Def Leppard: We made a record no-one had before
Def Leppard: We made a record no-one had before
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Friday, 05, Jun 2009 12:00
Thirty-two years into their career, with brand new nominations at the premiere country music ceremony under their belt and a headlining slot at Download coming up, Sheffield arena rock titans Def Leppard remain part of a very select musical club.
Their songs might have ranged from the lascivious - Pour Some Sugar On Me - to the literal - Let's Get Rocked - but Joe Elliott and co are in very prestigious company when it comes to record sales across the Atlantic - they're one of just five bands to have two diamond records in the US (10 million album sales). Who are the others? Oh, no-one special. Just the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and Van Halen.
Having sold more than 65 million albums worldwide and proved themselves as popular as ever having been nominated for four Country Music Television awards thanks to collaborations with Taylor Swift and Tim McGraw, the Yorkshire rockers are celebrating their remarkable career with the re-release of two classic albums, 1983's Pyromania - one of their diamond LPs - and 1992's Adrenalize, both out on June 8th.
Click here for the inthenews.co.uk review of the Pyromania and Adrenalize deluxe editions
Lewis Bazley talks to Joe Elliott about breaking America, the impact of grunge and hitting the road after 30 years.
The single success of Photograph helped Pyromania become a huge album in 1983 in the US - was transatlantic success a shock or something you'd aimed for?
It wasn't shocking at all - what was more shocking was that it didn't happen in England. We couldn't understand why.
Well, at the height of Pyromania's success, you won a rock band poll that made you more popular in the US than the Stones and AC/DC - yet, as you said, the same success wasn't happening in the UK - did you have any inkling of why?
Quite simply, it was exposure and availability. In America, it had gone wall-to-wall MTV, everywhere from LA to New York, Toronto to Miami, everyone was watching it, because they'd never seen anything like it before. For that initial couple of years, people were glued to it until it turned into a gameshow channel! (laughs)
So everyone got to see the Photograph video?
Exactly - and kids who saw the video were then ringing the radio stations to request it. But that never snowballed in Britain because we didn't have music channels. If they didn't play your video on Top of the Pops or on the Old Grey Whistle Test, nobody knew who you were!
While your popularity in the US was soaring, were you battling to reach the same level in the UK?
No, because while we were selling like crazy in the States, we were touring like crazy too. We toured in the UK, did the whole 'city hall' and the album got great reviews, just not enough radio play for the song to be a hit. But in America it did. It went from opening up for Billy Squire in April 83 to headlining in front of 55,000 people in San Diego in September. We were breaking Led Zeppelin's ticket sales record in several cities in the US.
But that wasn't hard to deal with?
No, it was seven years after we'd formed, so it wasn't like we couldn't handle it. We'd done all the ground work and played in arenas opening up for the Scorpions and AC/DC so when we got to headlining we had a tiny bit more room and a lot more control. But the hard work was coming back from the US to Europe and going from 55,000-seater stadiums to 1,200-capacity clubs in Sweden! It was a good ego-check and a good lesson though.
The video for Photograph
How important was Mutt Lange's production to defining the sound of Pyromania?
Very - that's why we employed him. It's the difference between a good actor working on a low-budget film and then getting the lead role in Pirates of the Caribbean! Mutt was somebody we wanted to work with from day one but he wasn't available. We managed to get him for High and Dry, which was a great record for what it was but we hadn't really found our feet. It was on Pyromania that he said 'Let's make a record that nobody else has ever made'.
What did he mean?
He talked about using all the technology in the studio that rock bands are scared to go near and making the album the way the Human League would, for example, using samples, and synthesisers and textures. Queen were another band that weren't scared of using the studio, which they took from the Beatles and the Beach Boys, so we wanted to be more like them but also be a kickass rock 'n' roll band live. We were like two different bands.
Click here for part two of the inthenews.co.uk interview with Def Leppard's Joe Elliot