Def Leppard News - JOE ELLIOTT Recalls Writing DEF LEPPARD's POUR SOME SUGAR ON ME

Tuesday, 27th November 2018

JOE ELLIOTT Recalls Writing DEF LEPPARD's POUR SOME SUGAR ON ME

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Def Leppard singer Joe Elliott has commented on the writing of PSSOM in the first of a new series of video clips posted to YouTube.

In a new series of promo videos to promote The Story So Far...The Best Of Def Leppard greatest hits release.

Joe talked about how the song was written and recorded as the final song for the Hysteria album in 1986/87.

View the full video via the playlist link below along with the so far released tracks from the album.

These include 'We All Need Christmas', 'Personal Jesus (Remix)' and the 'Rock On (Radio Edit)'.

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

Def Leppard 1987.

Joe Elliott Interview Quotes

Pour Some Sugar On Me

"Pour Some Sugar On Me. Arguably our most iconic song. Possibly our most well known song. Worldwide at least."

Writing The Song

"We collectively were scattered. We were in Holland as a unit recording. But there was only me there and Mutt Lange. Who was engineering and producing the record. Phil and Steve I think had gone to Paris. Rick had gone to Amsterdam. Sav had gone to England. And I was working on the vocal for Armageddon It and we took a break. And Mutt went off to get a coffee or whatever producers do. And I picked up this acoustic guitar sat in the corner of the room and just started playing this riff, chorus thing. Three chord turn around thing. And singing the chorus I guess."

"And Mutt came back in and he said what is that?. And I fully to this day believe that he thought at the time I was just playing some Stones of Kinks. And I said it's just this idea that I've had knocking around. We were 11 songs deep into this record and we'd takne the best part of two years to record it. So I didn't dare suggest it to anybody. But he picked up on it and went no, he says that's the best hook I've heard for years. Many a year in fact. We should do this."

"So he literally took the multi track off the machine. Put a brand new piece of two inch tape on and said right play hit again. You programme the drum machine and then put like some kind of synthesizer bass thing on it. And then I showed him the chords and then he played it. And then we just started piecing this thing together and we put as much of it together as we could on our own so that when the rest of the guys came back in. I think we were working through the weekend. When they came back in on a Monday or whatever it was. We were gonna say guess what?."

"And that's exactly what we did. Guys we've kind of got a new song. And eyes rolled a little bit from certain members of the band. But when we played it within a minute or so of this demo running past everyone was like oh yeah we're in."

"So technically it was the last thing that we wrote. It was the quickest thing that we recorded. And arguably the most important song on that particular album Hysteria. Maybe even our entire career."

Listen to and view all the related videos for the album on this YouTube playlist.

Def Leppard - The Story So Far...The Best Of Album Section
Def Leppard - Interviews 2018
Previous News - 23rd November 2018
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