Wednesday, 25th September 2013
Pic By DefDazz/Darren
Def Leppard singer Joe Elliott was interviewed by 100.7 The Bay radio yesterday and athe full audio is available plus quotes.
The interview with DJ Klug was recorded on Monday.
Joe talks about the weather in Dublin, his Planet Rock radio show, the VIVA! Hysteria residency and the cinema release, playing the full Hysteria album, the two Diamond awards, working with Mutt Lange, his home studio Joe's Garage, his microphones and the song writing process.
The full 16 minute audio can be heard below along with some quotes about Mutt Lange.
100.7 The Bay - Joe Elliott Interview Quotes
Working with Mutt Lange.
Joe - "By the time we met Mutt we'd made an album. We'd grown up through listening to everything from Sabbath to Zeppelin to all the pop stuff like Suzi Quatro and Sweet to T. Rex and Bowie and stuff like that. But as a bunch of kids we had all the energy in the world that a record company wants to capture but we were a bit of a headless chicken. Mutt gave us a great opportunity to find a direction. He didn't actually choose one for us he just led us to the water if you like. And said well take your pick which way do we wanna go here. And between the six of us you know we made some great music together and he was a pleasure to work with because he allowed you to be who you are. He wasn't you know waving guns around like Phil Spector or something."
Recording process with Mutt Lange.
Joe - "It depends if you're on your game and it's not something that's like Olympian vocal lines that you need to be absolutely on the top of your game to sing some things are first or second take. Some stuff you can spend, well you don't spend three weeks doing it but you spend three weeks revisiting it. You sing it a couple of times and you go you know what that bit could be better and you go in and clean it up. It's not really anything that. I mean everybody does it really but with Mutt it's the he focus because of the way that record sounded people couldn't believe it could possibly have been played all in one go. And the truth is it wasn't but we never told anybody that it was."
"That album was built like a building. You know you needed foundations and then you start building it floor by floor. And that's what we did with that record but the process is very - seriously U2, Peter Gabriel I can think of a thousand artists throughout the 80s who were making records that were humongous sounding. They weren't like just playing them live in the studio like say Black Oak Arkansas may have done in 1971. it was a totally different time period you know. So the proccess depended on what the song was but yes perfectionist because he wanted you to be better than you would allow yourself to be. And people work better under orders it's a fact. It's why we have different levels of people in the army for example. ."
"But he was always good humoured about it and he was never in a position so you'd really wanna just quit and leave and storm out. He would cajole you and encourage you rather than dictate and scream you know. It wasn't that kind of thing we had a great working relationship with Mutt. And we had a great playing relationship with him as well I mean we would stop hours at a time to watch soccer. If we didn't stop for the soccer we would've probably have finished the album about nine months earlier."
"That's the way that we were with him he's absolutely just - he's crazy about football. English soccer as we call and luckily so was three quarters of the band so it was always like hey there's a match on so tools down cup of tea and off we go. And it was always good to do that because it's such a you know when you're working it's always such an intense situation. To take an hour and a half away from it you come back with fresh ears, fresh throat, fresh attitude and you normally get stuff done a lot quicker after the game you know. So the more games the better really."
"He was always first in last out. He did a lot of work. Sometimes towards the end he's actually be sleeping on the couch in the control room. And get up at 8am the next day to start mixing it or something. He really was a workaholic and he did kind of shove that on to us a little bit. We've actually become workaholics truth be known. We realised that if you wanna get anywhere in this business you're not gonna get anywhere working two hours a day."
- Interview Source - thebayonline.com
- Def Leppard - Klug 2013 Show Page
- Def Leppard - Radio 2013
- Previous News - 24th September 2013