DEF LEPPARD Discuss Their Biggest Songs On Radio 2 Rock Show (Transcript/Audio)

Sunday, 24th August 2025

Def Leppard 2025

Def Leppard members Joe Elliott and Phil Collen appeared on the BBC Radio 2 Rock Show on Friday with a transcript and audio available.

Def Leppard will return to the UK at Radio 2 In The Park on 7th September.

Joe and Phil were interviewed recently to promote the concert.

Joe Elliott/Phil Collen Radio 2 Rock Show

Joe and Phil were interviewed for a special Def Leppard edition of The Rock Show with Shaun Keaveny on 22nd August.

Phil visited the Radio 2 studios in England for this interview with Joe linking up from Los Angeles.

It's not clear when it was done but probably a few months ago before the current Summer Tour started.

Joe and Phil talked about the early days of the band, their parents. how The Def Leppard E.P. was made and discussed a few of their classic songs.

These songs were also played during the one hour show.

Read many quotes from the interview below and listen via the link.

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

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

Def Leppard 2025.

The Rock Show with Shaun Keaveny 22nd August 2025 - (Transcribed by dltourhistory)

Early Years/The Def Leppard E.P./Parents

A rock show wouldn't be a rock show without featuring our next guests.

There was hysteria when we said we were interviewing them. A band that were on fire in the '80s — virtual pyromaniacs.

We've got a lot of love and affection for them. So, let's get rocked by Phil Collen and Joe Elliott of Def Leppard.

And for the listeners at home who don't realise, it's one of those very exciting sort of link-ups, because we've got Joe in Los Angeles, and Phil opposite me in London.

So what's the temperature like in Los Angeles at this exact moment, Joe?

Warming up. It'll be nice later on, you know.

This recording thing that we've got going here is very reminiscent of how we make albums these days. The technology is amazing, you know.

Me and Phil can be conversing like this, 6,000 miles apart with you — while he's about six inches from me. And it sounds like we're all in the same room, which is wonderful. And that's kind of how we make records nowadays.

Well, we should talk about your forensic approach to making these colossal albums a little bit later on, actually.

But we're doing this, obviously, because we're kind of looking forward to your Sunday headline slot at Radio 2 in the Park in a bit.

But I mean, going back a little bit as well — a lot's been made of it over the years, but it seems, quite rightly, you know, all of you had supportive parents, didn't you?

In fact, didn't your parents, Joe, help you with the seven-inch sleeves in the living room for the first releases?

No, it’s more than that, you know. I mean, once we'd made a decision that we weren't going to just play 150 working men's clubs — you know, where it costs you 50 quid to do the gig and they pay you 10 — we said, “Look, let's see if there's a shortcut.”

And we just happened to be really friendly with this band from Grantham that had moved up to Sheffield. We said, “We're going to London.” We kind of got really pally with them. And they had a three-track EP and they were selling it at their gigs and stuff.

And I asked the drummer, Frank, “Would you fill me in on how you did this?”

So we figured out we needed 150 quid to record it. And so I went to my dad and I said, “Can you lend me 150 quid?” And he literally emptied his bank account.

Because, you know, we were a working-class family and he didn't have anything like massive life savings or anything. But he said, “As long as you pay me back.”

Obviously, he was the first guy that got paid back. But then we had to print them up. And, you know, 450 pounds — I think it cost to do a thousand EPs.

And then, yeah, the rest of the band claimed that they joined in, but they bloody well didn't!

Phil - i wasn’t there — I’d have joined in. Absolutely.

Gluing a thousand sleeves. I think Sav and Rick might have done like three or something. Just to be part of the story.

Using Pritt, the non-sticky sticky stuff, to glue together and shove in a lyric sheet.

We really went to town on this thing, to try and make sure it wouldn't become, you know...

I was in the belief, having read enough music papers as a kid, that if you sent a cassette demo tape to an A&R man, it just got used as a doorstop or a paperweight.

And I figured, if we sent in a picture cover, seven-inch vinyl, with a lyric sheet, they're going to go, “Hang on a minute — who's this?”

They might hate it, but they'd at least put it at the top of the pile and play it.

Oh yeah, I mean, it goes back as far as that when it comes to the support.

And it's the same old story as well: “I'm joining a band.”, “I want you to finish your school first.”

Well, I’d finished school. I was in further education and working in a factory in Sheffield, you know, like you do.

And I said, “Okay, fine.” But as soon as we got a record deal, they said, “Oh, forget our place.”

We recorded the EP in, like, November ‘78. And the aforementioned Frank — who was in that next band — actually played on it,

Because we had to get rid of Tony, our drummer, a week before we recorded this, because he didn’t want to turn up for rehearsal.

So we borrowed Frank, and he played on the EP.

By the time it was printed, delivered and put together, probably February or March of 1979.

I sent copies down to Geoff Barton at Sounds, and John Peel, and everybody I could think of that wouldn’t just destroy it.

I got a phone call back from Geoff Barton, who had previously been very reluctant to come up the M1 to see us live. Now, all of a sudden, he wanted to come.

Him and Ross Halfin — the legend that is Ross Halfin, the photographer — they were down the front of the Crookes Working Men's Club, bopping away on 10-pence pints and 25p whiskies.

And, of course, consequently, we got a two-page spread in Sounds with no record deal — which got us the record deal.

By August 1979, the day after we saw Led Zeppelin at Knebworth, we signed the record deal in Rick Allen’s mum and dad’s house because he was still 15. So consequently, they had to sign for him.

Pulled him out of school, and by September we were on tour with Sammy Hagar around the UK.

And by October–November, we were opening for AC/DC on the Highway to Hell tour.

So things rapidly moved once we did that EP. It was the best decision we ever made, really.

Didn’t you do that AC/DC gig — you did a gig with them in New York City on your 21st birthday, didn’t you, Joe?

Yes — that was the last gig we did on that first American tour. All of a sudden, we were just there, and they went, “They need an opening act.”

So yeah — my 21st birthday, and coincidentally Brian Johnson's first gig outside of England.

So he was asking me for advice on the steps of the hotel, saying, “What am I going to do? What do I do?”

What does a 21-year-old — just 21 — say to this guy that's done Back in Black, and toured, at least, I’m guessing, Europe and certainly the UK?

I said, “Well, just be yourself, Brian.”

Joe Elliott and Phil Collen are here for a Def Leppard special, ahead of their headline slot at Radio 2 in the Park in a couple of weeks’ time.

Rock Brigade/First Album

You know, when you approached songwriting on that first record — obviously before it started to slicken up and become the very clean pop machine that it became — what was something like "Rock Brigade" like to come up with?

In fairness, I’ll tell you what it was.

When you're a kid and you pick up a guitar, the reason you pick up a guitar or a drumstick or one old keyboard — well, you don't pick keyboards up, you just kind of sit at them — but it's because you've heard other people do it.

So consequently, your early influences are going to be other people.

So Sav...He wrote the intro lick for Rock Brigade. It just had a real poppy hook to it. It’s just like — this is a real memorable "first time you hear it" kind of thing.

And the way that we wrote was the way that all young kids write when they're 16, 17, 18 years old.

He came up with this riff, somebody else came up with the next bit — which would have been Steve, probably — and then there was the chorus that somebody else wrote.

And you just glue all these bits of music together. And then they just gave it to me, and I just had to go and write some lyrics — maybe "ride with baby" or something a little better than that.

And I had no experience — I just had vast enthusiasm to try and write something that was as original as it could be under the circumstances.

But it's what attracted Mutt Lange, see — because he heard the first album and he said, “There’s something here.”

This is a rough diamond. It needs massive amounts of polish. But that’s why he wanted to work with us.

I mean - he heard that first album.

Photograph/Pyromania/Phil Joining

Perhaps some people lumped the beginnings of Def Leppard in with the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, and it was very different to that, wasn’t it?

What was the original synthesis of this idea — of it being almost like a sort of pop-heavy rock, with pop fused together — you know, with those harmonies and very strong melodies?

Who came up with that? How did that come up for you guys? Was it just a natural way of writing for you?

Most of it grew from watching Top of the Pops and only seeing these three-minute singles. I didn’t really hear much hard rock.

I didn’t even hear Led Zeppelin until Steve joined the band, because apart from the three big ones that you’d hear on the Alan Freeman Rock Show, I wasn’t really familiar with their work.

So we were always leaning that way. And once Phil joined, having been in Girl, who were a much more experimental, avant-garde rock band...

What was your sort of John and Paul at Walton Fair moment, guys? Because I know that, Phil, you joined the band a little bit later on, didn’t you?

Yeah — ’82, yeah — during the recording of Pyromania.

And it was kind of... it was a bit of a...

You weren’t exactly asked to join in a traditional sense, were you, Phil? Would you tell us a little bit about that — how it all came about?

Yeah. So Def Leppard were on tour with Ozzy in the States, right? And I knew everyone — me and Joe.

Actually, Joe and Steve slept on my mum’s couch and on the floor when they came down to London from Sheffield.

We got on the stairs, like, “Yeah, come stay down here.”

So we had this friendship. I actually stayed at Joe’s mum’s house, and Phil Lewis from Girl — so we had this relationship, we were really good friends.

And Joe calls me, and he goes, “Can you learn 16 songs in two days?” And I’m like, “Yeah, yeah, all right.”

Because it wasn’t really going that great with Pete — there was some stuff going on. “Yeah, yeah.”

A week later, he calls back and says, “We’ve kind of smoothed it over — it’s actually all right now.” I said, “All right, yeah, whatever.”

So a year later — I think it was a year later, wasn’t it?
Joe Elliott - Yeah.

He calls back and says, “Do you think you’d come down to the studio, just play a solo or two on a track?” I said, “Yeah, yeah, sure.”

So I go down — Mutt Lange’s there, producing it. And I go in there, do Stagefright, plug the Ibanez Destroyer in, all this stuff —

and I start singing, and playing more guitar stuff, and Mutt finds out I can sing. So he’s getting me to sing and everything.

And then all of a sudden the album comes out — and it explodes.

And we’re on tour. The first gig we did was at The Marquee Club, just around the corner — so that’s about 400 capacity or something.

And then it just went bonkers. And we actually weren’t prepared for it — because on our tour, we were doing like half-empty theatres and everything.

The boys had played America before, and they were doing well, because High ’n’ Dry had got in — and Bringing On the Heartbreak was on MTV.

But then Photograph came out — and it all changed. Because MTV culture and everything — it just jumped on it.

And all of a sudden, we were like, “We want to be visual. We want to be more like Duran Duran,” than some of the metal bands that were around.

And it just suited us fine. It just went off. It blew up.

And they never actually asked me to join — we just kept going.

Joe: - I mean — “Phil, would you like to join the band?”.

Phil: - “Well, I’ll have to think about that, because I’m pretty busy this month.”

Joe: - He likes to keep his options open — that’s the thing.

Yeah, I don’t blame him actually. You’ve got this gig in the park in a month or so — you’ve got to get that sorted out first.

Joe Elliott

Obviously, songs like Photograph — just huge. Do you remember the synthesis of that — or the genesis, should I say — of something like that?

Well, the truth is about Photograph — it was actually a leftover from the High ’n’ Dry sessions.

But it had a completely different beginning. It sounded like Thin Lizzy or Wishbone Ash — it had this twin-guitar lick, and it didn’t sit happily with us.

We were looking for songs for the next album, and it just got brought out again — and they kept messing with it. It didn’t really gel.

We were working in Battery Studios in London, and it was getting really expensive.

So Mutt suggested we move down to Battle — which is where Wings used to record, in Hastings. It’s a living studio, so it would save a lot of money. And it was a cheaper studio.

I remember one day, most of us were in this room watching cricket or whatever, and the intro riff just came through the door of the control room.

I remember just looking at each other going: “Whoa — what’s that?”

We all ran in. And I think Mutt said something like, “Well, it’s got their attention — it must be all right.”

That, musically, was an interesting story, I suppose — because like I said, it started in ’81 and now we’re into ’82.

When it came to the lyrics and stuff like that, I think Mutt suggested the title Photograph, and I suggested the idea of the “Die Young, Stay Pretty” thing —

because I think I’d just heard the Blondie song, to be quite honest.

And I had a poster of Marilyn Monroe in my basement flat in Isleworth, covering a hole — you know, the kind of Shawshank Redemption hole. It was like an escape hole for the previous tenant or something, and it just looked horrible.

So I put this poster over it. And because you’re looking at this thing every day, you’re thinking: the ultimate woman — you can’t have her, because she’s not here anymore.

And that’s what the whole lyric of Photograph was written around.

But that initial riff — that, still to me, is the thing. When we do that live, you hear those da-da, da-da — and the crowd just goes bonkers.

You just go: “Yep. It’s stayed with us all this time.”

It’s like — what — 42 years now? It’s crazy. It really is.

Mutt Lange/Hysteria Album/Animal

That’s from the first Imperial Phases, you know — with Mutt Lange, Pyromania, Hysteria, Adrenalize. Tell us a bit — the Beatles had George Martin, and you had Mutt.

It seems like to me — when did you realise what you were in for when you started to work with Mutt? Because he was a proper perfectionist with you guys, wasn’t he?

Phil Collen:

He was — and he is. But I think one of the things was, he worked so hard and he’s so talented, you didn’t want to disappoint him.

So I think that’s why we actually worked even harder than we would have done. Because he’d go,

“No, sing this,” and you’d go,“I can’t sing that!”

To all of us: “Play this.”

And he’s grabbing a guitar and doing that, and you go, “But play this rhythm and then move it back half a beat,” and it’s like — you’re going, “Whoa!”

And you just didn’t want to disappoint him — because it sounded great.

So we had total confidence in him, and we would do anything he wanted us to. And it was great — and we learned so much. But yeah, it was hard. Especially with the vocal stuff.

It took ages, and he’d go, “No.”

It was perfection. He wanted it to sound a certain way. He said,

“We don’t want to be like everyone else — because they’re like everyone else.”

So he just wanted it to move up.

We always say it’s a cross between AC/DC and Queen. That was the blueprint.

And then we threw some of the glam stuff in, and it just — it worked great. And he was totally up for just pushing every boundary.

What about competition? You know, it’s so obvious that you must have had an immense drive — as well as the talent. But you had the drive and the focus to get there in the first place.

Who were you feeling your competition was when you first started hitting the road fast — in the early to mid ’80s?

Who were the people you were looking to and thinking:

“We’re trying to outsell these guys”?

Joe Elliott

I don’t think we ever really were that competitive — because we always thought we were in a... I don’t know if this is going to sound terrible — a league of our own.

But what I mean is, we were ploughing our own furrow, if you like.

You know, with things like New Wave of British Heavy Metal — later on in America, they call it hair metal, I believe — the way that it was, I just think it was a time thing.

We came up at the same time as a bunch of other bands, and the cream of the crop would have been Iron Maiden.

It was difficult — because all we wanted to be was Def Leppard. We didn’t want to be part of a movement.

Because, having been a music fan since I could crawl, you realise that these things — like the Mersey sound — once the Beatles became The Beatles, there was no competition.

The Mersey sound just fell away. It became maybe nostalgic 10 years later — with Freddie and the Dreamers and bands like that from Liverpool.

And the Beatles obviously didn’t want to be lumped into that either — and they had the drive and the talent to just be the Beatles.

We saw that as a kind of blueprint. It’s like —

“Well, that’s how it should be for us.”

Led Zeppelin were yards — no, billions of miles in front of everybody else. And Sabbath — people might lump them in with Zeppelin, in a sense. And Sabbath and Zeppelin were our two favourite bands — but they’re vastly different musically.

We just wanted to be Def Leppard. We’d read all these articles that kept mentioning other people — but that’s what the writer was thinking, not us.

We just wanted to be Def Leppard. And I’m sure anybody who’s ever been in a band thinks the same way.

We admired other bands — we weren’t really competitive with them. It might’ve been Maiden, or later on Bon Jovi, or bands that came way after that.

If we liked them, we liked them. It wasn’t really a competitive issue for us.

It’d be remiss of me — in extremis — if I didn’t mention just one of the most devastatingly catchy songs of all time: “Animal.”

Who does that particular chorus line lie with? Whose brain did that come out of?

Phil Collen

Well, originally, I had this demo — we were in Dublin, on this little four-track Fostex recorder, doing all these things.

We got it to a certain level — and it was kind of alright. But it took three years to actually finish off.

Then Joe did a lead vocal over that. And then Mutt said:

“Let’s get rid of the backing track.”

So we kept the lead vocal that Joe did — and it was great. That’s the one you hear on the record. And we literally wrote everything around it.

There was a lot of stuff happening musically at the time — like Frankie Goes to Hollywood — that we loved, all the Trevor Horn stuff.

It’s like:

“It’s got to have that power. It’s got to have that kind of drive.”

And it’s a rock song — it’s pop, but it’s also a rock song.

So we just did it from Joe’s vocal. We kept that there and kind of fit stuff around it.

I’m not even sure who came up with the chanting and everything — just so many backing vocals, gang stuff, and things like that.

Joe Elliott:

I don’t remember either — but in fairness, the way that that record was made, the reason it’s credited to six people as writers is because some songs were written by maybe one or two people, and some songs were written by others.

It just got to the point where everyone did something. Somebody did a bit more here, a bit less there.

So we just spread the love across. Everybody said,

“Look, everyone contributed — so credit everyone.”

So you don’t kind of hang on to who did what — because it was a team effort.

Somebody just throws in an idea — someone else says:

“That’ll work. That’s going to be great.”<

And it gets done. Then you move on.

And you don’t actually write down:

“This bit was written by so-and-so.”

That’s what people clambering for money do.

Phil Collen:

And we literally don’t remember — because it is a team thing. You’re all trying ideas:

“What about this?”, “That’s great!”

And before you know it — you’re on the radio with it.

The secret sauce — it’s all of you together, isn’t it?

Phil: - It is.

It’s all of those little contributions...

Joe: - Henderson’s Relish, baby!.

The 90s Sound/Grunge

Moving into the '90s and beyond — because grunge derailed a lot of people's expectations, didn’t it, when it came to rock music.

It was a genre… it was like a hammer that just came into the scene, wasn’t it?

I mean, how do you feel about that looking back on it — that particular time in your career?

Do you feel it was a necessity, something that had to happen, and you got through it?

Phil Collen

Oh, it definitely had to happen.

It was refreshing because, you know, talking about getting lumped in — we got lumped in with so many awful bands.

And everyone thought… talking about New Wave of British Heavy Metal, we got lumped in with — I mean, I might even mention it — but there were tons of bands, and we got, "Oh my God, that’s awful."

So it needed to change, because it got really kind of… pale and weak — just the whole genre, you know, rock music.

It was like a punk explosion, really.

It was like, you know, the mid-'70s when The Pistols came out.

But it was Nirvana, really, that was the main band.

And then it was like Pearl Jam, and there’s always like three or four major bands, and then you get that weak stream behind it.

So it came out and it did what it was supposed to do.

It was a bit rough for us for a few years, but we kept at it.

We have integrity.

We actually really believe in what we do — the records, the live show.

I mean, you know, the vocal thing, which keeps getting better — we really do sing and everything.

And I think what happened in the end, we just kind of rode it out.

And it got bigger than ever, so that was really good.

But I think that needed to happen.

The first time I heard Nirvana, I was like, "This is absolutely amazing."

I loved it — the energy and everything.

And that’s what was lacking in rock music at that time.

I mean, what is the secret to that for you?

I suppose if everybody knew, they’d just do it. But the longevity of you as an act, and the fact that you can survive things like that…

I mean, obviously, you survived terrible tragedies.

You know, what happened with Rick back in, sort of, '84 with losing his arm. And then, you know, losing Steve in '91.

How do you manage to keep coming back?

Phil Collen

Well, Joe mentioned before — our families, our parents were such an instrumental part of everything.

They survived World War II.

You know, Joe’s parents were down there in the garden in the air raid shelters and stuff.

My mum and dad — same deal. And they had this kind of attitude and work ethic and all that stuff that they kind of passed on to us.

So that's really the thing — there’s a spirit, a fighting spirit, that we kind of inherited from our parents, that we still have.

You never really forget that.

You’ve got the scrap in the heart.

Joe Elliott

Over the years, we’ve been very matey with Brian May.

We first met him in '83 when he came down to one of our gigs at the LA Forum.

And then he asked — we were doing two nights there — and he asked if he could get up and play with us on the second night.

I mean, you know, this was looking so good.

I bought Sheer Heart Attack like nine years ago, and now he wants to play with us? Wow.

But he became a mate, you know.

And he has this phrase that he says — he says it to anybody listening — he goes, “Don’t split up.” Oh yeah, ride it out.

We just kept ploughing away until people started listening again.

We always invite people to listen.

We don’t make them — not enough to kidnap people.

But sooner or later, it came back around. It just does.

You know, it’s like being in a plane in turbulence.

Sooner or later, as long as you’ve got enough fuel, you keep going.

You come out, and there’s blue sky on the other side.

It sounds a bit poetic, but a lot of fans of grunge were just people that didn’t buy our music in the first place.

So there was a parallel audience that didn’t jump ship.

There were just a bunch of different people buying Soundgarden — and rightfully so.

Because when we all first heard Black Hole Sun, we were just knocked to the ground at how brilliant it was.

A lot of those bands didn’t like us.

A lot of them pretended they didn’t.

But 20 years later, they’d be coming to see us play.

And I get it. They had an image to create.

It was as calculated as they thought we were. But we understood that.

And then 20 years later, they did too. They were all forgiving.

And now we know people like Pat Smear, Dave Grohl, and loads of others who survived it.

You know, the Stone Temple Pilots guys — one of them was in one of Phil’s side bands.

So there’s a lot of love these days, because it’s moved on from all that kind of, you know, looking shadily out the corner of your eye at this new movement.

Yeah, it was going to kill us.

It tried. But it didn’t.

We circumvented around it a bit — you know, at the end of the day.

Let's Get Rocked/White Lightning

I think that’s what it all comes down to, definitely.

And obviously, I’ve got to talk about Let’s Get Rocked as well, because I just remember… it’d been a little while, obviously.

And then that single comes out — and it was colossal.

Can you give us a little idea of the sort of genesis of that one?

Phil Collen

Well, it came out at a weird time, because the Nirvana thing happened at the same time.

And it was kind of a silly pop song.

Let’s Get Rocked is — you know — it’s tongue-in-cheek, and it’s all of that stuff.

So it was bizarre that it came out at the same time as Teen Spirit and stuff like that.

So we had to live with that.

But we play it live — it goes down a storm.

And I think we were saying this the other day — we way prefer how we do it live.

It’s got a lot more aggression to it.

Because, like I said, it is tongue-in-cheek.

It’s kind of silly. It’s a pop song. But people love it.

So we just give it a bit more oomph when we do it live.

Joe Elliott

And also, it was written directly after we wrote White Lightning, which was our tribute to Steve — which was emotionally draining to do.

I mean, it really was. But Phil had this track.

It had been knocking around for a good couple of years, and we finally finished it.

Musically, you know, Steve used to wear these white suits and run around the States — consequently, an easy title.

But it had a kind of double entendre to it as well.

And it really was draining to do.

And when it was finished, we were all like, “Okay, now what?”

So we just said, let’s do something like, you know, kind of like You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet, or Turn Off the Drive, or All Right Now by Free.

Just something that’s light and easy.

But at the same time, we were all really crazy on Prince at the time.

We were on a bit of a Prince rap, you know — especially Phil, just listening to him all the time.

And he had that song Let’s Go Crazy.

And it kind of led us toward Let’s Get Rocked.

Because he sang “Let’s get nuts,” and we sang “Let’s get rocked.”

So, if you actually do listen to the song with that in mind, it is actually a very Prince-type song — really, from an arrangement point of view.

But it came after a really heavy time.

And it was released into a very heavy time.

But it was just something that we felt we had to do.

When we were recording it, we needed to just bring the mood back up.

Because I think by the time we were working on Let’s Get Rocked, Steve had passed maybe nine months earlier.

And you have to move on — you really do.

Phil Collen

It’s like a tonic. Yeah. It’s like an answer — to what we’d been doing, and what had happened.

Playing Hits/Collaborations

Can you give us any idea of the kind of thing we might expect?

I mean, obviously, you know, with the big songs and things — but are there any other things you can let us into, get us excited about?

Joe Elliott

Well, maybe some reggae mariachi music?

Reggae mariachi? I've written it down!

Phil Collen

That's on the list.

Joe Elliott

Yeah, you know, we're not one of those arty-farty bands that are not going to play our hits — you know what I mean?

It's like, you've got the one...

I remember we met Mike Scott years ago, and he wouldn't play The Whole of the Moon.

I mean, so I just looked at him and went, why?

It's the only song anybody knows, mate — you know what I mean? It's just crazy.

So, you know, McCartney, The Stones — what do they play when they play live?

Well, you know, The Who?

You know, they can't play them all, but generally speaking, the chestnuts — or what we call the crown jewels — that you don't get out of the building alive if you don't play... we're going to play them, you know?

But there's obviously room for a little bit of A, you know, the B- and the C-list songs, if you like.

Where you throw something new in, something you haven't played for many, many years.

But you've got to remember that we're playing for people in front of us.

You've got to strike a really good balance of what people want to hear and what they expect to hear.

We don't pander, but we just kind of figured — what we play, people will come along with us.

Because that's what got us there in the first place.

It's that they listened to what we did, and they liked it, so they want to hear it. You know?

And finally, I just wanted to ask about anything that you've not yet done that you would like to do — any people that you would perhaps like to collaborate with.

I think you duetted with Miley Cyrus at the Taylor Hawkins Memorial?

Joe Elliott

Yeah, we did, yeah.

It's funny actually — country artists seem to dig us quite a bit.

Because we first started out, what, 20 years ago with Tim McGraw, and then we worked with Taylor Swift, and then we worked with Alison Krauss.

There's a theme that's running through this, you know?

Phil Collen

They were very natural as well — it wasn't like with Tim McGraw, we found out that he liked the band, and it'd be great to write a song.

And he came to see us at the Hollywood Bowl, and I met him for the first time in a hallway and literally said: "Be great to write a song."

And he said, "Yeah."

I said, "I've got this riff, it goes..."

And he goes, "Well, if I sung that..."

And then Joe could come in...

And before you know it, a minute and a half — I'd never met him before — and we had this idea for a song.

Then we all went in and wrote it properly and recorded it.

It was like bang.

So it was a very natural thing.

Same deal with Taylor Swift — we found out she was a fan, and her mum was a huge fan.

Joe Elliott

When we did the 'Yeah!' album 20 years ago — when people were expecting us, when we did the covers album, that it would be Sabbath, Purple, Zeppelin, Uriah Heep, whatever — and we were doing Blondie, David Essex, T. Rex, Bowie, Sweet, you know.

We will work with anyone.

You know — we'll work for food.

There are lots of people that we have worked with, and will.

Phil Collen

One of the best ones ever was the Freddie show — you know, the AIDS awareness show.

It was all of Queen, Mick Ronson, David Bowie, Ian Hunter, and me and Joe.

Brian said, "Do you want to come and sing on All the Young Dudes?"

And we're like, "Yeah, all right."

So you see us on the video — it's actually brilliant.

It was just lovely.

It's just lovely to do that.

Joe Elliott

And don't forget, Phil — you're one of only three people that's ever got up in costume to play with KISS.

Phil Collen

Yes.

Did you?

Phil Collen

Well, in half costume.

Yeah, yeah — I had Paul's spare boots on, and I had to have these kind of ski things to support my ankles.

I was going to say — you could snap them quite easily.

Oh yeah, those platforms!.

Phil Collen

And just doing that too was great.

You know, I had all Gene's stuff on, and he hooked me up to the chain, and I went flying up into the scene.

So yeah — no, it's all lots of fun.

All the dreams have come true, really.

Oh well, listen — for us as well, The Rock Show, it was just a fantastic experience to get to chat to you both. Thank you.

Obviously looking forward so much to what you're going to do for us at Radio 2 in the Park.

It's going to be absolutely enormous, obviously.

But Joe and Phil — welcome any time, obviously, to The Rock Show if you happen to be passing.

But thank you so much for being with us today.

Joe and Phil:

Pleasure.

Thank you, anytime.

Listen to the show here on BBC Sounds.

The Rock Show with Shaun Keaveny - 22nd August 2025 Playlist