DEF LEPPARD To Release HYSTERIA 40th Anniversary Box Set In 2027

Friday, 2nd July 2021

By dltourhistory

Def Leppard singer Joe Elliott has been interviewed and talked about plans for the 40th anniversary Hysteria box set in 2027.

Joe spoke to the Jeremy White podcast.

Joe talked about the Collection Volume Three box set, YEAH! album, covers/David Bowie, pop music, Mutt Lange, song writing, NWOBHM, Bryan Adams, X/Ten album, Perfect Girl/Gravity, Collection Volume 4 Box Set, record label issues, Hysteria 40th anniversary plans, backing vocals, studio recording, music videos.

Hysteria 40th Anniversary Box Set

Joe announced plans for a comprehensive 40th anniversary box set for the Hysteria album to be released in 2027.

It will include previously unreleased tracks, instrumentals and different versions of songs plus perhaps some as yet undiscovered extras.

View the full video interview below.

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

Def Leppard 1987.

The Jeremy White Podcast - Joe Elliott June 2021 Interview Quotes - (Transcribed By dltourhistory)

Hysteria 40th Anniversary Box Set Plans

"Yeah there's always a possibility. Don't forget there will be a 40th anniversary re-release of Hysteria."

"We did put our foot down and say we're not doing any more 35th or 27th anniversary versions."

"Yeah we're saving it for - when the old regime for example were in charge they put the double deluxe version of Hysteria out on the 19th anniversary."

"And I mean I'm sorry but we just all went can't you just wait one year. It's like those were the things that were like pissing us off as a band. it's all gone away now."

"We don't want anything out till the 40th."

"There's no value in doing it. It's not fair on the fans until we really go through the archives and find stuff like that you know."

No Jim Steinman Tapes included

"I will say this out loud. There are no. Nothing survived from the Jim Steinman sessions."

"They'll never see the light of day 'cause there isn't anything."

"It all got wiped a bit at a time as we re-recorded the record."

"But there are rough mixes. There's maybe instrumental versions of certain things."

Lost Tapes

"The sad thing about Hysteria is most of the tapes got lost."

"So you can't even do a remix 'cause it was all digital."

"So a lot of the stuff was never even on tape. It was just on hard drives and run concurrently with tape."

"Then the things they get shoved into a corner, eaten by spiders."

"And then when you plug them in they don't work."

"Or you can't plug them in 'cause the machine you plug them into doesn't exists any more."

"You know 'cause technology was in its very infancy at the time. Now days it's easy.",/p>

"All our old stuff like analogue tapes we've had them transferred into Pro Tools. We can do everything with them."

"But there's a mid period where we're kind of scuppered. But there's definitely stuff there."

"So yeah I mean we may save most of the Hysteria stuff for a 40th anniversary box set."

"But you know it's like that non Bond film that Never Say Never Again you know ."

"We don't say absolutely not because we get talked into things and we go actually I don't know what we were thinking when we said we wouldn't do it 'cause we really should."

"Things become more valuable the older they get. I think a lot of bands might look at a four year old song and going god I don't want that coming out."

"But when it's 40 years old yu go there's some kind of nostalgia. You go alright this is pretty cool."

"Take the last Who album there's a demo that Pete Townshend did in 1965 I think it is called Got Nothing To Prove Any more. But he put a brand new string arrangement on it."

"So it's like a 2019 string arrangement on a 1965 demo and it's brilliant."

"It's way more valuable than say a song from 2008. That might become valuable in 20 years time."

Def Leppard 1987.

Love Bites Unused Mutt Vocals

"Walker Brothers. That was our Walker Brothers moment. We hated it."

"No we said no we're not doing that. Sometimes we'd go for a coffee and you'd come back and Mutt would say I've done this thing see what you think."

"And we're like going Ugh! what are you doing you know. No!."

"Yeah I think every record. Look at The Beatles stuff. When you go through The Anthology they start finding stuff and putting versions out where they do something different. Like there's a lost verse for My Guitar Gently Weeps and all that kind of stuff."

"They're decisions that you make on the fly. They either come back to haunt you or you're glad to get rid of them."

"And again maybe in six years time we'll find that quite amusing and say fine let's let it go out you know."

"But I still get the shudders when I think about it you know. We're all about the vocals but that was just one vocal too far."

How many overdubs would you do with Mutt for backing vocals?

"Thousands!. Well that's how it seemed."

"This is how we started out doing it. We did a little bit on High 'n' Dry but on Pyromania we wanted to take it up a notch."

"So that people would go holy crap. the same way that they did when they heard Bohemian Rhapsody or something you know."

"We had some great yard sticks to judge ourselves against like Boston's first album or any Queen album from Sheer Heart Attack onwards up to at least The Works."

"And they used to multi-track everything. I remember talking to Brian and he said yeah we all sang the same apart. We didn't sing like I'll do the middle one, Roger does the high and Freddie does the low."

"We all sang the high. And then we all sang the middle and then we all sang the low. And that's kind of what we did."

"But we would get a 2 track mix of the song and put it onto a fresh piece of 24 track tape which would leave us 22 empty tracks."

"And we would sing the chorus on 20 of those tracks and bounce it down onto one of the two remaining blank ones. And then wipe those 20 and do them all again and bounce those onto the final empty track so we had it in stereo. Different performances."

"And so if there was say five of us round the mic times 20. That's a hundred voices. And then do the math. It's hundreds and hundreds of voices."

"But it gave us a unique sound and the weird thing is we never had a problem pulling it off live because Phil's voice when he joined the band sounds like 20 people singing anyway."

"He's got that Rod Stewart, Bonnie Tyler rip and it sounds like. You put a bit of a harmonizer on it. It sounds like a choir."

"So Sav's voice fits in beautifully. Now that Vivian is in the band he takes a lot of the Mudd stuff. He's got an insanely high full voice. And I fall somewhere in the middle."

"I've got a falsetto-y gruff voice like Brian Johnson. Vivian's is full voice. I mean he could've been in the Isley Brothers if he wanted to You know he's got that tone."

"But between the four of us we'll normally sacrifice one harmony in a three part so that two of us can do a two-part doubled. You know two of us singing one and two uf us singing the other. And you kind of hear the third one in your head anyway."

"So you know we don't try and replicate it the way that say Supertramp might do where you can't tell the difference between the album and the live. But with us it's a representation. The way Queen were."

"We make records and then we play live. I mean can you imagine when Queen did Bohemian Rhapsody did they really honestly o holy crap how are we ever gonna do this live. I don't think they did. I think they said we're making a piece of art. This is our one chance to get it exactly how we hear it in our heads."

"And that's how we approached all our records. So if there's things that are physically impossible to do live but it makes the song sound better we do it."