Monday, 8th July 2019
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DEF LEPPARD On Playing HYSTERIA In Full At DOWNLOAD FESTIVAL

Def Leppard 2019. Screenshot

Def Leppard members Joe Elliott and Rick Savage were interviewed by Sky Arts TV in June at the Download Festival.

Sky Arts broadcast two lengthy highlights shows from the festival on Saturday 6th and Sunday 7th July.

Def Leppard were in fact featured in both shows with six songs broadcast in full.

All of the band spoke to presenter Kylie Olsson backstage before they started their headline set with the full 'Hysteria' album.

The Saturday night show started with 'Animal', Joe and Sav talking followed by 'Pour Some Sugar On Me' and then later the rest of the band followed by 'Armageddon It'.

The Sunday show ended with 'Let It Go', Joe and Sav talking plus 'Rock Of Ages' (complete with Joe's intro for Rick) and then 'Photograph'.

Last In Line were also featured in show #2 playing 'Martyr' and Vivian interviewed by Kylie after he left the stage.

Lep tour mates for the upcoming Canadian tour Tesla were also shown playing their hit 'Signs' plus a short interview with Frank Hannon and Troy Luccketta.

The Download Festival performance took place on Friday 14th June before over 80,000 fans at Donington Park in Derby, England.

The third time the band have headlined this event.

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


Def Leppard 2019. Screenshot

Download Festival 2019 Highlights - SKY Arts TV

  • Saturday, 6th July 2019 - SKY Arts @ 9-11:45pm
  • 01 - Animal
  • 02 - Joe Elliott/Rick Savage Interview 1
  • 03 - Pour Some Sugar On Me
  • 04 - Phil Collen/Rick Allen/Vivian Campbell Interview
  • 05 - Armageddon It

  • Sunday, 7th July 2019 - SKY Arts @ 9-11:45pm
  • 01 - Let It Go
  • 02 - Joe Elliott/Rick Savage Interview 2
  • 03 - Joe Elliott's Rick Allen/ROA Introduction
  • 04 - Rock Of Ages
  • 05 - Photograph

Download Festival/Sky Arts - Rick Savage/Joe Elliott Interview Quotes

Kylie - "Have you got a favourite incarnation of Def Leppard because your sound has changed over each album. Have you got a favourite period?."

Sav - "It's all relative to where you are in time, that's the thing. I mean if you look back now I honestly believe that Pyromania was a sort of really special album because I still think it was heavy enough from a guitar point of view. And yet all of a sudden we had all these vocals and melodies and it was just. It was a metal album that was very very melodic. And the way that it sounded and the production and just the tracking and the drum sound was ground breaking."

Joe - "You've just come up with a new phrase Metolic. A melodic metal album Metolic."

Kylie - "I love it, You're so quick. You should be a song writer."

Joe - "I think singling out any one era is kind of disrespectful to the other eras. I mean I love where we are right now. I love where we're at. I loved where we were when we had Pete and Steve in the band and playing the Fforde Grene club in Leeds in front of 300 people. Or five men and a dog in a field in Sheffield. Our second ever gig, because it's all part of the journey."

Def Leppard 2019. Screenshot

Download Festival/Sky Arts - Rick Savage/Joe Elliott Interview Quotes

Kylie - "Friday night headliners. Hello."

Sav - "It's good to be here."

Joe - "It really is."

Kylie - "So it was the 30th anniversary of Hysteria 2017. You've been touring that album and tonight you are playing it in full."

Sav - "Yeah from start to finish from Women to Love And Affection. And a little bit extra afterwards as well."

Joe - "That's we called it "And More..."."

Sav - "I personally found it a different sort of thing to our normal set. It's more theatrical. Just because everybody knows what the next song is going to be. It does become more of a performance than just a rock show."

Joe - "I think there's more pressure on us because people know the record so well that when they come to see it once. It's like well you better be good!. You know there's no room for error. When you're doing a regular gig you can fall off stage and miss a chord and all this kind of stuff and it's just part of the vibe. But with this, as Sav says, it's a performance and you've kind of gotta get as much of it right as you possibly can. And we though we need to pay full respect to the album and not mess with it. So it's like, it's the boss. It is the boss, we are it's servant."

Kylie - "You played here in 1986 at the Monsters Of Rock. It was kind of the first big gig you'd done since Rick had had his accident. I mean what are your memories of that particular show?."

Sav - "It's just, the biggest memory is just Rick standing up.in front of his kit. Or behind his kit after Joe had just, you know, kind of introduced him in a low key way. We weren't trying to make a deal out of it. But something had to be said because, you know, things had changed. And it was just seeing the sea of people, you know, showing their respects and the reaction it had on Rick was just. It was quite profound. I think it was just great. It was like we're back!"


Download Festival/Sky Arts - Phil Collen/Rick Allen/Vivian Campbell Interview Quotes

Kylie - "Friday night headliners are in the house it's Def Leppard. Hi how's it all going are you excited about tonight 'cause you're performing Hysteria in full with a few other little tracks in there at the end."

Phil - "We are I mean we've never done that at a festival. We've never played the album all the way through. We done the Vegas residency in 2013. Then we toured it last year. We had a little warm up with it in Denmark. You know it's difficult these songs are not. The other songs that we don't always do are really hard to sing and play at the same time."

Kylie - "So you keep playing and you keep doing all these shows and you just keep getting better and you've had an incredible couple of years. I mean why do you think all of a sudden you've gone...you are one of the biggest bands in the world again."

Phil - "We keep getting better. The playing gets better. The singing, everything. You know we just keep pushing that thing. And you wanna represent that, You know you wow we sound better than we did last year. So it's all of the above and it's so much fun. It's like at 61 we get to do this dream still, you know, it's like when anyone goes oh I'm so tired. You go really?, it's awesome. How can you get tired of that?."


Download Festival/Sky Arts - Pre-Show Interview Quotes

Kylie - "Hello."

Phil - "Hi. You alright?."

Kylie - "Are you not cold?."

Phil - "I'm freezing! that's why I'm wearing a coat."

Kylie - "Yeah that's a lot of clothing for you isn't it?."

Phil - "It's really a lot yeah."

Kylie - "Oh my god look at that!. Doesn't that make you nervous?."

Phil - "No."

Kylie - "So are you ready?."

Phil - "I'm totally ready yeah."

Joe - "Hi."

Kylie - "I'm nervous!."

Joe - "Why?."

Kylie - "I don't know."

Joe - "There's only 85,000 people out there!."

Kylie - "What's the first thing you're gonna say when you go out there?."

Joe - "Er..."In the Beginning", because I don't say anything I just start singing."


Download Festival/Sky Arts - Vivian Campbell/Last In Line Interview Quotes

Kylie - "How are you doing?. How was that fresh off the stage?."

Vivian - "It was great, you know, I mean it's a festival show. It's not without incident, but that's what keeps it interesting. ."

Kylie - "So you have this task of opening Download Festival on Friday and then later you're gonna be closing Friday night. How does that differ for you?."

Vivian - "Oh they're two very different bands as you can imagine. I don't sing in Last In Line. I do a lot of singing in Def Leppard. I'm the only melodic instrument in Last In Line so there's a lot of a lot of heavy lifting on the guitar end. Which is good. I enjoy it you know. Different muscle for me."

Kylie - "You like the juxtaposition of the two?."

Vivian - "I do absolutely. I love it yeah. It's great. I'm very happy and very fortunate to be able to do this you know."

Kylie - "When did your album come out. A couple of months ago?."

Vivian - "Yeah our second album came out. It's just called II. It came out in February. Our first album Heavy Crown came out in 2016. So we played three songs off the new album and two from the Heavy Crown album. And I think they go over well. You never really know. I can't hear the audience at a festival. They're just, they're out there. You see them, you don't hear them you know."

Kylie - "But you got a big crowd there I mean everyone's been talking about the rain and everything. But the sun came out for you."

Vivian - "Yeah the sun came out for me 'cause I'm Irish. So, you know, I had a word with someone. I called and held up the rain. Hopefully it will hold off all day."

Kylie - "Brilliant. Well listen thank you so much and I guess we'll see you a bit later."

Vivian - "Indeed yeah I'll be around. See you then. Cheers."



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