Def Leppard News - JOE ELLIOTT On DEF LEPPARD's Euphoria and X/Ten Albums

Wednesday, 11th April 2018

JOE ELLIOTT On DEF LEPPARD's Euphoria and X/Ten Albums

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Def Leppard singer Joe Elliott has commented on two classic albums X/Ten and Euphoria in new video clips posted to YouTube.

Joe talks about 1999's 'Euphoria' and the 2002 album 'Ten' which was of course named Ten, as in the Roman numeral.

For Ten or "X", he recalls how people did not realise it was named after the Roman numeral for Ten and using outside writers.

Which for those who go back that far was a running joke for much of the first half of the X tour...or X/Ten tour. (Probably because it was actually the eighth studio album.)

He also speaks about 'Euphoria' and the return to the classic band sound of the 1980s and early 1990s.

Andreas Carlsson who worked with the band in Sweden for the song 'Unbelievable' posted a studio photo on his Instagram last year which can be seen below. It shows the band having completed the sessions at Polar Studios in Stockholm.

The studio was once used by ABBA and has since closed. Def Leppard were the last band to record there. Also seen in the photo are Per Aldeheim and Max Martin who co-wrote the song with Andreas.

Watch the short videos below.

Visit the Tour News section. For more news on future tour plans.

Def Leppard 2002.

X/Ten Album - Joe Elliott Video Quotes

"Ten's a weird album. A) because most people call it X. But I think we were at a crossroads with that album. We weren't really sure. There was, internally we were all not going in the right direction. We had some discussions about how we should go. We had suggestions thrown at us that we should work with some outside writers which I was completely not cool with 'cause I knew that we were well capable or writing our own. So why would we wanna do that."

"But it turns out it was Marti Frederiksen who was a pretty damn good guy and we did one song with this couple of guys in Sweden that had worked with the likes of Britney Spears and it was like look. OK as an experiment let's just go with it we can always scrap 'em. We don't have to release them. And it turns out that they weren't that bad. But I was much more of a fan of the stuff we did with Marti. 'Cause we did the song Now. We did a song called Everyday. And they were totally kind of poppy. They reminded me of like us if we'd sat down and said let's try and be Cheap Trick. That's where these songs were."

"And they're one of my favourite bands of all time. So I was actually OK with that. But I think that the stuff that we wrote on our own has the real flavour of what Def Leppard is. It's obviously polarised people's opinions. And that is better than being grey. I would rather be black or white than grey, you know what I mean. So it's not a standout album. I don't think it's a complete duffer and It's certainly not Hysteria but there is some good stuff on it."

Def Leppard 1999.

Euphoria Album - Joe Elliott Video Quotes

"When we came to do the Euphoria album we started recording it in 1998 but we hadn't actually made a Def Leppard sounding record since 1991. When we pretty much finished the Adrenalize album. What came after that was the odds and sods collection of Retro-Active and then Slang. So it had been a good eight years which is just the exact amount of time The Beatles were together. Since we'd made a classic Def Leppard record."

"So it felt very natural to go back to writing songs that were like the ones that we grew up listening to. Like the ones that we'd previously recorded ourselves."

"And this also coincided with what was happening with the music industry. It was moving away from the dark grunge towards a much more uptempo poppy kind of grunge music if you like. With bands like Sugar Ray who all started writing pop songs you know. And so taking that into consideration and our 'OK we got that thing out of our system' we were all starting to write songs that were happy. We just moved into that mood again. And so we had a lot of songs that were just rock. They just rocked. Demolition Man and Back In Your Face. Stuff like that."

"There was a lot of pretty good songs on that record. So it was natural. It was totally natural because part of nature for us naturally is the environment around you. So you are listening to everything else that's going on. And it just becomes part of that internal decision that everybody in the band makes and collectively we make another one. You know as a group that decision would be to make an album that's that classic Def Leppard sound."

Good memories! Producing @defleppard back in the day. This was also the last session ever at the now legendary Polar studio in Stockholm Sweden, originally owned by ABBA. #tbm #defleppard

A post shared by Andreas Carlsson (@andreas.carlsson) on Jun 5, 2017 at 4:55pm PDT

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