Examiner.com recently conducted an interview with DEF LEPPARD guitarist Phil Collen. In the interview Collen talks about their new album Mirror Ball: Live And More, being with a new label, and more. Excerpts from the interview are below:

Examiner.com: Def Leppard has doubtlessly had the chance to do a live album for a long time. Why now?

Phil Collen: “We actually didn’t get a chance before. We’ve always been in the cycle of album/tour/album/tour, you know? I think we took our first year off in 30 years, so that was really the only time that we were actually thinking about it, because we were a lot more serious about our studio albums and tours, so we never really had the time. That’s it in a nutshell.”

Examiner.com: The band’s deluxe reissues of the Pyromania, Hysteria and Adrenalize albums released over the last few years were excellent.

Phil Collen: “We actually worked with (our former) label (Mercury Records/Island Def Jam) on all the material, the bonus material, tapes and stuff that we didn’t actually use…it was actually fun getting the stuff together because we had to dig around in the archives.”

Examiner.com: Even though the band’s with a new label now, are there any plans to play catch-up with the rest of the catalog?

Phil Collen: “Again, we’d love to help them with that…basically, as it’s always been with most artists, the label would get a rate, and the artist takes 15 percent and then the record label would take [more], actually 90 percent in some cases. We had a bad deal with that, with our earlier relationship with our record company. It was too imbalanced, and [when people are illegally] downloading, they don’t really put that much effort into it. They don’t do promotion anymore, so it was too much based on an old deal. So there won’t be a new [deal]…they weren’t prepared to do it.”

Read the entire interview here.

As reported earlier, footage of Def Leppard, performing their classic track, 'Photograph', shot in Dublin, Ireland on June 8th on the Mirror Ball tour, can be seen below. The video was produced and directed by Alias Designs Ltd.

Def Leppard have also added another date to their 2011 Mirror Ball Tour. Join them on Saturday, September 10th in Irvine, CA at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater with special guest HEART.

Tickets go on sale July 29th at 10 AM. For all details go here.

Def Leppard's North American live itinerary can be found at this location.