DEF LEPPARD's Phil Collen - "I Am A Writing Machine At The Moment"
July 1, 2010, 14 years ago
Ted Drozdowski of Gibson.com recently interviewed DEF LEPPARD guitarist Phil Collen. An excerpt follows:
What’s happening with Def Leppard? Are you writing for a new album?
"I am a writing machine at the moment – writing songs with C.J. Vanston and for my other band MAN RAZE, which some people say is a cross between THE POLICE and the FOO FIGHTERS. It’s an alternative rock band, and we are going to be recording our second album. We’ve pretty much written all the songs. We just need to figure out when we can get together and record them. We’ve got about 20 songs written and need to winnow the list down. I love playing in that band because it lets me really rock out in a different context from Def Leppard and maybe play things a little looser. We can jam and go in all kinds of different directions. Some of the songs are never played the same way twice. It’s impossible to do that with Def Leppard because we have a lot of backing vocals and distinctive bridges that require changes in harmony singing and that kind of thing.I get really busy next week because we start working on Def Leppard again. We’ll be collaborating from different places, putting together songs. Usually we try to find a theme for an album, but this time we’ve been coming up with all kinds of ideas and we’re going to be incorporating all of them. So it’ll be a nice variety.
With a Def Leppard tour coming up next year, we need to get our next album together and recorded. In the old days, you toured to sell records. Today you make albums to tour. Once we hit the road it becomes a well-oiled machine and there’s little time for anything else. But it’s always great to be back out playing with the band again. We’ve been together for quite a long time now, and we still have real energy together and fans who love what we do. That’s really cool!"
To read the rest of the interview, click here.
