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Vivian Campbell Discusses Last In Line Heavy Crown Album Tracks

Thursday, 10th March 2016





Heavy Crown 2016.

Def Leppard guitarist Vivian Campbell was recently interviewed by Iowa radio to promote the Last In Line album.

Vivian talked about buying his own Last In Line album at Best Buy, history of the band, making the Heavy Crown album, album tracks, his guitar solos for Last In Line and DIO, his 72987537 guitar, his health and Def Leppard's 2016 tour.

Vivian goes through many of the album tracks including the lead single 'Devil In Me'.

Listen to the full 31 minute interview below.

Visit the Album News section. For more news on new music (based on band member quotes) dating back to January 2011.

Mark Skaar/103.7 The Fox - Vivian Campbell Interview Quotes

Heavy Crown Album

"Then a couple of years later we were offered some shows in the UK and in Japan and immediately after that we get a call from Frontiers Records offering us a record deal. If we were interested in writing and recording new music and we honestly hadn't thought about doing that up to that stage. But we decided to take that opportunity and we started writing songs and it just - it was such a great experience as I hope the DVD shows. I mean just the whole writing and recording and just being back together with those guys was so much fun and it was a very organic process. It was very easy and just joyous."

Devil In Me

"Well yeah that's one song - we didn't approach any of these songs deliberately trying to make it sound like a DIO record or anything. But again I mean you know we were 75 percent of the early DIO band. So we do have that tonality. That was just a song. It grew out of a jam session in rehearsal with Vinny and myself. Jimmy was late and anyone who knows Jimmy will tell you he was always late. In fact, and this was not a joke, Jimmy was late to his own funeral because it took us a week to get his body released from coroner's office in Miami to fly it back to LA. I don't mean to make light of this. I mean Jimmy would share the joke with me."

"So anyway Jimmy was late for this rehearsal and I was really hoping that Jimmy would have an idea on this day because I kinda just showed up with nothing. So it was like uh oh it's just me and Vinny. So I just started playing and the song literally just fell out. I just started playing the chords and I said oh that sounds nice. And Vinny started laying this huge big beat and I said oh this is good. Then the riff, I don't know where it came from but all of a sudden my fingers just feel on this riff and then I started to get really excited. I thought OK this is really reminiscent of classic DIO. This is the sort of thing that Ronnie would've loved and by the time Jimmy showed up we had most of the parts for the song. And then we just sent an MP3 to Andrew. And Andrew came up with this terrific melody and lyric on top of it. That's how that song kind of happened but that's the one song to my ears, others may disagree, but to my ears that's the one that sounds like it wouldn't have been out of place on the Holy Diver album."

Starmaker

"Starmaker was very much a collaborative effort. We were kind of hung up on it for a while. Then one night I remember in rehearsal. It happened to be one of the rehearsals or writing sessions where Andrew had flown in from Vegas to be with us. And that really helped it take its final shape. Andrew had lyric ideas and melodies and stuff. I can't remember who exactly came up with the idea, it was either Andrew or Vinny, came up with the idea of stopping and having dead air right before the chorus of the song and that really gives it tremendous impact. It was just a wonderful suggestion whichever one of those two guys came up with it but it was so cool. And we thought oh that's really powerful. And that was the night the song just really came together but it'd been hanging around for a couple of weeks before that. And we hadn't quite completed it until somebody made that suggestion."

Burn This House Down

"Again that same night that we nailed Starmaker was the same night that Andrew was there and we managed to knock that song into shape. It was one of several riffs that we'd kind of started and we'd put on the back burner because we kind of felt that we needed to go somewhere and we didn't quite know where. And it was only when Andrew came in and completed the equation that it actually made it obvious for us musically where we needed to go."

"A lot of the sessions, because Andrew had moved to Las Vegas and the rest of us were in Los Angeles, Andrew wasn't always in the room with us when we were doing writing sessions. We'd have to write and record MP3s and send them to him to work on. But again it was the same night that we nailed Starmaker. It was the same night that we nailed that song."

"We didn't have a lot of sessions in all. Writing or recording sessions. This entire record was done very quickly and very economically shall we say. So we didn't have a lot of luxury of time to think about stuff but that's why I'm saying like oh yeah we finished that song in the same night as we finished the other one. You know a lot of it really was kinda jammed in into a few hours work."

Heavy Crown

"Heavy Crown. That one was pieced together - I heard that in a totally different way. I had the musical idea - I had an idea for a melody and a lyric. Andrew totally ignored it. I remember singing it into a dictaphone for him and saying here take that home and listen to it. He just came up with a completely different thing which I'm very happy to say was a million miles away from what I had suggested and a hundred times better."

"Heavy Crown became the title track of the album just because I felt it was an appropriate title being that I know a lot of people are gonna compare this to DIO records and to DIO. To Ronnie himself. So we've always felt that that's a heavy crown for us. A heavy mantle for us to carry. So I just felt like it was an appropriate title for the record but the song itself lyrically relates to a personal experience in Andrew's life that goes back a few years and had absolutely nothing to do with the DIO connection or Andrew's being in this band but I just felt it was a nice title to use for this album."

Def Leppard 2016 Tour/Joe Elliott

"Yeah Joe's voice - he saw a couple of doctors back in January. He tried to sing through it. He tried to soldier on and one doctor told him he could. And then he went to see a second doctor, for a second opinion. The second doctor put a scope down his neck to actually see what was going on with his vocal cords and told him if he didn't stop, he's in danger of doing permanent damage."

"So that was the bad news that we had to postpone. The good news is Joe - he won't require surgery. It's just a couple of months rest that he needs. He'll be fine. So we'll be back out on those rescheduled shows in May and then we always were scheduled to start a US tour in late June. So we'll be doing that. That'll run through October."

Last In Line Future

"Then, I don't know what will happen with Last In Line later in the year. It's possible, Last In Line, we may reschedule some of our cancelled shows later in the year if there's enough interest in the record and in the band and whatnot. It just didn't feel right to it on the heels of Jimmy's death."



Buy Heavy Crown Online

  • Buy @ - Amazon - Deluxe Edition CD+DVD
  • Buy @ - Amazon - Regular CD
  • Buy Digital MP3 @ - Amazon
  • Buy Digital MP3 (USA) @ -
  • Buy Digital MP3 (UK) @ -

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