Def Leppard
He turned 60 this year, but Def Leppard singer Joe Elliott is showing no signs of slowing down – certainly not when he’s talking. And with the year he’s had there’s plenty to talk about.
A Hall Of Fame induction, a Vegas residency, a new Down ‘N’ Outz album… It’s been a busy year for Joe Elliott.
In 2019, Def Leppard were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame, headlined the Download festival, played a residency in Las Vegas and enjoyed the company of Brian May and Miley Cyrus. And to finish what frontman Joe Elliott describes as “a very good year”, there was the release of a new album from his other band, Down ‘N’ Outz, featuring three members of The Quireboys – guitarists Paul Guerin and Guy Griffin and keyboard player Keith Weir – plus ex-Vixen bassist Share Ross and Wayward Sons drummer Phil Martini. This Is How We Roll is the first Down ‘N’ Outz album comprised of original material. “It’s a good record,” Elliott says. As for Def Leppard, he says simply: “The band is on fire. There’s no stopping us. It’s fucking nuts.”
How will you remember 2019? The amazing thing is, I didn’t think it could get much better than 2018, when we had one of the top rock tours of the year, we sold a million tickets in America, and we did the Teenage Cancer Trust gig at the Albert Hall, where we got a beautiful introduction from Roger Daltrey and the reaction from the audience was incredible. We really felt on top of the world last year, but in some ways this year has been just as great, if not better.
In March, Def Leppard were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame. What did that mean to you? I didn’t think it was going to be as big a deal as it turned out to be. For years I’d been saying I don’t give a fuck about the Hall Of Fame.
Why is that? Because of the voting system they had. We were always under the impression that it was this invisible committee that would pick and choose who goes in, and they were very stuck in their ways about the kind of artists that they wanted in the Hall Of Fame – and we weren’t one of them. They wanted R.E.M. and Lou Reed and U2 and Springsteen; they didn’t want us and Mötley Crüe and Bon Jovi. They just didn’t.
But in recent years the Hall Of Fame also introduced a Fan Vote, open to the public, which is how Bon Jovi got inducted in 2018, and then Leppard this year. Out of nowhere we were nominated. And we won with the highest ever fan vote. I thought, okay, we’re about to get in now. And now it means something, because it’s the fans that have voted us in, not some committee that was reluctantly accepting us. So all of a sudden we’re in. And when we actually got in that room, we could feel the love, because they sold tickets to punters, and there were a lot of Leppard fans in that night.
It felt like a victory? Yeah. It was a fantastic evening. I didn’t think it was going to be as much fun as it was. We had
Brian May inducting us, my speech went down really well, our performance went down great, and we had a proper all-star jam at the end. We couldn’t imagine doing that with some of the other inductees – you know, [The Cure’s] Robert Smith and half of Radiohead. But we got Brian May and Ian Hunter up to do All The Young Dudes, which was the perfect full-circle – doing that song, my favourite song, with Ian, who made it famous, and Brian who had just inducted us. And once that was happening, Susannah Hoffs from The Bangles wanted in, Phil Manzanera from Roxy Music wanted in, Stevie Van Zandt from Springsteen’s band, and we’d got the guys from Argent doing backing vocals. It was great.
What did you make of the rest of the event? [One Direction’s] Harry Styles inducted Stevie Nicks and did a fantastic job. So much better than David Byrne, who inducted Radiohead and was embarrassing, really. I don’t have that in-built hatred of pop, so I watched Harry Styles and thought: good for him. It was brilliant watching Stevie Nicks perform. And watching Roxy Music was phenomenal. The Americans didn’t really get into Roxy Music until [1982 album] Avalon, which to us [Britain] was the lounge version of Roxy. But there they were, in front of an American audience, ten thousand people, and they opened with a song from ’73 – In Every Dream Home A Heartache, this mad song about a blow-up doll, which is so very English and European. All these people in tuxedos in the posh seats were going: “What the fuck is this?” And I was going: “Oh yeah!”
In June, Leppard headlined the Download festival at Donington Park, the scene of one of the band’s greatest moments: playing at Monsters Of Rock in 1986 – the big comeback show after drummer Rick Allen lost his left arm in a car crash. Is it an emotional experience for you to play there?
It brings back a lot of memories. What happened in eighty-six was something we’ll never forget, a big moment for Rick and for the whole band. And it was a great show this year, even though it was cold and wet. That’s three times now that we’ve headlined Download, and it’s been manky on two of them and beautiful on one. Oh well, it’s England, it’s going to rain, that’s what it does here. But I loved it, and the crowd was great. It felt like they were really there for us.
Later in the summer, Leppard returned to Las Vegas for another residency – a twelve-night stand at Zappos Theater at Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino. Nice work if you can get it. Talk about the cherry on top of the cake. We put on the biggest production we’ve ever done, with five gigantic screens, and the stage itself was almost the size of a football pitch. It was just bonkers. We had a format, of course. We did a forty-minute blitz, then a twentyfive minute sit-down acoustic bit, and then we did another blitz. But we had a lot of fun changing up the set every night.
And you opened those shows with a classic deep cut from Pyromania. Well, when Phil [Collen, guitarist] suggested that we open with Die Hard The Hunter. I looked at him like he had three snake heads, and went: “Are you fucking nuts?” But then the more we did it, I went: “Wow, this is genius. Good idea, son!”
How does a residency compare to a regular tour? In one respect it’s easier. When you do one load-in and one load-out and you’re there for twenty-odd days, all your energy goes into the show, because you ain’t travelling. You’re just getting into a car and driving back to your hotel, or in some cases just getting in an elevator and going upstairs, because some of the guys stayed in the hotel above the place where we played. By the end of the Vegas run, the last two nights, which we filmed, we were playing twenty-four, twentyfive songs a night and playing for nearly two and a half hours. You really needed stamina for that. But with the crowds that we had and the way we paced it out, it was a fantastic thing to do.
Is that the kind of thing that could only happen in Vegas? Totally. Vegas is Vegas. I wish we could do that kind of residency in other places, but there is no equivalent in the UK. You can’t do it in Blackpool or at Batley Variety Club. But we had maybe a couple of hundred fans that came over from the UK to see us in Vegas.
They call it Sin City. How did you find it? Vegas is a mad, mad town, and it’s totally rock’n’roll these days. It’s not the elephants’ graveyard that it was in the fifties and sixties. We had Aerosmith playing next door, and we had all sorts of people coming through. Jackson Browne came to see us. Criss Angel, the magician, came to see us twice. And on our days off we saw other shows. I saw Criss Angel’s show, and Phil went to see Cher, because she had Joel Hoekstra from Whitesnake playing guitar for her. It was fun on stage and off.
Leppard have a famous fan in Taylor Swift, and you found another this year in Miley Cyrus. We met her at this huge festival in Vegas, a few weeks after our residency. It was a proper mix of all types of music – us, Miley, Green Day, Chance the rapper, Heart. We played for twenty-five minutes, and here’s commitment for you: Rick Savage [Leppard bassist] had gone home to Sheffield after the residency, but he got in his car, drove down to Heathrow, flew ten hours, got to the gig, did five songs, and then went straight back home. I, on the other hand, stayed local. It was fun to hang out with different people, whether it was rockers or rappers or whatever, and when we met Miley she told us she’s a huge Leppard fan. At that festival she sang Black Dog and Comfortably Numb. This is the same woman that did Nothing Else Matters and [Nine Inch Nails’] Head Like A Hole at Glastonbury. She’s upped her rock game somewhat!
And after the final Leppard shows of the year – in Tennessee in October, headlining the Exit 111 festival with Guns N’ Roses and Lynyrd Skynyrd, and in Sacramento in November – you celebrated the release of the new album from your other band, the Down ‘N’ Outz. How would you describe it? It definitely doesn’t sound like Def Leppard, but it does sound like me. You know how Ozzy’s Blizzard Of Ozz didn’t sound like Sabbath but it was still full-on rock? A fan would be able to distinguish between Sabbath and Ozzy’s solo stuff quite easily, even though they’re quite close. Well, this is very different, but it’s still rock. It’s more Elton John, Queen, Bowie, a bit of Sparks, a bit of Leon Russell. The songs are good, and Paul Guerin’s guitar playing is just brilliant. I said: “Be my Mick Ronson.” He said: “You don’t have to ask!”
So in Joe Elliott’s head it’s still the seventies? Put it this way: if you hear anything on this album that sounds like it came after 1975, I’d be very, very disappointed.
“We felt on top of the world last year. In some ways this year has been just as great,
if not better.”