In a new interview with The Morning Call, Def Leppard guitarist Phil Collen talks about the band’s latest self-titled album, their ‘80s triumphs Pyromania and Hysteria, the health status of singer Joe Elliott and the upcoming tour with Reo Speedwagon and Tesla

Here are a few excerpts from the chat:

On Elliott’s health:

“He’s great. He’s doing really good. I spoke to him yesterday; we start rehearsing the tour tomorrow. He got walking pneumonia last year, all year long and just burning the candle at both ends, you know? The touring and flying every night. Then he got a really bad cough, and carried on singing on it. He’s really lucky he didn’t do permanent damage. So, yeah, all good.”

On Def Leppard the album:

“It was kind of different because we didn’t really have to make a record. In this day and age, it’s not kind of … albums don’t really mean anything. You know, I think the closing time was when they kind of introduced Apple Music and Spotify and you could stream stuff. Then all of a sudden you didn’t really need to buy physical albums anymore. It became less … which is a real shame, considering that was what we were all about. But, um, we still felt it necessary to write and record our art. You know, we actually wanted to share that. So it was really important to us, you know? The way we got about it, recording techniques are so much easier than they used to be. You could go software based. It does sound different, but it still sounds great. So that part made it easier. And I think if you got great ideas, everything just starts flowing. So that was the experience we had for this one.

It’s more important than a lot of the other ones, because, again, why we recorded Def Leppard was it was really to do with us. We didn’t make it … it wasn’t a business agenda, we won’t become record company executives. We didn’t even know what label it was going to come out on.

So it was really done for the pure, right artistic reasons. And then every album we’ve done has got something to it. Back in the day, you know, you had the big machines – the record companies, the industry kind of promoting it and nurturing bands and artists and stuff. And, you know, that all stopped and that got cut off and they only kind of nurture and promote bands … there’s only, what, two record companies? It’s a new age; it’s changed a lot.

Yeah, Hysteria was very important to us. So I mean, all of them. Pyromania was a breakthrough album. Hysteria kind of crossed over big time; it was kind of like what Thriller did for Michael Jackson. Just covered a lot of ground.

Then there was a big gap. I think that this is the biggest, most important record we’ve actually made since ‘Hysteria,’ to be quite honest. I know we’ve done eight or nine in between but that to me is the most important one since Hysteria.”

Read more at The Morning Call.