Def Leppard News - JOE ELLIOTT Talks About DEF LEPPARD's UK Hysteria Tour (Video)

Wednesday, 7th February 2018

JOE ELLIOTT Talks About DEF LEPPARD's UK Hysteria Tour (Video)

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Def Leppard singer Joe Elliott was recently interviewed in London and the full video is available.

Joe spoke to the Goal football website.

Joe talked about band fall outs, being a Sheffield United fan, best footballer in the band, playing football on tour, the UK Hysteria tour, the digital/streaming deal, who the best footballer in the world is, would he invest in a football club and whether he would choose being a footballer over being in music.

Joe mentions the reasons for playing Hysteria in the UK this year and the digital deal.

Watch the full 8 minute interview video below in two parts.

The HYSTERIA & More UK/Irish Tour was first announced on 19th January.

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

Goal - Joe Elliott Interview Quotes

How did you come to support Sheffield United?

"Well it's normally passed down from Father to Son isn't it?. But my Dad was actually neutral. He was actually, he was a Unitedite, but back in his day it was OK to go and watch the opposition. And I used to go to school in Sheffield. My junior school was Hunter's Bar school. Hunter's Bar Junior School. And 99 percent of the kids who went there were all Wednesdayites. And I just started to develop this anti everybody personality I guess. So I decided I wanted to be a Unitedite 'cause everybody else is a Wednesdayite."

Who is the best footballer in the band?

"Technically Sav would be the better player. But I scored way more goals than he ever did 'cause I was what they used to call a shit liner. Just give me the ball and I'll bang it in. Hattrick was my nickname all through the 80s. For obvious reasons. But Sav actually had an apprenticeship at Bramall Lane. He was never accepted by Wednesday as a player which broke his heart, but he got picked up by Sheffield United. He used to play for Sheffield Boys and Hallamshire Celtic and it was like, you know, Top goal scorer year in year out."

"And then he got an aprenticeship with United but he hated it. He didn't like the cliquey-ness of the then United squad, Currie all that crowd. He didn't like it at all. They had like the juniors were playing the first team in a practice game. He skinned Eddie Colquhoun who was United's centre-half. You know got the ball, flicked it round him and ran round the other side. Just left him for dead. And about ten minutes later they were kind of stood within the same vicinity of each other and Eddie Colquhoun said to Sav: 'You do that one more time and I'll f**king kill you'. ."

Did you ever play football on tour?

"Just outside Amsterdam we were working in a studio called Wisseloord and we got to know these guys. We'd play football with them and mess around. And one of them says listen, one of our teams. They were playing in I think it was the first round of the Dutch FA Cup. Where the lower league teams hang out. And he said one of our players is down sick and we need somebody to play. Can you pretend to be him?. And don't open your mouth for 90 minutes ' cause they'll know you're not Dutch. So I had to play completely silently, but I scored two goals in a 3 all draw. Somewhere there's Von Hertzen or whatever scoring two goals and it was actually me. They're going going zip it and I wanna scream Yah! or something."

Tell us about the upcoming Hysteria tour

"The way that we did five years ago in Las Vegas when we did the DVD of the show called VIVA! Hysteria, not VIVA! Las Vegas, that was Elvis. So we're basically bringing that to the UK. We promised we would five years ago, but things got in the way between then and now like a new album. We were touring that for two years. We had a lot of other things on the go."

"But now's the time. There's a huge demand for us to play, but with no new record out. We don't just wanna play for the sake of it. So how do we turn it into an event?, Well, now's the time to bring Hysteria to the UK. So the UK and Ireland. 11 shows starting in Dublin on the 1st of December and it finishes, as of right now, in Birmingham on the 17th. But who knows if the ticket sales are, you know, strong we may add on shows. I don't know."

Why did it take so long to stream your music?

"Our deal with the record label just, you know, fizzled out in 2009 and there was no digital deal. So we were doing our own recordings. We were putting them out. We were happy with the way things were going and having once tried to negotiate with the label. A deal which fell through. We just figured it would never get resurrected, but new people come in and they go hang on a minute, we're big fans of what you're doing and we'd like to resurrect this deal. So we listened to what they had to say and over the last year or so we managed to get a deal in place. But it wasn't just like sign this and up it went."

"We wanted everything out. From the first EP to some lost tapes that we'd forgotten about and then they've all gotta be remastered for digital 'cause it's a slightly different, you know, sonically there's just little things you need to do so that they sound better streaming. You can EQ stuff doe CD and vinyl. It's totally different for streaming. So we had tom between us and our sound guy, we literally had to remaster every song."

Who is currently the best (football) player in the world?

"I love Messi. I think Messi's fantastic. More so than Ronaldo actually. There's just something about Ronaldo. He just seems to think his shit don't stink. Honestly right now it's the, whatever his name is at Man City. De Goyner...(Kevin) De Bruyne. Is it a B is it?. De Bruyne, I thought it was a G."

Would you ever invest in a football club?

"Well they asked me back in the 80s to like jump on board and I went you've gotta be kidding me. All you do is throw three hundred grand at it and then two weeks later they want three hundred grand again. You know it's like I'm a fan I'm not an idiot. That's for like rich trillionaires from other parts of the world to come in. This guy came in about three years ago and wiped our debt off. Thank you 'cause all that would have been is exactly the same debt had I got involved, but I would be like not here now. I would be skint. Working in Starbucks or something ."

Would you choose being a footballer over musician?

"No, absolutely not because I'm 58 years old and I'm about to head out on a sold out tour for the next seven months. Well not the next seven months but starting in May all the way through to Christmas. Not many 58 year old footballers out there."