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Def Leppard Tour History Fan Archive.
Joe Elliott/Rick Savage Leona Graham Interview Part 2 Transcript

Monday, 23rd September 2013





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

Def Leppard members Joe Elliott and Rick Savage were interviewed by Leona Graham of Absolute Classic Rock radio last week and a transcript of part two is available.

The full interview was played last night as part of Absolute Classic Rock's 'Rock Icons' series in a one hour special.

Joe and Sav talked about the VIVA! Hysteria residency/film, playing the full Hysteria album, Ded Flatbird, the band's influences, recording the first album, the success of Pyromania, the making of the Hysteria album, UK success with Animal, Tom Cruise singing PSSOM and the writing of the song, starting to play music, recording Adrenalize, touring the UK, new material - hinting at EPs rather than an album.

Joe and Sav's interview was part of the Rock Icons show where artists pick some of their favourite songs. Joe picked Queen, David Bowie. Sav chose Sparks and Muse.

Rock Icons - Joe Elliott/Rick Savage Interview Transcript

Leona Graham - Let's go back a bit let's talk more about your influences. Joe on your list is Now I'm Here from Queen?

Joe - "Yeah well that was the first song of Queen's that I ever heard. And it was one of those songs where there was a lot of stuff going off in '73 that was part of my DNA to this day whether it be Slade, Sweet, David Bowie, Mott The Hoople all that kind of stuff. But there's something really astonishing about that song for me. The guitar riff when it comes in is I suppose you'd call it standard but the way it was played was very unusual. It started off with just this like chunk, chunk, chunk thing and Freddie bouncing from one speaker to the other. And again it was the dynamics of the song, The arrangement of it. It wasn't heavy metal and it wasn't glam rock as such. It wasn't Blockbuster or anything like that. You could tell it was a bit more expensive and the production was huge. The performance was great and it's just got such a great hook. And I just love the way that it sounded. It was probably one of the most rock 'n' roll songs. It just really kinda sucked me in when I first heard it."

Sav - "I'm a huge Queen fans - certainly the first five albums I just thought were wonderful. I went to my friends house, ho was actually the original drummer in Def Leppard, in one lunch time and he put the Sheer Heart Attack album on. It's heavy but it's melodic. I'd never heard anything like it. It was like I wanna be in a band that make records like this. Every so often in your life you hear something either on radio or where ever and you just stop everything and go what the? what is this?"

Leona Graham - And I imagine that was what happened with Sparks?

Sav - "Yes that was the effect that This Town Ain't Big Enough For The Both Of Us had on me. I remember it was on Radio One and it was an awful reception where I was and I just heard this weird vocal. It was kind of melodic but weird at the same time and I didn't know where it was going. I couldn't quite pick out the name of the band but I do remember as soon as the song finished I ran 300 yards up our street to the local hangout it was like where the swings and the park was. I just remember running up and telling everybody, all my mates where there. I just heard this band called Spark, and I thought that's what they were called - just fantastic song and I just wanted to tell everybody for some reason."

Leona Graham - What was it like when you first began making your first album?

Leona Graham - ?

Joe - "Well it was very exciting."

Sav - "Oh it was great. It was your dream come true."

Joe - "We were in Tittenhurst Park which was Ringo Starr's house and it used to belong to John Lennon. It's the famous house where he shot the Imagine video. We were actually recording in there. We came in one Friday night and Dr. Hook And The Medicine Show were just finishing up. And there's the guy with the patch on his eye and a cowboy hat and you know we were playing these guys at pool."

Sav - "It made it real. It was like god we're on our way we're on the journey. It's fantastic and it was just - we'd practised the songs off the first album probably so much and we recorded the backing track so quickly that we were kind of almost like well what do we do now. And we probably overdubbed too much on that first album. Just because we were there and it was just fun being in the studio."

Leona Graham - So later on you brought out Pyromania which absolutely exploded in America. Was it frustrating having to wait for the UK to catch up?

Joe - "A little bit you know because the first album did OK in England. It went Top 20 it put us into the City Halls. We played Sheffield City Hall our home town and sold it out and we thought we were well on our way to going somewhere and then we hooked up with Mutt Lange and we made a much better second record but it didn't do anything in England really it just. It did all right in America. It did OK. But then while we were making Pyromania MTV came out in the States and they started playing the video for Bringin' On The Heartbreak. And High 'n' Dry started to sell massively in the States but still nothing in England and then because of the success of High 'n' Dry. Photograph came out in early '83 and it just exploded in America. We started that tour off in February at the Marquee in front of 600 and finished in September in front of 55,000 people in San Diego. It was just a nuts summer really."

Leona Graham - On your Rock Icons list Rick you've put Muse - Hysteria.

Sav - "Obviously nothing to do with the same title as one of songs but for me they're the one band that since the 80s they've really sort of inspired me. It was one of those songs where you're driving a car and you hear it. It comes on the radio and you've no idea who it is. It's one of the few times it's happened to me where you stop the car and go what the hell is this?. It's just one of those moments in your life were that just sounds so good. And you don't know who it is and so obviously you don't want to lose the signal or anything like that. You wanna get to the end of the song and hope that the DJ would announce who the band is. To me it was like one of those defining moments. It brought me back to feeling like a teenager again where I used to get you know excited by certain bands. I'm a huge Queen fan and I can hear a lot of Queen in Muse. But I can also hear other things as well. I can hear a bit of Prince in Muse. And it's just that musicality that they bring to the area of rock 'n' roll that I really, really love. And I didn't really like much of the stuff that happened in the 90s. I mean I thought it was all pretty dire and depressing about from possibly Stone Temple Pilots and Oasis. And when I heard Muse it was just like Oh thank god. And as I say that was the first time in many, many years that I'd heard a song and I've gone great this is brilliant."

Leona Graham - That's probably a good opportunity to talk about your Hysteria.

Sav - "Geez how long have you got?."

Joe - "Well we started writing it in Dublin in February of '84. We weren't working 7 days a week. I mean we'd just finished the Pyromania tour so we were living a little bit. Probably a little too much actually!. And then we moved to Holland in August of '84 and Mutt dropped the bombshell that he wasn't in a position to produce it. So we were scraping around for somebody to do it because really when you've worked with Mutt it's downhill from there. You know everything he did went triple platinum, multi-platinum whatever. And we started working with Nigel Green who was one of Mutt's engineers who had worked with us on the previous two records. And we were making a I'd say a pretty you know a competent record. But not earth changing, life-changing like say Hysteria turned out to be. We'd been faffing about for 18 months which is just way too long to make a record. Anyway all of a sudden Mutt was fine and he was basically exhausted due to non stop work. So he came over and very cleverly instead of starting from scratch we just bit by bit replaced certain things until we had a totally different record you know. It was clever cause I think it would have broken our hearts if he'd said right we're just gonna start again. So he said well let's just change this bit here and we just replaced a vocal or replaced a guitar. Exactly the same part but just played differently through different amps, different feel or whatever."

Leona Graham - I bought Animal, then Hysteria and then I started buying your back catalogue.

Joe - "That's how we got into a lot of bands I discovered Queen on Sheer Heart Attack. And then had the joy of thinking oh there's two more I can go back and get. A lot of bands it's the fourth album that's where people really - we broke big on our fourth album. U2 broke big on their fourth album, Bon Jovi did. You know by the time I bought Starman and Ziggy Stardust you realise you can go back and get Hunky Dory, you can get Man Who Sold The World, Space Oddity and it's like you've got an entire collection."

Leona Graham - And let's talk a bit more about Starman

Joe - "Yeah a major turning point. It was like I don't care about history lessons any more I just wanna play my guitar or write songs and listen to songs and be in a band and do things like this. So many people from different areas of the music business. For example Boy George, Morrissey being two very different to me have all said that when they saw Bowie do Starman on Top Of The Pops it totally changed their lives. They remember when he draped his arm round Ronson in a kind of very homo-erotic kind of fashion. To me as a 12 year old kid I had no idea what that was supposed to mean. You know you look at it now and go wow. To me it was just two aliens on stage you know just mates and the band wearing those like gold lame suits and stuff. Which I've since heard some fantastic stories about from Woody Woodmansey and Trevor Bolder cause they were Yorkshireman you see. there's Bowie all arty farty and there's these three Yorkshireman going I'm not wearing that! We'd probably just got a colour TV so everything went from black and white to just bang! And you knew the artists knew this as well. This is why they were having wars with each other on Top Of The Pops over who could wear the most ridiculous outfits. You had Slade in tartan suits and mirrored hats and Bowie with you know with this weird thing that he wore for Starman and when T. Rex were on doing things like Get It On he'd be wearing yellow trousers, blue jacket and sparkly stuff stuck to his cheeks and a feather boa and women's shoes. These things just fascinated me it was another world that I so wanted to be part of."

Leona Graham - What was it like coming back to that success in the UK with Hysteria?

Joe - "It was literally almost 10 years to the day since we formed that Animal actually went in the charts. We were a very slow burner in our home country."

Sav - "It was great because it's got nothing to do with record sales. You just want to be recognised from where you come from. It's more for your family. Your Mother and Father you need to kind of prove it that what we'd done in America it wasn't a fantasy it really does happen. We are this band that people have been talking about. To actually prove it in your own country was - it meant so much to us to actually have a number one album in England cause that meant more than anything."

Joe - "Go back to the old factory in your flash car with your with middle finger up at the boss."

PSSOM

Joe - "The great thing about Sugar is it was like the very last addition to the album. We thought we were done."

Sav - "It was an 11 track album and then Joe came up with this idea on an acoustic guitar and when Mutt got wind of and heard it and went OK we can do something with this and it was like you gotta be kidding me. I was in Ireland back in Dublin and thinking the album was just about finished ready for mixing."

Joe - "It seriously became the most important song - maybe not so much in England cause Animal was the big one in England. But the rest of the World and specifically like Canada and America Sugar just went through the roof. Six or seven months after the album came out but it took the album from doing OK. While we were back in Europe touring the album. The album sold three million copies while we were away. And then we went back there and then it carried on and on and on and it ended up by the time we finished that tour it was at ten million copies. It was a fabulous time."

Leona Graham - Let's just talk a bit more about how you got into music in the first place. On your Rock Icons list Rick you've put down Rod Stewart Maggie May.

Sav - "Yeah purely because it was the first song I ever learned to play. My eldest brother had an acoustic guitar and he'd gone out to the pub. I think he'd just got to that age where he was allowed to drink. And I was kind of left with his guitar and I picked up this piece of paper and it had the words to Maggie May. Which was at the time probably number one. So I was familiar with the song and I saw it had the little boxes which told you where to put your fingers. And I remember just picking it up and like by the time he'd come back and was like what you doing with my guitar? I'd kinda got it down. You know it was like wow it's pretty easy this guitar lark. You know this is cool so to me Maggie May means something."

Joe - "It's the first album I ever bought. That's on Every Picture Tells A Story and that was the first album I actually ever paid money for. Two pounds and eleven pence. I've still got it because it was the first album when it came to CD I didn't get rid of it in the swap shops. It was like I'm keeping this. You know I've still got a lot of vinyl that were either presents from my parents or they're iconic. Your first ever album is pretty iconic."

Leona Graham - When are you touring the UK?

Joe - "It's a good question and you're right it's coming up a lot so it's nice to know that people care enough."

Sav - "Yeah. I'm actually surprised cause that is a very popular question. And we've toured quite a lot in the last three or four years. So it's great to know there is interest there. And we always like to tour on the back of promoting something - a new album or a new song or some angle."

Read Part One of the transcript - Here






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