Joe Elliott Comments On New Single/Album

Joe Elliott has commented on Def Leppard's new single 'Nine Lives'. Joe explains in great detail the songs origins and how Tim McGraw came to be involved in it's writing and recording. He also offers an insight into the albums recording in the 'Sparkle Lounge' area during the band's 2006 YEAH! tour. And a twelfth song that might appear on the band's next studio album.

Nine Lives Quotes.

"The story goes, and this is absolutely the truth, that Rick, our drummer, his brother Robert is Tim's tour manager. And we've been hearing stories for many years about how Tim and his wife Faith are big Def Leppard fans. It's a nice thing to hear."

"He was in LA doing some business back in 2006 when we were playing the Hollywood Bowl and he came down to see the show. So we kinda press-ganged him into coming up and doing a song with us so we did 'Pour Some Sugar On Me'. And of course I introduced him and the 19,000 Def Leppard fans out there all went like 'Wow!'. They loved it. There was no kind of half and half like thumbs up, thumbs down, it was total embracing the fact that we went together it was a gelling moment, as it were."

"So after many clinking of Heineken glasses and high fiving afterwards and him saying 'Dude, we should work together in the future in the studio'. And having rolled my eyes and thinking 'Yeah, I've heard that like now thirty thousand times and it's never happened' He actually came through. We were in Nashville a couple of weeks later, he came to the venue and he came backstage. We hung around between soundcheck and the gig and he said 'Look, I've got this idea for a song' And literally from that moment the song was born. He came in with the title. We had some music knocking around you know a few weeks and months later we wrote the lyrics. But that was basically where the song was conceived, was in Nashville. And it just seemed like the genuine thing to do, mutally appreciation society you know."

"And something that we've never really done before so it was another feather in our cap."

"The guy's a huge fan, we are obviously are fans of his. Like I said it's a mutual appreciation society, we get together and it's either gonna work or it's not and I just really think that it did work."

Album Quotes.

"We didn't start recording until that tour was over."

"'Songs From The Sparkle Lounge' is named so because we had a room backstage every night on that 2006 tour where we set up a mini-studio rehearsal situation. a little drum kit, little amps, we could go in there and play. And we were writing songs. Myself Vivian, Phil, Sav all had songs written that we'd written ourselves that we'd bring to the table and say 'Look I've got this song' and you play it to them off a little cassette player with an acoustic guitar that you did in a hotel room or whatever. And we would just play the songs round so we had these songs there. We were doing that constantly through that tour. When we did this song with Tim I can't remember exactly where it was in the process. but it could have been somewhere towards the middle, somewhere towards the end. It was during the songwriting, song creating period of Welcome The The Sparkle Lounge." [possibly an old working title also mentioned by Phil to Classic Rock].

"I think actually we had twelve (songs). We literally had twelve and we had a twelfth song that was nearly finished and we were forcing it from a time point of view. The music was pretty much done, we had a verse, we had kind of an idea how it was gonna be. But we didn't quite get it finished so we jettisoned that idea until next time. Cos it's still a new song to everybody else by the time it's on the next record."

"So one song didn't make the cut but it'll be the first thing that we work on for the next album."

"We'll come back to that song the next time that we decide that we want to record an album. It'll be one of the first ones that we mess around with because musically it's pretty much there. We've got a certain amount of work done from the melody and the lyric point of view but its just not done. So we're gonna save it and sit on it and I guarantee you when the album comes out, the one after this, you won't know which one it was. It won't stick out as being one from the Sparkle Lounge that didn't make it. We will approach it from a different point of view when we do it maybe next year or the year after. Whenever it is."

"Welcome The The Sparkle Lounge is a rock record. I think that the guitars are more prominent, the melodies are still there. But it's just a bit more hard hitting. I think it's got more edge to it. But at the same time it's still exciting, it's still got the melodies. This one is certainly more hard-edged."

Thanks to - Joe Elliott/Markus © WMMR 2008 - listen to full interview via the link below.

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More Info - Def Leppard Radio 2008

Order The UK/US versions of the Album - Here

Release Schedule | Album Press

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