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Interview :: Times-Union 17th June 2005. This isn't a comeback - it's a resurgence :: Def Leppard will tell you that all the action in this, their 25th year, is no comeback. Music may have pushed them aside for a while, but they never left. "Once you're past 10 years or so, there's a great danger of becoming a parody of yourselves. You have to re-invent, keep it fresh, whether you're Aerosmith or the Eagles or the Stones," said lead singer Joe Elliott. "After you've been around a while, you have to turn yourself into an event." Def Leppard was the event in the '80s, an immeasurable fist-pumping powerhouse that helped define pop-metal with tracks such as Photograph, Love Bites and Pour Some Sugar On Me. And the British band is enjoying a Stateside resurgence in their anniversary year, touring minor-league ballparks with Bryan Adams and headlining occasional gigs like the one at the Veterans Memorial Arena tonight. A new two-disc hits compilation, Rock of Ages, was a surprising sales success. And they're polishing up the covers record Yeah! for a September release, a project grounded in tracks by U.K. glam gods David Bowie, T. Rex and Queen (as well as Tom Petty, the Kinks and the Police). That's a good bit of hysteria for a band that spent its share of time out of the spotlight, despite its longevity. Not that they'd have predicted either. "I don't think anybody ever did," admitted Elliott. "I remember an interview with Mick Jagger in the '60s when they asked how long he could play and he said, 'I don't know, 18 months?' " The 46-year-old Elliott talks like a guy who's not quite arrogant, but who knows he's sold 65 million records worldwide, puts his legacy in the context of the greats and still plays arenas for a living. "You're just doing it for the moment. Maybe when we got to Adrenalize in '92, we started to realize we've been doing this for 15 years, and we suddenly had a career," he said. That career has seen its share of tragedy. Guitarist Steve Clark died from an overdose of alcohol and prescription drugs in 1991, and drummer Rick Allen lost his left arm in a New Year's Eve car wreck in 1984, though thanks to a specialized electronic kit, he's continued to play. But it's also seen earth-shaking successes. Pyromania, from 1983, and 1987's Hysteria were both wild smashes that dovetailed with the video age, vaulting the guys into MTV superstardom. Still, when grunge, hip-hop and candy pop claimed rock's throne in the '90s, Def Leppard found themselves well south of the music forefront. But unlike many contemporaries, they persevered, smartly sticking to smaller venues and releasing a hits disc, Vault, which went triple-platinum in the United States. "We never had a split in that respect," Elliott said. "We've had lineup changes and all that, but our only breaks were from the public." One of those breaks almost came last year as the band wrapped up an 18-month tour. But Elliott said that the band had built up so much road steam that it seemed a shame to scuttle that momentum. "So we said, why don't we go into the studio and bang some [covers] down? I'd been wanting to do something like that since [Bowie's] Pinups," he said. Elliott said the band drew up a list of 50 or 60 songs that they voted down to about 20, most from the early-'70s British glam scene that helped birth them. "We wanted to show our true roots, which aren't Black Sabbath, Zeppelin and Deep Purple, as much as we love them, but Mott the Hoople, Queen, that kind of great little three-minute vignette stuff." But once this tour's over, Elliott says that they'll get back to new music. "Everybody in the band has to come up with two songs every couple of years, not the hardest thing in the world to do," Elliott said. "The hard thing is to make sure they're good." Jeff Vrabel © Jacksonville Times-Union 2005 :: (Link Expired).

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