trying to say Leppard can’t do different things. There genuinely are songs that bands shouldn’t do. I don’t want to hear Oasis doing dub reggae!”
Fans can rest assured Def Leppard have not strayed from their distinctive style, as evidenced by the three new tracks on live album Mirrorball.
“It’s recognisably Leppard – 2011 Leppard. And it really works,” notes Joe. “One song that I wrote, ‘Undefeated’ is what the media would call a ‘classic stadium rock anthem’. It’s ‘We Will Rock You’ with loads of guitars and big tribal drumming and a huge big fist-thumping chorus. Rick Savage wrote ‘Kings Of The World’, a big choral Queen/10CC/Beach Boys-type affair with piano, which we very rarely do. Phil Collen’s song ‘It’s All About Believing’ is again
really uplifting.”
The band recorded over 25 shows from which to pick tracks for the collection.
‘We would record a gig and afterwards we’d chat to Ronan (McHugh – Def Leppard engineer) and rate them out of 10. One of the most important things for us was the audience reaction,” he says. “For example, there’s a version of ‘Bring On The Heartbreak’ which I’m sure we could have played or sung better. However, the audience just took off. We stopped and they sang it and that meant a lot more than having a perfect live performance.”
The band are also releasing a coffee table book, The Definitive Visual History that, like the songs on the live album, spans the breadth of Leppard’s career, which as Joe points out makes them ideal companion pieces (good marketing ploy, Sir!).
“We bought all the rights to the photos from Ross Halfin four or five years ago, about 12,000 photos going back to 1979,” says Joe.
Leppard enlisted the help of a Japanese über-fan who whittled down the mammoth archive to 1,000 shots from which the band made the final selection. How did Joe find the experience of looking at his life through the lens?
“It was really weird,” he confesses. “It’s like when your mum gets your baby pictures out for your girlfriend! First basin cut! From that to a mullet back to no mullets to…”
His favourite section of the book is the one dedicated to Steve Clark, the original Def Leppard guitarist who passed away in 1991.
“The guy was so photogenic. When it came to playing live he just had it,” says Joe. “He had a natural exuberance on stage that just came across. There’s a tinge of melancholy also looking at the shots. There’s loads of mad stuff in there but the Steve ones, because he’s not around anymore, mean more.”
Are there many wild times caught on camera?
“Not really,” smiles Joe. “We weren’t the kind of people that were shagging women in elevators with the doors wide open. Sad to say… we’re blowing the myth. It wasn’t our thing. We were never big into drugs and we were never into flaunting what we had. Our parents brought us up to be polite to people and to say ‘thank you’ when you got anything. If we were going to get indulgent, we always locked the door.”
In terms of indulgences, Joe never had to battle any demons. However, attitudes to alcohol in the band did change after Steve’s death.
“When someone like Steve passes away because of an accidental drug overdose… He took painkillers because he had cracked ribs that he attained
through falling downstairs drunk. This is why Phil stopped drinking.”
“I still like to drink because I never got that out of control,” says Joe. “The worst I’ve ever done is get on my knees over a toilet bowl, we’ve all done that. It’s God knows how many years since I’ve done that. It’s part of your life – you go through it. I’ve never got to the stage where I was so out of control I had to rein myself in.”
This down-to-earth practical attitude and openness has served Joe well over his 34 years in the world
of rock.
“I’m very respectful of everyone in the music business and I’m a fan too,” he explains. “I think one of the reasons that we get on with people is because they recognise the enthusiasm within us.”
As a self-confessed fan, has he ever met anyone that sent his knees knocking?
“I wouldn’t get heart palpitations, but I was backstage at a U2 gig about 10 years ago and I was sitting next to Neil Diamond! I was like, ‘If my mother could see me know’. (Bursts into song) ‘I am I said!’ ‘Cracklin Rosie get on board!’”
“And Dave Gahan was there from Depeche Mode and he was telling me how he thought ‘Sugar’ was brilliant. I never expected to hear that from his mouth,” he says.
Another of Joe’s fans (and friend) David Coverdale was joking with Hot Press recently about the vulgar e-mails he sends.
‘Oh he told me he slagged me off to Hot Press!’ exclaims Joe.
“You should see the e-mails he sends me! Between the two of us, there must be 10 e-mails a day. He’ll say ‘I’m thinking about this, what do you think?’ He’ll ask my advice and I’ll ask his advice… But most of the time it’s just a pair of tits!’ (Laughs)

Def Leppard play the O2, Dublin on June 8. Mirrorball is out on June 17. For archive interviews, see
hotpress.com.