BW&BK; caught up with Def Leppard’s main man at the Turning Stone Casino in Verona, NY on the band’s current fall tour with Bryan Adams. The ever elusive frontman (or so the record company would have you believe) took a look back at what was, but more importantly looks at what’s yet to come.

BW&BK;: The Rock Of Ages DVD (coming out Nov 15th). What’s it like looking back on all your videos?

Joe Elliott: “Well, it’s difficult. You wear a different head everyday. We did a Best Of DVD for the European market in the middle of last year. So, we were watching the videos because they wanted a commentary on them and I did mine a year ago with a different head then. We changed it a little, so I had to re-watch them four months ago and I came up with different commentary for the US version.”

BW&BK;: Is it hard to watch them?

JE: “It’s not hard, but once you’ve done a video it’s out there for other people. So, you let it go and it represents a certain time period. Some videos hold their own better than others and fashion dictates that they sometimes go out of fashion and then come back into fashion. A while ago, I thought ‘Rock Of Ages’ looked ridiculous and yet last year it didn’t look so bad. Some of the more bland videos that we’ve done just look timeless. I’d rather have a video that dictated a certain amount of humour (that people laugh at it now) because at least it said something then. Videos like ‘Tonight’, ‘Stand Up’ are okay, but they were just a vehicle for a director’s new toy. ‘Me & My Wine’ had personality... it got the band’s personality across, but ‘Stand Up’ had shots of people running upside down on clock faces and guys bus surfing out-of-focus and had nothing to do with the band. It was about the director and how much budget he had. The little bits we were in it, he made us look good, but it had nothing to do with the song. I’ve always preferred the live stuff. When I see ‘Pour Some Sugar On Me’ or ‘Armageddon It’, to me, they don’t date.

BW&BK;: Except the British version of ‘Sugar’...

JE: “Yeah, well – that doesn’t even count. That was just stupid, but the live stuff works. Even the live High ‘N Dry ‘Let It Go’ and ‘Bringing On The Heartbreak’ they are what we were and it’s great. There’s nothing wrong with that. I don’t look at old footage of the Beatles and giggle. I look at old footage of the Beatles and go ‘I’m glad somebody filmed this.’ Otherwise, we’d be looking at a 50-year-old McCartney all the time and not a 20-year-old one. It’s good to document the band’s career and sometimes it’s done better than other times.”

BW&BK;: Will there be any other ‘documenting’ such as a live DVD from this tour or...

JE: “ No, we haven’t got any plans. We’ve just gone through a phase where we’ve spent a year mentally working in a ‘best of’ scenario and at the same time creating the covers album – which is us looking even further back than our own career. The whole point of doing it was that every song had to come from before we signed our first record contract. That was the only rule that we placed on the songs. So, we’ve spent this last year or so frustratingly putting this record together in between being advised, asked, and begged to look back at our own stuff. I’m over looking at us for awhile. So, in regards at having to sift through thousands and thousands of hours of live performances... I’m not in the mood to do it. I don’t want to look over my shoulder. I want to look forward for a while and I’d like to treat the covers album with as much respect as I think it deserves. When that’s over, I’d like to think, as we are doing now, is write for our next album and be one step ahead. Maybe then, the mood will hit us that a live album is good, but to do a live album... I find it hard to let go and tell our guy (Ronan) to weed through the performances and piece something together. That’s got nothing to do with the band and it’s like a record company putting out a live album after we’ve left them. You owe it to people to get involved, but it’s too much of the past again and I want to start writing...”

BW&BK;: Let’s talk about the future. The covers album (Yeah!) is that going to be released and then we move on to the next studio album...

JE: “ No. No. We’re going to tour it and that’s why we delayed it. We didn’t see the point in putting it out in September when the Best Of was still doing well. They would have stood on the toes of each other. We sat down as a band with our new management and we were in complete agreement that we should delay the release. It gives us more time to make sure that it’s right. We could have had the album out a year ago and it would have been alright, but now it’s going to be better.”

BW&BK;: How so?

JE: “We’ve changed the songs. We’ve done lots of stuff to them that your average guy in the street might not notice so much, but we’ve changed the drums, we’ve re-recorded certain parts, we hadn’t even mixed it... The thing that leaked was a rough mix. It hadn’t technically been finished. During the last break me and Ronan were in my studio putting backing vocals, that Phil had done on the road, to the John Kongas song (‘He’s Gonna Step On You Again’). We changed certain bits on the Free song (‘Little Bit Of Love’) and we were finishing the mixes on three or four tracks. The great thing about it, is that we’ve been able to keep coming back to it and improve it. A lot of people don’t get that opportunity and we get a lot of ‘Why don’t you guys make a record in six weeks?’ Sure, we can do that easy, but we’d regret it later because there’s things we could have done better.”

BW&BK;: Did you re-record it because of the leak?

JE: “No, no, no. It wasn’t finished. It wasn’t a case of re-recording. It was a case of putting the bits on that we hadn’t finished. We were always going to do this. So, it’s just coincidence and what they’ve got is like what the (Bob) Dylan bootlegs were.”

BW&BK;: How many songs will be on the album? 14 leaked, 22 recorded so...

JE: “There’s 14 songs on that disc (which is what we planned to put on the record) and there’s another six or seven that we recorded for different territories or whatever b-sides are called these days.”

BW&BK;: Japanese bonus tracks...

JE: “Or if we put out a single, you put something on there that’s not on the album. There’s a bunch of different songs we can use and we may even record some more once we get off the road. And what we did as bonus tracks is that we took them as individual projects, so Phil did a song on his own, Vivian did a song on his own, Sav did a song on his own, I did a song on my own, me and Sav did one together...

BW&BK;: When you say Sav (Rick Savage bass) – do you mean he did a lead vocal?

JE: “Yeah. Sav did a lead vocal. Phil did a lead vocal. Vivian did a couple of songs, but he’s not sure if he wants to sing or wants me to sing.”

BW&BK;: Which is odd considering Vivian just put out an album (Two Sides Of If) on which he sings...

JE: “If he wants to – it’s totally up to him.”

BW&BK;: You’ve mentioned the future – you’re writing an album now?

JE: “That’s a little misleading. We’re demo-ing songs and we’re getting ideas down on tape. I did a demo while I was back home on the break.”

BW&BK;: Do you have a release date in mind? Like fall 2006?

JE: “No. We’re writing now, but we’re certainly not recording now and we’re going to tour next year (on the covers album). So, there’s no way we’ll be in the studio... not till possibly the end of 2006.”

BW&BK;: So 2007?

JE: “I doubt it’ll be before then. I don’t think there’s any point. I think you can over-expose yourself. If U2 put out an album every year – nobody would buy them. I think it has to be an event. The years of putting out an album every year were in the ‘70s. Rush, Thin Lizzy and Kiss didn’t have to do nine month tours of the States and Canada then go to Europe. They did six weeks and went back into the studio. It’s a totally different world.”

BW&BK;: Musically, where do you want to see the next album go? A Pyromania? A High ‘N Dry, or do you want to take it to the next step and be more like System Of A Down...

JE: “Oh, no! I never want to sound like System Of A Down. Not that there is anything wrong with them, but it’s like why would the Rolling Stones want to sound like System Of A Down. Why would anybody other than them?”

BW&BK;: There are two eras of Def Leppard – The ‘80s with Pyromania then there’s X and Euphoria...

JE: “There was a different sound for sure, but other than using a few loops which was the en vogue thing to do at the time, there’s always been... Like say on a Queen album – Queen started making records that didn’t sound anything like the Queen that everybody bought and loved, but then they’d do a Princes Of The Universe that were full-on just Queen. I think the same thing with Euphoria - ‘Promises’ is a ringer for ‘Photograph’ and ‘Kings Of Oblivion’ could have fit on High ‘N Dry and ‘Disintegrate’ (the instrumental) was just a vehicle for loads of drums and bass ‘cause me and Phil had been listening a lot to ‘Earthling’ by Bowie and we liked the way that he had basically re-recorded ‘Man Who Sold The World’ on drum and bass, but reviewers are not ready to accept anything new. People are typecast from day one and as much as the media will say ‘Why don’t you do such and such?’ but when you do they don’t accept it. That’s exactly what happened to us with Slang. We did exactly what everybody wanted and nobody cared.”

BW&BK;: I actually like Slang...

JE: “I do too. I know people who think it’s the best album we’ve ever made, but...”

BW&BK;: I have to see ‘All I Want Is Everything’ or ‘Move With Me Slowly’ live someday...

JE: “Move With Me Slowly is the Japanese bonus track. It’s a bluesy little number. It’s a great song, but nobody cared and we’re not the kind of band that makes records for a dozen people. We want to be like Aerosmith or U2 or for what it’s worth from the commercial point of view like Celine Dion or Mariah Carey. The idea is to be a top ten act not a top hundred act. We know that our hardcore fans will dig our ‘Move With Me Slowly’’s because that’s what we were like when we were kids. We loved when T-Rex or Bowie put a song out on a b-side that wasn’t on their album. Things like ‘Velvet Goldmine’, ‘Round And Round’ and ‘Holy Holy’ which were Bowie tracks that I love to death to this day, but that never appeared on an album. When Leppard makes a record we evaluate the marketplace at the time or the way that people are. When we were doing Slang, we knew that we couldn’t make another record that sounded like Pyromania, Hysteria or Adrenalized because nobody would have been able to get their head ‘round an act still making that kind of music in that day and age. Come 1999/ 2000 everything shifted back again and it was okay to make that kind of record... like Euphoria. We had to come through it and fight that whole industry backlash and believe that one day everything would be alright. We just have massive self-belief that everybody else is wrong and we’re right (laughs).”

BW&BK;: Is it safe for you to do a hard-rocking record again and do you even want to?

JE: “Of course it is, but you say hard-rocking record... High ‘N Dry was just the springboard of where we wanted to go. I think the ultimate Def Leppard album is Hysteria because it literally could go in any direction. We did great ballads. We did great rockers. We did great pop songs. We did great mid-tempo. We did great slow and we did great fast. We had melodic stuff and non-melodic stuff, but it all blended together. Songs like ‘Women’ gets by as a song that’s half melodic half not-melodic. It’s heavy, but it’s got this commerciality to it. Then, there’s the obvious like ‘Love And Affection’ which is way more commercial, but doesn’t mean as much. And with any Def Leppard record there’s four people... four main writers. So, like Queen and unlike The Who – you’ve got four different directions that all have to get to a common place. Phil has just done Man-Raze... he could bring us those songs (which are great), but they just don’t work for us, but then he’ll come in with something else and say this is Leppard-like. We’ve always taken other people’s great songs and used them as yardsticks to stuff that we want to do. We’d love to write a song like ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ (The Who) or do something like AC/DC’s ‘Back In Black’ or something similar to Queen’s ‘Sheer Heart Attack’... so, we’ve got that mixture and once we perform it – it has to sound like us. When people hear the covers record they’ll know it. We can do Roxy Music as well as we can do Sweet. Those are two vastly different kinds of bands. We can do Badfinger as well as we can do ELO or David Essex or Blondie or Thin Lizzy or Free... Those are 14 vastly different artists and we do them and they SOUND like Def Leppard. For those who want to listen and for those who want to care, they’ll hear it and know that we can actually do this. So, no matter what kind of song we do... You hear ‘When Love And Hate Collide’ which is basically a piano song with a few guitars or the acoustic ‘Two Steps Behind’... We can be acoustic, we can be electric, we can be heavy metal, we can be proper rock, but we’d end up putting harmonies on it because that’s what we do. The Beach Boys without harmonies is not the Beach Boys. When we don’t put harmonies on, the songs lack something... which is why I think ‘Slang’ is the best song on Slang because it’s the closest thing to Def Leppard on that record. The rest of it was us pouring out our hearts and saying ‘We just want to do something different’ and if people don’t want to buy it – that’s absolutely their right, but artistically we would have died had we not made that record. It was a great springboard for us to go back to ground zero and build up again... which is what we did. Euphoria was much more like Adrenalized, but there was a seven year gap between them (which is one year shy of how long The Beatles were together). Thin Lizzy came and went in seven years. Mott The Hoople came and went in five. We felt comfortable going back there.”

BW&BK;: Final words – there are no plans for the next record...

JE: “We don’t do plans. We used to giggle when we read Kerrang! and saw somebody say ‘Yeah, we’re going into the studio to start writing songs for this great album title we have.’ You’ve got an album title before you’ve written any songs? That can work if you’re maybe Roger Waters, but still... You don’t pick out an album title and write ten songs. The title is supposed to reflect what the songs are and until we’re finished we don’t know what the title is going to be. The reason I suggested Yeah! as a title is because I wanted to grab it before Aerosmith did (then they put out an album called Oh, Yeah!)... I just figured that these songs are so integral to what we became... I just wanted a word that is universally accepted as the most exciting thing that happens to you right then and there. When your favourite team scores or your favourite tennis player hits that winning shot or your favourite band starts the riff to your favourite song... the first thing people do is say ‘Yeah!’. It works in every language.”

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