Monday, 1st February 2016
Screenshot by dltourhistory
Def Leppard singer Joe Elliott was recently interviewed by Joe Benson for Off The Record and mentioned the new album.
Joe talked about recording the new album in three sections, the tracklisting, the songs - Man Enough/Let's Go, Dangerous/Battle Of My Own, famous fans/influences, Jimmy Page, David Bowie, the 2016 tour, being away from home and playing with Styx.
The interview was conducted before the cruise took place.
As with previous appearances on this show a number of studio songs were played during the 50 minute special.
Visit the Album News section. For more news on new music (based on band member quotes) dating back to January 2011.
Off The Record - Joe Elliott Interview Quotes
Recording The New Album
"Yeah we did. We took breaks from it. Instead of labouring over it, as we've done in the past with albums. Which we've had many successful records that we've laboured over like Pyromania and Hysteria. And there's been other albums that we've laboured over that weren't so successful. So it's not a tried and trusted formula to do that."
Album Tracklisting
"The running order was extremely important to us. So that's why with this album you get like the first two songs are what we might call classic Leppard sound. And then after that it does kind of go off on tangents of us expanding ourselves which is something that's very necessary as artists. But it's still attached to where we came from."
Man Enough
"So you listen to a song like Man Enough it's got its roots in our hero worship of a band like Queen. You listen to Forever Young it's very Bowie-ish from the Aladdin Sane period. When Phil came in with the bass line for Man Enough. He said I've got this thing and it sounds a bit like Queen. We might've shied away from that ten years ago. But this time we were like well come on let's hear it then. And we're like oh yeah we'll have some of that. And of course we'd be the first to put our hands in the air and say it's got a kind of a similar feel to Another One Bites the Dust but in essence that song itself is related to Good Times by Chic. So everything is borrowed from somewhere else anyway and we don't have a problem saying this song sounds a bit like such and such because that's how we actually - before they had titles, we would name them silly you know. We would give them titles that would enable us to remember which tune they were."
Let's Go
"Actually I think Let's Go came somewhere in the middle to be quite honest. But it was probably percolating in Sav's head for five years but it's not like he's gonna walk into the dressing room everyday going. I've been thinking about that song a bit more. We'd just be going what song? you know. There's no point in any of of us bringing anything to the table until it's got at least a minute's worth of listening on it. You can't just play ten seconds of something and say I've got this idea for a song that's just not an idea. You've gotta take it further. So he was obviously working on that on his own and - until he presented it to the five of us to listen to. Backing track wise it really didn't change too much. We may of added a section or cut a section in half. But he had an idea for the chorus, for the vocals and that grew and grew and grew but he never really had any verse lyrics for it or melodies and I helped him out with that once we'd got the track sorted."
- Interview Source - unclejoe.com
- Def Leppard - Off The Record 2016 Show Page
- Def Leppard - Radio 2016
- Def Leppard - Def Leppard Album Section
- Previous News - 31st January 2016