Thursday, 29th October 2015
Screenshot by dltourhistory
Def Leppard singer Joe Elliott was recently interviewed by radio host Phil de Fer and mentioned the new album and the song writing credits.
Joe talked about the making of the new album, how it came together, the song writing credits on the album (except for Invincible) and the song Sea of Love.
Note - Credits shown below. And amended from Joe's info based on the actual album booklet with the help of Swedish fan Frida.
Listen to the full 8 minute interview in three parts below.
As you can see below the promo sticker rightly proclaims the band as "one of the greatest".
Visit the Album News section. For more news on new music (based on band member quotes) dating back to January 2011.
Phil de Fer - Joe Elliott Interview Quotes
Making The New Album
"It was just time for us to get together outside of the touring cycle that we were in and just do something different. So we got together at my studio in Dublin. And we all just started playing each other what we had. Looking for maybe three songs you know. And we'd play each other little things that we'd all recorded on to our iPhones or cassette players or whatever. And it's like 'oh yeah I like that one. that's good. We can do that'. And by the time that the first week had gone by we had the best part of 12 songs on the go. And we were looking at each other and going, well how are we gonna narrow these 12 down to 3. And then you know the situation just arose that we were like. Well, why do we need to?. Why don't we just make an album and be damned with the - you know the industry standard that the album is dead. It's like let's try and revive it then you know."
"So like you said. It was relatively quickly recorded. We did it over a long period of time but it was only about 8 or 9 weeks of recording. But we went off of tour in between. We chiselled away at it. We didn't have a delivery date or a budget because we didn't have a record company. So in that respect this is the most freedom we've ever had to make a record because we were making it for fun. We were making it for art. It was not part of a product line. Where somebody's expecting this thing to sound a certain way and be delivered on a certain date. We were just gonna make this record and it was gonna be finished when we said it was gonna be finished. And we were gonna put it up there for people to say OK do you wanna release this? and see if anybody was interested and that's exactly how we did it."
Songwriting Credits/Diversity
"It is it's diverse. the reason for that is quite simply. Having not written or sat down to write songs together for a while. Everybody was writing songs on their own. You know we were (in) hotel rooms, at home when everybody is away from each other. We were just writing. Everybody in this band is very, very capable of writing songs. And what you got was Sav pretty much wrote all of Let's Go, me and Phil wrote Dangerous, me and Phil wrote Man Enough, I wrote We Belong and All Time High, Sav wrote Last Dance. We as a band wrote Blind Faith and Wings Of An Angel, me and Phil wrote Broke 'n' Brokenhearted and Forever Young. He wrote Sea Of Love and Energized."
"You know we're not exactly the same. We're very different people that when we get together, we're Def Leppard. But when we're individuals Phil Collen is different to me and I'm different to Sav and different to Vivian and different to Rick Allen. But when we come together as a team it works. But when we bring our individual ideas to the band. They're gonna be vastly different to anything we wrote as a team. So you do get that variety. And we'd - there's nothing on this record is what we call filler. If it wasn't good enough for the record we wouldn't have put it on. But we just happened to really like what we were all bringing to the table. And so Sav would bring in like these acoustic songs like Battle Of My Own and Last Dance. And we go well these will be a really good contrast to the stuff like Broke 'n' Brokenhearted and Forever Young which are like - sound like Bowie of The Clash or The Faces or something."
"You know we just mixed it up. So we wanted it to have our stamp of quality. But we didn't want every song to sound identical. The way that say things do on maybe an Airbourne or an AC/DC record. I'm not criticising them, it's really good what they do. My point is you're not likely to put an AC/DC album on and find an acoustic ballad. Or a song with piano in it. It's not what they do. What we do is more akin to a band like Queen where you've got that variety of being able to write a song like Tie Your Mother Down or Now I'm Here. And then have things like Love Of My Life or Bohemian Rhapsody which are totally different you know. Musically we wanted to lean towards Queen but with the power of a band like AC/DC when we were doing the rockers."
Sea of Love
"There's some like gospel oohs and ahhs at the front and at the end of that thing that me and Debbi did together. And we wanted that kind of like thunder thighs, 70s gospel sound you know. I'm thinking like Mott The Hoople did it on things like The Golden Age Of Rock 'n' Roll and The Ballad Of Mott off the previous record. Pete Wylie did it on Story Of The Blues in the 80s. It was that kind of - the song has got the Hendrix break in the middle. The whole song itself is very, I believe almost could be Lenny Kravitz. You know it's that kind of like soul rock song. It's just a new direction for us to go in and one that we embrace. And thought this is gonna be very different for us. So if we can pull this off it's gonna sound great. But you know Debbi's a singer in Delta Deep and so she was handy enough - she was just around. She was at Phil's house so Phil recorded her in California and we mixed it all in Dublin. But I mapped it out and then she sang along with mine and so it gives it that big huge sound and again it's a little different to something that we've ever done before."
Def Leppard Album - Songwriting Credits
- 01 - Let's Go - Savage/Elliott
- 02 - Dangerous - Collen/Elliott
- 03 - Man Enough - Collen/Elliott
- 04 - We Belong - Elliott
- 05 - Invincible - Allen/Elliott
- 06 - Sea Of Love - Collen
- 07 - Energized - Collen
- 08 - All Time High - Elliott
- 09 - Battle Of My Own - Savage/Elliott
- 10 - Broke 'n' Brokenhearted - Collen/Elliott
- 11 - Forever Young - Collen/Elliott
- 12 - Last Dance - Savage
- 13 - Wings Of An Angel - Collen/Campbell/Savage/Elliott
- 14 - Blind Faith - Collen/Campbell/Savage/Elliott
- Interview Source - phil-de-fer.eklablog.com
- Def Leppard - Interviews 2015
- Def Leppard - Def Leppard Album Section
- Previous News - 27th October 2015