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Def Leppard Tour History Fan Archive.
Phil Collen Talks About New Album Songs/UK Tour

Sunday, 15th November 2015





Phil Collen 2014.
Phil Collen Auburn 2014

Def Leppard guitarist Phil Collen was interviewed last month by Jorge Botas of Metal Global and talked about new songs.

Phil talked about the US tour, the band's popularity in the USA, the new self titled album, Man Enough, Blind Faith and other new songs, rehearsing multiple new songs, the UK tour, a second residency, Delta Deep - second album/Christmas single, his Adrenalized autobiography and his health and fitness on tour.

The interview was done 16th October in Columbia, SC just before the end of the US tour. You can hear from Phil's voice he had a cold at the time.

Listen to the full 19 minute interview via the show link below. Phil starts talking at 10 mins in after 'Dangerous' and 'Let's Go' are played.

'Man Enough' is played at around 30 mins into the podcast to end the interview.

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

Visit the 2015 Tour News section. For more news on future tour plans.

Metal Global - Phil Collen Interview Quotes

The New Album Best Since Hysteria

"Yeah I think so. I think it's very black and white with it. I really do think it is. I think it's got a special thing about it that Hysteria had. And I don't think any of our other albums have. You know I love the Slang album. I thought that was great what we did there but there's something very special about this one. Just listening to it you know. If I pretend I'm not in the band and I listen to it. It's got a different feel about it. It's got a different kind of texture. I dunno. I don't know how to explain it. It sounds different and more special for some reason."

Man Enough

"When I first wrote that I actually wanted it to sound like a 70s funk band. You know like a lot of the stuff that was coming out - Sly And The Family Stone. A lot of that kind of stuff in the 70s. You know American Funk music. And also you know Michael Jackson kind of went there a little bit with Billy Jean. It kinda of reminded me of that. But that was the kind of feel of it. And again that's been very different for a Def Leppard song. We don't usually do stuff like that. And Joe, I sent him a demo of just the music about a year ago and he come back and said I've got an idea and it's Are you man enough to be my woman. I thought what a great title. And then he started writing lyrics and before you knew it we had the song. It came together pretty easy and then it was just a matter of making it sound, just different. It still sounds like Def Leppard, it's still got all those elements to it. You know it's still got those 70s funk elements to it as well."

"And it was great doing this album because we could do that. We treated each song like a separate album almost. It was like this song needs to sound like that and instead of saying the whole record should have a certain feel. Each song had its own kind of thing about it which was very refreshing."

New Album

"Yeah we wasn't really planning on making an album. We was just gonna go in and make an EP. Then we literally sat down and before two days we realised we had 12 songs that we wanted to record. Which has never ever happened. You know I think the fact that there has been a big gap in between. You know everyone had these different ideas - we actually done that. We tried everyone's ideas and they all seemed to work."

Let's Go/Blind Faith

"Sav had had the song Let's Go. It was called something else before. When we started it we made it like a pop song but when we - we done the album in three parts. We done it in February 2014. May as well we was back for three weeks. We finished it off in January. And we was actually doing some stuff on tour as well and it had a very different flavour about it. Some of the songs - they're all different you know. Some are written - actually I got an idea for the song Blind Faith while I was driving from Joe's studio to this cottage where I was staying. It was all snowy everywhere and I had to pull over and record this guitar riff and melody idea. And them we came in and that's how that song started. But each song's different you know like I said Sav had Let's Go sitting around and it was a pop song. And then when we came back you know in January we said no, this needs to be a rock song and we changed the feel of it. So every song's different. Every song and the writing process and the recording and the producing/arranging process is different for each song."

We Belong

"Yes everyone sings a line each or two lines each. Joe did - Joe come up with the idea. He said this song We Belong, he said it'll be great if everyone sung a line each you know. So we literally just did that and again it works perfect. It kinda shows that we actually can really do that yeah . So it's kinda cool."

Let's Go Live/More New Songs

"We've done Let's Go. We've been doing that for the last four or five shows. So you know we've been trying it out. You know we've put it in different places and we've been rehearsing another song - a couple of the other ones. We're not sure what ones we're gonna put in yet. But when we get to Japan, because that'll be the first time the album's out. We'll probably put - probably only one at first because you don't wanna put too many new songs in because a lot of fans they just don't know it. And it kind of wouldn't go down well. So yeah we'll just very slowly introduce a few songs and you know experiment with them in the live show."

At Least Two New Songs On UK Tour

"You have to be very careful with new songs. So we do two/No more than three new songs. But yeah they'll be at least two in there I think. We're changing the set around as well from the American set. You know it'll be different songs."






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