GUEST STAR 2: DEF LEPPARD

Joe Elliott and Phil Collen on the glam and glory of The Struts’ Strange Days album.

Phil Collen: It’s got a very British flair and flavour to it. You can absolutely tell that [they’re] a British band, and I think that’s really cool in this day and age. A lot of the times we’ve been mistaken for an American band. We grew up listening to American music, hence the American accent. But I think [The Struts] had longer to ingest, digest and take all this other stuff in, and you can actually hear it on their stuff. Joe Elliott: There’s an atmosphere to it. I can hear that it [Strange Days] was made so quickly and with so much bottled-up energy. It’s got that snowball, can’t-stop-it-once-it’s-rolling-down-a-hill factor. And you’ve got so much eclectic direction going on, but all within the bubble of The Struts. And the great thing is it’s not overdone, it’s not all ‘virus virus virus’. There is a kind of claustrophobia to it, which is a good thing, but there’s something for everyone. PC: And a saxophone solo! JE: The skit at the beginning [of I Hate How Much I Want You, which he did] sets the tone. Such a great song. When I first heard it I thought: ‘This is brilliant, I just love it.’ This is one of the most glam things on the record, so it totally reminds me of watching Top Of The Pops in 1973, and it’s like: ‘Why would I not wanna be on this song?’And the lyrics are so fun. The chorus is awesome. The chorus reminds me of Slade, Sweet, all those big what we used to call ‘football terrace’ choruses. And nobody’s written a song like that in decades. An absolute joy to be part of it. PC: Cool reminds me of The Pretty Things in the sixties. They had these great songs, and Cool kind of reminds me of them, especially the verses; it has the sixties thing about it, but done in a modern way.