KomodoRock.com recently caught up with DEF LEPPARD guitarist Phil Collen to discuss his side-band MAN RAZE, featuring his former GIRL bandmate Simon Laffy. Following is an excerpt from the interview:

Q: What does it feel like being back on tour with someone from one of your first bands?

Collen: "It's great. It's kind of weird because just three weeks ago I finished the Def Leppard tour in Auckland, we have also just done Australia and Japan, so we played to around 11,000 people there and then all of a sudden were doing the clubs and I'm with Paul (Cooke) and Simon and there is no real join, it was seamless which is kind of weird, you're playing in a club in front of 60 people in Manchester and three weeks before it was in an Arena. The only real difference I'm finding a bit weird is now I'm a singer opposed to a guitar player. I mean, I sing all the time but that's what I had to get over more than anything else. It's just a headspace thing. You have to concentrate on your vocal performance more because normally I'd go, 'Ok, I'm a guitarist, oh yeah, I've got to sing here. It's now the other way around, I'm a singer, oh, here's a guitar bit over here.'"

Q: You often hear about singers having a bit of a phobia of not having something in front of them. Are you finding that easier that you have still got a guitar in front of you?

Collen: "I'm so supremely overconfident that it really doesn't matter, I could go out there completely stark bollock naked with no band and I would be fine, I could make poetry up and I would still be all right."

Q: From your first introduction of the band in 2004 to your debut show in 2005 - where you also released your first single, 'Skin Crawl' which reached No.9 in the UK top 40 rock singles charts - the band's next movements only came again in 2007 with your new website, downloads and the release of your second single,'Turn It Up'. Have things been fairly slow in the Man Raze camp due to other band commitments?

Collen: "Oh Yeah. Absolutely. But I'm really glad we waited because if we had done the first lot of songs and just released it as an album we would've been really unhappy. It's actually evolved. I honestly think, me going away and doing Leppard stuff, Paul going away and doing Pistol's stuff, us getting back together has been different and we actually found our identity. We weren't sure whether it was a bit of reggae, was it bit hard edged, but not quite and then all of a sudden it just kind of gelled and we recorded the album in about 2.5 weeks. We had some of the stuff floating around, some of it we over-dubbed on the demos but most of it we recorded in 2.5 weeks and all of a sudden it just clicked and it had its own identity."

Go to this location for the complete interview.