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Def Leppard Tour History Fan Archive.
Joe Elliott/Rick Savage On Def Leppard's Hysteria Album (2012 Interview)

Tuesday, 1st November 2016





Def Leppard 2016.
Pic By Chele Drappel

Def Leppard members Joe Elliott and Rick Savage were interviewed for the 25th anniversary of Hysteria in 2012 and audio is available.

They both appeared on various editions of the In the Studio show with host Redbeard and archive interview clips were used to celebrate the band's most successful album.

Their interviews date a previous anniversary special (possibly the late 90s) as the show likes to repeat old audio clips.

They talk about the making of the album in a 25 minute excerpt from a longer special.

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

Joe Elliott/Rick Savage - In The Studio Interview Quotes

Trying To Repeat Success of Pyromania

Rick Savage - "Personally I would definitely say it's harder to repeat it. And to actually improve on it. You do what you do and with Pyromania, again we had the vision and we had the scope to try and make a record that would be years ahead of its time. But we were young and it's the first time and you can never really, from a feeling point of view, beat the first time. The first time you do the big gigs and it's the first time your record's at Number One or wherever it is in wherever it is in the world. It's a lot harder to actually sustain it and actually improve on it."

"People forget that Pyromania was a huge selling record and people already at that stage were ready to say" "Yeah you know they'll never repeat that again." You know which kind of gives you even more satisfaction in a sense. That not only did we go on to better it. I mean we doubled the sales. We made Pyromania look like a, you know, just a good selling record. Instead of an unbelievably good selling record. So it's definitely harder the next time round for sure."

Starting Without With Producer Mutt Lange

Joe Elliott "We just tried to record the songs that we'd already got written with Mutt. And we weren't having that much success about it because when you're young and you've had this one successful album. Where in fairness we did rely heavily on Mutt a lot for the Pyromania sound. You're second guessing his opinion all the time and it's like the old joke. How many A & R men does it take to change a light bulb?. I don't know, what do you think?. And that's exactly what we were like. You know it's like what do you think of this guitar sound?. Well, I don't know, what do you think?. Well, I don't know, and it's like we're all looking at each other. Nobody could make a decision and consequently we were everywhere at a snails pace."

"And I think the Christmas break came as a godsend really. We decided to have seven/ten days off. And the idea would be that we'd all come back with fresh ears and somebody would say look this is fine. Or this is rubbish let's start again. But unfortunately come New Year's Eve you know we had sad news come through that Rick had lost his arm in a car crash. And all of a sudden all those things that we were fretting about over Christmas. While we were pretending to to enjoy it, eating out Turkey sandwiches. Became like - they took a back burner to everything because when your drummer loses an arm whatever you're doing at the time just becomes completely insignificant."

Getting The Phone Call About Rick's Accident

Rick Savage - "There was a party that evening. And it was a fancy dress party and I'd just been to a fancy dress store with my girlfriend at the time. It was mid afternoon, probably around three or four. And we got back to the house and the phone rang and I just - it was the news that. It was Peter Mensch our manager who called and you know. I admire Peter in many ways 'cause he's a very straight talking guy and you know he calls a spade a spade as we say in Yorkshire. And he didn't say look, brace yourself for a shock. He just said. I said How ya doin'? You know compliments of the season and blah blah blah. He said yeah thanks a lot. Your drummers been in a crash and he's lost an arm ."

Joe Elliott - "Mr. Subtle."

Rick Savage - "Yeah. I thought it's too heavy to be a joke. And you know immediately you don't actually believe what you've heard and then you know 30 seconds later it just hits you like a sledgehammer right in the forehead. It's you know it was one of those, one of those terrible moments in your life when you just wish there was another life that you could go to or change for everybody. And that was it. I mean it was like, it was the most devastating thing at the time that I'd ever been through. ."

Joe Elliott's Reaction To Rick Losing An Arm

Joe Elliott - "The first thing I thought was well, he's a drummer. Well, that's that then you know. That's over. And then there's - and it sounds very cynical to think that way that I thought more about the drumming thing than the humanity of it. But it was just the way that I reacted to it at the time. He didn't die. We know otherwise we'd have been told you know your drummer's dead and not your drummer's lost an arm. So I instantly started thinking well how's he gonna feel once he wakes up from this?. Because that's the way that we are. We try and always out think each other I suppose. But I was just trying to imagine what it would be like to be Rick. When he comes round and he takes one look down and sees that there's nothing there. It must have been an unbearable feeling for a drummer of all people to lose an arm."

Sav's Reaction To Recording One More Song (PSSOM)

Rick Savage - "I'll take up the story. I was in Dublin at the time and I got a phone call from Joe. And I was about to ask him how the final vocal was going and he said ah it's going great but we've written another song. And I went: 'What do you mean you've written another song?!'. He said: 'Yeah, we need to all come back and record it properly'. You know. This is a joke right?."

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