Gary Graff from Billboard.com spoke to DEF LEPPARD frontman Joe Elliott about a number of topics including their new album, Songs From the Sparkle Lounge.

Here are a few excerpts from the chat:

Billboard.com: Sparkle Lounge sounds like a kind of default Def Leppard album, something that's almost 'easy' for the band to make.

Joe Elliott: "Well, yeah, I suppose that's one way of putting it. There was a thought process behind it that we wanted to deliver a specific kind of record, but that specific kind of record was, if you like, a non-specific kind of record. We weren't going to try to theme it to the point of Pyromania, where it's got a drum sound that was definitive in 1983 ... [or] Hysteria, when we had a definite, like, overall '80s sound. With this one it was a case of, 'Let's just hone in on the songwriting and we'll use 2008 production techniques, if you like, to make it sound more like a '70s record.' It sounds very complicated, but it actually wasn't."

Billboard.com: Everybody thinks Def Leppard is going country!

Joe Elliott: "(laughs) People have been bringing that question up: 'You guys have gone country?' 'No! Tim (MCGRAW) went rock!' And truth be known, that's really what he did. If you listen to the record, he goes off on his own kind of twangy tangent for the beginning part, but after that, even me and him could barely distinguish one from another.... So he really stepped up to the plate in the rock sense."

Billboard.com: What kind of commercial pressure do you feel when you put out a new Def Leppard album now?

Joe Elliott: "The commercial pressure actually comes after we've delivered a record. The fact of the matter is we don't allow anybody anywhere near us when we're making records - it's what I call the ROGERS WATERS syndrome; nobody's going to tell Roger Waters how to make a PINK FLOYD album, and rightfully so. Same thing with us.... I know some people might think that someone shoved Tim McGraw in our face, but it wasn't like that at all. That was something we chose to do, and it caused a certain ripple in the media."

Read more here.