Def Leppard News - JOE ELLIOTT On DEF LEPPARD's Cover Of ACTION From Retro-Active

Monday, 4th February 2019

JOE ELLIOTT On DEF LEPPARD's Cover Of ACTION From Retro-Active

Action 1994

Def Leppard singer Joe Elliott was recently interviewed and spoke about the band classic 1994 single Action.

In a new video posted today on YouTube Joe talks about the 'Action' single and video from 1994.

The promo video was shot in December 1993 at Joe's house in Dublin, Ireland at the same time as the one for 'Miss You In A Heartbeat'.

The original song was released in 1975 by Sweet and reached Number 15 in the UK charts.

Def Leppard's version got to Number 14 in January 1994 and spent five weeks in all on the singles chart.

The single was released on 4th January 1994 in the UK.

Watch the full video below.

Action 1994.

Action - Joe Elliott Interview Quotes

"Action originally recorded by a band called Sweet. Was a hit for them in about 1975 I think from an album called Give Us A Wink. Again like Two Steps Behind was chosen as a B-Side because we didn't have to write it. It's like let's just do a couple of covers. So what shall we do and Action was just one of them kind of songs that we always thought when Def Leppard gets very commercial we sound like kind of Sweet, Queen, Slade that kind of stuff."

"It's what we grew up listening to. So and watching it on Top Of The Pops. So it was logical that we'd sound that way and they were also logical if we did a song from a band like that it would sound a bit like us 'cause we always sounded a bit like them."

"So Action was like the obvious one for us because it was like a proper pop rock song. it wasn't like Wig Wam Bam or any of their earlier stuff which was too pop. So it made sense to give it a go. And just like Two Steps Behind when Retro-Active came out the label were hinting that they thought they had a chance getting this thing on the radio. So we hurriedly shot a quick video for it which was literally footage shot from another song with me superimposed over what was then black screen. They didn't have green screens I don't think in 1993. Just mouthing the lyrics and we ended up with a song that went Top 15 in the UK and did pretty well in other territories as well. And again it was just, it was an accident. It wasn't like some big long planned out thing. We did it for fun and I guess the world picked up on that because funnily enough it became a hit."