Def Leppard News - JOE ELLIOTT On DEF LEPPARD's RECORD STORE DAY 2018/Vinyl Box Set Releases

Wednesday, 31st January 2018

JOE ELLIOTT On DEF LEPPARD's RECORD STORE DAY 2018/Vinyl Box Set Releases

By Jamie Stangroom

Def Leppard singer Joe Elliott was recently interviewed and mentioned some new upcoming releases by the band.

Joe spoke to Jamie Stangroom on BBC Radio 5 Live's Up All Night show presented by Dotun Adebayo.

Joe talked about the streaming/digital deal, remastering for digital, vinyl, streaming cities, Record Store Day 2018, record sales, classic artists/new artists, lack of press respect, UK Hysteria tour/playing the full album, original In The Round tour, the second London show and Hysteria album costs.

Joe says the band will take part in Record Store Day 2018 in April and reissue all of their albums as part of vinyl box sets.

They first took part in 2016 with the double vinyl picture disc version of the self-titled 'Def Leppard' album. Followed last year by the reissue of 'The Def Leppard E.P.' to start their reissue series.

A vinyl box set is expected to be released to some point this year with a rare 1980 live album also being prepared.

Listen to the full 12 minute interview via the bbc.co.uk link.

Joe's part starts at 3hrs 43mins and lasts until 3hrs 58 mins into the four hour show.

The interview was conducted in London on 26th January. Joe previously appeared on the same show in 2014 with the same interviewer.

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

Up All Night/BBC Radio 5 Live - Joe Elliott Interview Quotes

Digital Streaming Deal/Welcome to the digital age

"Well, the great thing about that is it's makes more of an impact. I don't think people would be talking about it if we'd have just drifted in/ Plus the fact that, you know, when our deal with Universal Records, as it's now known, came to an end. The deal just ran out in 2009. We didn't have any digital dealings. There was no one part of the contract that we signed with Polygram Records in 1979. So we were at a loose end."

"It was also, was it a fad? was it not a fad? Are we hurting if we don't do this? Why would we do it when nobody gets paid. All this kind of stuff was going through our heads. We tried to do a deal, it fell through. We let it go because we, as I said, we weren't hurting for anything. We were releasing albums on our own label. We were on tour, we were working really hard and we weren't really missing it, but then of course it becomes part of the industry you start to realise it all levels off."

"And new regime came in at what is now Universal. Who really wanted to put the deal back on the table. The previous crowd didn't. We let the grown ups deal with all that paperwork stuff and meanwhile we were, knowing full well we wanted the entire catalogue. We had to get little bits of it back from other places. We wanted it all under the one umbrella."

Remastering Audio For Digital

"So then we had 200 songs to remaster, because you can't just take the vinyl and say: 'Here, put that up online'. There's a little bit more to that because when you're streaming it has to have certain frequencies lined out and maybe enhanced. That are different to vinyl, different to CD. So we just wanted to remaster them for 2018 basically. So we kinda started doing it towards the end of the summer. We finished touring June 25th. And other than a three week run in South America, we've had pretty much all this time in the studio to get this down. So while nobody saw us doing it, we were actually working quite hard on this. It's not just a case of like we just said yes and they magically appeared. They had to be kind of taken out the box and dusted off and you know polished up a little bit before we put them up."

Vinyl/Have you also recently embraced other technology, like the Microwave maybe?

"No, vinyl!. Re embraced vinyl. My wife doesn't like me using the microwave. She thinks it, you know, it's dangerous to your health."

So what the listeners don't know is we organised this interview via smoke signals. We're traditional men aren't we?

"Of course we did. I saw the smoke coming over the hill and here I am."

Streaming Revenue/Royalties

"You work on advisement. I mean, you know, Initially people would say things to me based on one answer I gave to an interview once when somebody said to me. I don't know whether you've heard but (Lady) Gaga's song blah blah blah was streamed 127 million times and she got a cheque for 127 dollars. What do you think about that?. And I go well, I think it sucks. I think it's terrible. I think it's not fair. That's like expecting somebody to go to work for 40 hours and you give them like 4p. You can't unscramble an egg. That's forever in print you know what I mean. We learn more as we go along, but it just doesn't go out into the public domain that we did. And then all of a sudden we're here as though we're playing catch up."

"But it's not really that. It's like all last six or seven years we've been very aware of what the streaming situation is and people taking their music off. People putting their music back on. People forgiving Spotify. People getting involved with Deezer. Whatever it is we just wanted to get the right deal for the band. That's all we wanted you know. And once the grown ups and lawyers had done all their stuff and dotted the I's and crossed the T's. And we were all happy with the way that we were gonna drive this on into the future, we were more than happy to get involved. It's not like we didn't wanna do it. We just didn't wanna do it wrong."

Biggest Streaming Cities For Def Leppard/The right deal?

"That's exactly right. It's easy to just say well, you know, it's London, New York, LA. When you go, somebody said to me the other day. Check it out, there they are. Pull up the App. It's got all the facts and figures about what's going on with our streaming in the first 48 hours of it being up there. And the three biggest cities that stream Def Leppard the most is Mexico City, Sao Paulo and Santiago. Coincidentally three cities that we played 8, 9 weeks ago. Three cities where people live and all they have is a phone. They don't have a laptop, they don't have an iPad. They don't have CD player. They just do everything on the phone."

"So it's like yeah we've known that. I mean I didn't know exactly how many and what genre and sex they were and all this kind of stuff. What age groups but now we do because you can pull this information up every five seconds and they can almost tell you the name of the people that are streaming it you know. But we just wanted the right deal. that was the important thing. It's all about the band. It's about us, this is our career. We don't wanna screw it up on something that is so important. Nine years ago we didn't know how important it was gonna be, we were waiting and seeing. Like I said we weren't hurting for anything so we just let it ride."

Record Store Day Vinyl

"Five or six years ago we weren't sure if the re-embracement of vinyl was a fad. It's like well they're gonna do this Record Store Day and blah blah blah. And we're gonna put the records out on vinyl. Now some people were like going what's the point?. And then there was others like going actually that's really cool because such and such an album of ours never came out on vinyl."

"So I can't wait to see this 12 inch square. My Down 'n' Outz stuff just came out on vinyl. I was like this is amazing!. We're doing specific special things for Record Store Day on vinyl. We did it last year. We're doing it this year. So again that's something we were 'Is this a fad or is this really happening'. So of course now the box set that came out, all the back catalogue is coming out. Just gone digital but it's also coming out again in box sets on vinyl because people want it in vinyl you know. So yeah we're embracing everything from smoke signals all the way down to vinyl and downloads."

UK Hysteria Tour/Full Album/In Sequence?

"Yeah. No we're gonna do it in the running order. That's how we did it when we played in Vegas in 2013. I don't know many people who've gone out of sequence. Bowie went out of sequence when he did Low. In 2002 he did the entire Low album but he didn't do it in the same order. Pink Floyd did it in the same order. U2 did it in the same order. We did it in the same order five years ago. So we'll keep it as it is."

New Wembley Show

"Actually you're wrong. Yeah because we've just added a Wembley on the end. The O2 sold out this morning. So they've added a second London show on the 18th. We just finish a week before Christmas. So I get out of having to put the tree up. The wife will have to do that I'm afraid you know."