Ultimate Classic Rock recently conducted an interview with DEF LEPPARD guitarist Phil Collen, in which he spoke about his band MANRAZE, Def Leppard’s legacy, and more. Excerpts from the interview are below:

Ultimate Classic Rock: I want to dig into the Manraze stuff – the band is finally playing its first US show (which was originally set for July 31st and now has been rescheduled for October 2nd, due to show cancellations on the current Def Leppard tour), which is a great opportunity to set up the new album. You’ve played some dates overseas… what took so long to bring it here to the States?

Phil Collen: “With Def Leppard, they go: “why don’t you come to Colombia”, “why don’t you come to Lithuania”. You’ve got to be invited there, you can’t just show up. It’s really that, really – if we’d have come, it would have just been for no reason, there would have been no promotion, no nothing, so you’ve always got to tie it in with something else. Now we’ve got this new release with Rocket Science, a record label, so that makes all of the difference, really, with the marketing, interviews and all of that stuff, so it makes it valid and worthwhile coming, otherwise there’s no point at all.”

Ultimate Classic Rock: There’s a new Def Leppard live album out with a few new studio tracks on it previewing a new album. From your part, how would you describe the new album that Def Leppard is currently working on, as far as how it’s shaping up sound wise?

Phil Collen: “I don’t think we are going to do a new record per-say. Not like a standard thing, because it would take a year to fit in the studio. I really love the fact that we’ve done three songs, I think it reminded me of all of THE BEATLES stuff, all THE STONES stuff, DAVID BOWIE, they’d go in the studio and they would write when they were inspired and they would record when they were inspired. As opposed to going, “we’ve got to go in the studio, we’ve got three good tracks and we’ve got like seven fillers. I don’t like the idea of that. I thought what was really refreshing about the three new songs is that they evolved naturally. They were written and recorded and then we got the opportunity to release them on a live album and I love that. I thought “wow, that’s way more inspired and it’s going to sound a lot more real than anything we’ve done for many years, actually. So, I don’t know, I think perhaps we should doing something like that where it’s not a full blown album per-say, but it’s like an EP or something where you just release certain songs. I think that’d be the way to go. I think the three songs, are very representative of us right now. But say in a year’s time, I think it could be different again. Since we’ve done those three, I’ve finished the Manraze album, Joe’s done some DOWN ‘N’ OUTZ stuff, so already it’s shifted a little bit, dynamic wise and energy wise. So, you have to bear all of that in mind, I think that what we do from this point on would be different to the three songs, which is a very interesting thing when you look at it.”

Read the entire interview here.

Check out BW&BK; scribe Martin Popoff's new Manraze feature at this location.