Interview :: April 2003 :: [ Link Back ]
Last year, '80s rock giants Def Leppard pulled off a musical miracle when - in a world dominated by Avril Lavignes, Nellys, and Godsmacks - their new album, X, debuted at No. 11 on the Billboard album charts. For over a decade, it has been ultimately uncool to admit you like Def Leppard. First of all, they (along with the rest of the metal flock) got booted off the cool train with the emergence of Nirvana in the early 1990s. The situation only worsened when the band released Slang (1996), an embarrassing attempt to modernize their sound in order to compete with the grunge movement.
But now, in the age of nu-metal and bling-bling, Def Leppard is suddenly relevant again. It's a strange phenomenon, especially considering that X has neither down-tuned guitars nor a guest appearance by Ashanti.
Instead, with the new album, the band completes the 180-degree turn they started with 1999's Euphoria - a full retreat (albeit a brave one) to the monstrous dual-guitar hooks and fist-pumping arena-rock anthems that made them arguably the biggest band in the world during the late 1980s.
"Yeah, we actually consciously set about to try and write an album that had the same values that Hysteria had, which became a pop album by virtue of the fact that it had hits," explains Def Leppard lead singer Joe Elliott during a recent Fly Magazine interview. "This time around, we actually did a similar thing, where we actually sat down and tried to write songs that we considered would be potential three-minute singles."
"We've always been that way. You listen back to even the first album, as raw and as basic as it was, it had lots of hooks and melodies and harmonies and stuff," he continues. "We were always leaning that way, kind of a mixture of AC/DC power and Queen's virtuoso or songwriting ability."
Regardless of the way the band kowtowed to grunge in the '90s, Elliott claims that Def Leppard wasn't tempted to compete with the nu-metal bands sitting on top of today's rock charts. "Oh God, no. I think if we had done something like Linkin Park, we'd have been laughed off the planet. Certain things are generational, and you can't tamper with them," Elliott reasons.
So the popular question remains: Why is it suddenly cool again to like Def Leppard?
"It's a combination of a lot of things. I think it's like a pendulum or a wheel. It swings one way, it swings back. ... I think if we had made an album like X in 1996, I think we'd have been slaughtered. I mean, we were likened to the antichrist anyway, so it made no difference," Elliott laughs. "[But] right about the end of the '90s, melody wasn't such a bad word anymore. I think bands like Sugar Ray started bringing it back, and even Sum 41 and bands like that bring kind of a humor to it. That's what we've always had, is a humor and a melody to our stuff. ... Loads of bands have resurgences because of other bands coming along and name-checking them and saying, you know, 'They're actually quite cool.' And then people start going, 'You know what? Actually, they are, but I didn't want to say anything for the last couple of years.'"
Although Def Leppard is back in mainstream consciousness with new singles like "Now" and "Four Letter Word," they have yet to score that major hit (i.e. Bon Jovi's "It's My Life") that gets them back on the magazine covers and invited to all the red-carpet events. "There's a lot of people who've got a healthy respect for us, but still, one song could bring all that kind of focus back in, and people go, 'Oh shit, I forgot about that!'" Elliott exclaims. The new album still has a few potential singles up its sleeve, any of which could spark the hysteria (no pun intended) that Def Leppard would love to rekindle.
"Lightning can strike twice," Elliott assures. "I'm not saying I'm expecting it to happen, I'm not saying I'm not expecting it to happen. You just don't know. It's all down to timing. It's down to one guy maybe picking it up and then it spreading nationwide because of one DJ or the time of year - the weather gets better, and a certain song sounds better because the sun's coming out. All those kinds of ingredients have got to be taken into consideration. You just don't know, but it is something that we're very aware of, and the fact that we're coming back out on tour starting in two weeks' time is one of the coincidences in the design."
Def Leppard's story is the stuff of rock and roll. They've already sold over 45 million albums and weathered countless musical trends. They've endured personal tragedy (drummer Rick Allen lost his arm in a 1985 auto accident; guitarist Steve Clark died of a drug and alcohol overdose in 1991). And they've still got the ambition to be the kings of the rock and roll mountain. No wonder VH-1 keeps making movies about them.
"If you don't have an ambition, there's not really much point in doing it anymore," Elliott says frankly. "We've been around for 23 years recording, so a lot of what we may achieve will be reachievement. Because we've had a No. 1 loads of times, we've had sold-out tours. People are saying, 'You've played Madison Square Garden. What's next?' You go, 'Two nights at Madison Square Garden!' That would be the ultimate. You can always climb a bigger mountain. "We've never really kind of focused in on how many records we've sold. We're so much more concerned about how many we're going to sell. It's almost like, we're always looking forward rather than looking behind us to see what we've done," he continues. "I think if you keep looking behind at what you have done, I think eventually you'll just start moving into some kind of nostalgia thing, and that's the one thing that we're scared stiff of."
Elliott has no illusions about Def Leppard's place in the rock continuum. He speaks plainly of the huge impact the band has had on popular music, yet realizes that succeeding in the current market will be an uphill battle. But, from the perspective of a true veteran, he remains optimistic that some of Def Leppard's greatest moments are still to come.
"We are better now than we were on the Hysteria tour, better than we were on the Euphoria tour. I think we've become comfortable in the skin that we're in," he says. "We're very focused, we're getting along very well with each other. There's no fighting. We travel together, we don't stay in separate hotels. We genuinely are a real rock and roll group. We take it on the road, we celebrate what we do, and people I think get off on that. They feel it, they see it, they sense it that this is not fake.
"Rock and roll, the bad boy thing, doesn't have to be throwing teles out the window," he says of the band's new approach. "It's all about music. Everything's about the music. Give me a great song any day."
Jeff Royer © Flymagazine 2003.
