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Joe Elliott/Rick Savage Kerrang! Radio Interview Transcript

Monday, 16th September 2013





Joe Elliott Sheffield 2008. Rick Savage Sheffield 2008.
Pics By DefDazz/Darren

Def Leppard members Joe Elliott/Rick Savage appeared on Kerrang! radio yesterday with Louise Molony and a full transcript is available.

Joe and Sav talked about the VIVA! Hysteria London premiere, the March/April residency, playing a full album live, the cinema release and the documentary shot in Vegas. Read the full transcript below.

The 6 minute interview can be heard again using the On Demand feature.

Kerrang! radio - Joe Elliott/Rick Savage Interview Transcript By DefDazz

Rick Savage you're kinda known as Sav is that right?.

Sav - "That's what everybody calls me yeah and have done for years - of course you can yes. I would be offended if you didn't. "

VIVA! Hysteria UK Premiere.

Joe - "Yes it was the UK premiere of VIVA! Hysteria which is the Def Leppard experience live in Las Vegas. They call it a movie or film but nobody dies, nobody gets to rescue a damsel in distress. It's basically just a live gig from start to finish. And it's the entire Hysteria album in sequence from Women all the way to Love And Affection. And then a couple of encores thrown in."

Las Vegas Residency.

Sav - "Well, we played 11 shows spread over the better part of three weeks I think it was. And one of the greatest things we've ever done really. It was fantastic. It was great to just play your gig and then not have to get on a bus and travel 300 miles down the road to do the next show. You just got in a service elevator and if you wanted to there was your bed. It was all the great things about being on the road without having all the negative things. Which is basically travelling and stuff."

So you had all your home comforts upstairs?.

Sav - "Kinda."

Joe - "Yeah. I brought my electric piano over. A little plug in thing."

I thought you were gonna say electric blanket for a second.

Joe - "No, no, no, no - my hot water bottle. Yeah no I had a piano in my. It was great you know because you could sit and write songs, mess around on it. It was - there was a lot of down time which was good for getting stuff done. But you had a lot more energy for the shows because there was no travel. That was the great thing you know. It was Friday, Saturday and Wednesdays. So you had Sunday, Monday, Tuesday to kind of chill out. It was great you know."

Not playing full albums before 2013.

Joe - "What we've refused to do in the past was play an album in sequence, in its entirety because whenever we've been out on the road. We've been promoting a new album like we were promoting say Songs From The Sparkle Lounge five years ago or before that it would've been X or whatever it was. I can't remember - the newer albums we've done I can't remember which order they came out. X and then it was YEAH! and then it was Sparkle Lounge. We've been asked to play Hysteria or play Pyromania and it's like no well then it's gonna overshadow the new stuff so we refused to do it. But with this it was totally different because they asked us towards the end of the Mirrorball tour and it was gonna be in six months time. Well we knew we weren't gonna write, record and release an album in six months so we could channel all our energy into doing this. So we had six months to get all the production right and you know revise the songs because a lot of these songs Vivian hadn't played at least three or four of them ever. And we hadn't played them for maybe 20 years so there was a bit of revision needed to be done and we had plenty of time to do it."

Was it kind of a therapeutic thing going back and visiting it all in sequence like that?

Sav - "Yeah I thought it was really cool. There's probably about seven songs from the album that we would in some form or other regularly play when we're on tour. But the other four or five would come and go and I think it was concentrating on the songs that we've never played that often was - it was great to go back and in rehearsals probably 80 per cent or more than that was concentrating on songs like Don't Shoot Shotgun, Excitable, Love And Affection and it was great to just get them up to the standard you know of the ones that we normally play. So just revisiting them and - cause that's the only time we ever listen to our records. I mean we don't sit there and listen to them for pleasure."

Do you not go to bed and turn on one of your own CDs?

Joe - "Fall asleep to the iPod with Hysteria."

Sav - "Not really. We've spent so much time recording them that once they're finally done and finally out in the shops it's like you tend to let them go. But it was interesting to revisit them and really study them again and like you go Bloody hell there was a lot of work went into making this thing you know. But it was cool, it was really cool."

I did hear a word of a possible documentary or a cinema experience.

Joe - "Yeah well the movies in the cinemas that goes 19th of September it goes into the UK chain for I think it's about 180 cinemas it's going in for. And then in - worldwide it's about 2,000 actually but the rest of the world is in October. The DVD's out I think October 22nd and there is. We did actually film if you like they recorded - they filmed us for the whole month we were there for supposedly a Being Def Leppard type documentary. It's not obviously seen the light of day yet. They're probably still editing it together and taking out the bits that are well let's just say not fit for TV viewing."

They're the best bits man!

Sav - "They are yeah."

Joe - "I know so they'll be quite a lot on the cutting room floor I'm sure."

Well I'm gonna finish up I know you guys are really busy. You know you've said it was a great experience revisiting this album and spending and playing it and re-practising it. I wanna stick on a track now but I want you to choose which one that you wanna hear.

Joe - "Why don't you play Gods Of War."






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