Def Leppard News - PHIL COLLEN On DEF LEPPARD's Hysteria Album (1990 Video)

Wednesday, 21st November 2018

PHIL COLLEN On DEF LEPPARD's Hysteria Album (1990 Video)

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Def Leppard guitarist Phil Collen was interviewed by MTV Australia in 1990 and video footage is available to watch.

He spoke to TV presenter Richard Wilkins for MTV Australia.

Phil was in the country to help co=produce songs for the B.B. Steal album 'On The Edge' alongside Adrenalize engineer and future Lep co-producer Pete Woodroffe.

At the time the Hysteria album was just starting to fall out of the charts and the band were on a break from recording the 'Adrenalize' album.

Watch the short video via the link which also includes the PSSOM US version video at the end.

Phil talked about the success of the Hysteria album, the car accidents and illnesses during the recording, the album sales and why it took so long to record.

Visit the Album News section for more news on new music (based on band member quotes).

1990 MTV Australia - Phil Collen Interview Quotes

Hysteria Album Success

"We really put a lot of time and effort into the songs. I mean when it first come out we thought, well this is really weird. We thought it should be more popular. And it wasn't at first but we kept on touring it and eventually it just kind of, you know, clicked in. It was really weird ."

Car Accidents/Illness

"Yeah we had car wrecks, all sorts of stuff. You know like weird things going on like it got trashed with hail stones, it got stolen and used in a bank raid. I went through a shop window in it. All these weird....I sold it in the end!. Rick lost his arm and Joe got mumps and looked like Elephant man, It was like really weird."

Hysteria Sales

"Well you see Hysteria kind of did that when it come out. We had to sell five million to break even and it kind of stopped at three million."

How much did you spend on it?

"Yeah. Nearly five million dollars which is outrageous but that was the time period more than anything else. And studios, you know, like I was saying earlier on, they just add up. You can imagine that like three years straight in the studio. I mean we should've bought our own place which is kind of how we're doing it this time."

How does a band spend three years in the studio?

"We just kept redoing it and we got so run down. Some of the songs we recorded three or four times 'cause they weren't right you know. We had Jim Steinman who was supposed to produce us initially and then it didn't work out at all. We were on a totally different wavelength. Tried on our own and that didn't really happen. We were really struggling with sounds. And then Mutt came in again and he's like, he's just so easy to work with. A lot of people think he's hard to work with but we have a great time and just learn so much from working with him. It just kind of clicked and we worked all the songs out again and ended up writing a few more. And it just, by the end of the day it was like yeah three and a half years."

Watch the full video on this YouTube Playlist