WED 5th Jan 2005: Indie 103.1 Studios, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
Interview Transcript :: continued...
(back from break) [Steve: Host] (8:40pm) "...with my guests Def Leppard. And we're gonna attempt to do a verson of T. Rex's 'Get It On' is that correct?":
[Phil] "We are Indeed."
[Joe] "Now this is a song we've played live on acoustics ah, 10 years ago. This should be a bit of a laugh. We did it in, I saw...we were in Japan on our last tour and we were in the Hard Rock Cafe and
this thing came on the TV it was us it was live from Thailand or somewhere (Viv chips in "Singapore") Singapore. We didn't even realise we'd done it we'd actually forgotten so it was like watching other people. Pretty weird and we did 'Get It On' then and it was alright."
[Viv] "Are we in tune?."
[Joe] "I don't know. Are we?."
[Phil] "Not really."
[Joe] "We might have to tune up."
[Steve] "D'you want me to tune 'em up for ya?."
[Joe] "If you could play a song..Yeah that would be nice."
[Steve] "The one I got was in tune when I bought it. "
[Joe] "Who was it..who's mother that thought that the tuning heads should be in a straight line?."
[Phil] "A mate of mine actually."
[Steve] "That's funny, That is funny. Cause I've thought that before as well."
[Joe] "You could play another song off the records. Play another song and then we'll do it."
[Steve] "Yeah. Let's play another song we got one cued up. How about a bit of Bowie 'Watch That Man' take it away me old son."
(plays song)
[Steve] "You're listening to Jonsey's Jukebox on Indie 103.1 with Def Leppard in the studio. Viv, Phil and Joe. You ready to do a but of uh 'Get It On'?"
[Joe] "Yeah. For a laugh."
[Steve] "Take it away then."
(8:45 Joe/Viv/Phil play T. Rex's 'Get It On' acoustic: Steve on box drums.)
[Steve] "There you go."
[Joe] "We made it up as we went along. What's new..."
[Steve] "Very good. That was fun."
[Phil] "It was indeed."
[Steve] "Did you enjoy that Phil?."
[Phil] "Absolutely. I did."
[Joe] "Getting a few licks in there?."
[Steve] "Let's do a. a Rainbow Down The Pub." (meaning Dio's 'Rainbow In The Dark')
[Joe] "HA HA HA." (after Viv plays one note and stops.)
[Phil] "He does know this honest."
(All start playing the song with Phil singing and Steve doing mock Ronnie Dio screams)
[Phil] "Help me here cause I don't know the words...." (after singing the first two lines) "..and there's a dragon and a dungeon..."
(all together "And the top of the morning to ya, ..have a pint then, Like a Rainbow Down The Pub" - lasts about 2 mins/very funny. Viv plays a solo part.)
[Joe] "Tight. Ohh good lord."
[Phil] "Nice, nice. There ya go."
[Viv] "Met-al."
[Phil] "A very metal moment."
[Steve] "Fantastic, Fantastic. Did you write that Viv?."
[Viv] "Er a bit of yeah."
[Steve] "What. The guitar part?."
[Viv] "I did all the guitar parts yes."
[Steve] "You wrote the music?."
[Viv] "Yeah."
[Steve] "And old Ronnie James did the vocals and wrote all the lyrics."
[Viv] "Yes he did that was his gig."
[Steve] "How tall is he?."
[Viv] "Um not very."
[Steve] "Like what? 4 an' 'alf?."
[Viv] "Nahh he's probably a bit more than that. 5 something." (all laughing in background)
[Steve] "5 with platforms on."
[Viv] "Yeah I don't know. I never actually took a measuring tape out ya know."
[Steve] "Is he a nice guy?."
[Viv] "Do I have to answer that?."
[Steve] "No..."
[Joe] "Can he take the fifth?."
[Steve] "So is he horrible?"
[Viv] "I'm taking the fifth."
[Steve] "Alright. I'll take the five foot."
[Viv] "Phil took the five this morning, all the way from Orange County."
[Joe] "I'm a nice guy."
[Viv] "Joe's a nice guy."
[Phil] "And he's tall. He's 6ft 2..."
[Steve] "You're very tall. Very tall. What else shall we, You wanna play something else? Or shall we break it up a bit?"
[Phil] "Let's break it up a bit."
[Joe] "Yeah Let's break it up. We can do Ziggy later on. We know that. We can do 'Ziggy Stardust'."
[Steve] "Fantastic."
(back from break) [Steve: Host] (8:55pm) "...with my guests Def Leppard here. And um Phil what you been doing?":
[Phil] "I've been. I've got another band as well I've got a band called Man-Raze."
[Joe] "One's not enough for him."
[Phil] "I know!. Absolutely."
[Joe] "2 Cars 2 Houses. 2 Bands."
[Phil] "4 Houses actually."
[Steve] "2 nuts..."
[Joe] "200 guitars..."
[Phil] "Um yeah so we're doing this thing Man-Raze. It's Cookey, Paul Cook on drums and he's great and Simon Laffy he used to play in Girl with me. Back in the 80s, the early 80s."
[Steve] "I've got that album, I've got a Girl CD. I should have brought that."
[Phil] "Have ya?. There ya go yeah so we're doing all this stuff and it's like a lot of it we're doing in Simon's spare bedroom. Like just recording it when we can. And there's a little studio, Westbourne Grove Studios, a little rehearsal room [in West London].
And we actually went down there and recorded the drums live on some of the stuff. And we've just been..they're all different stages all the songs and that. But it's a blast ya know. It's three-piece, classic three-piece and I'm singing.
You know (it's like) anything from like The Police to kinda Nirvana, it's different. You know, it's kinda, it's just fun."
[Steve] "Did you like doing it London?."
[Phil] "Yeah. Cause I hadn't spent anytime there for like 20 years and I hated it when I left years ago. But I had to go back, me Dad pased away last summer. So I was there for like 3 months and that's when we started all this stuff up.
And it was actually kinda fun being back in London. But it's horrible and bleeding cold out there."
[Steve] "Oh I know mate I know."
[Phil] "Its vicious."
[Steve] "That's why I like the old palm trees and movie stars. Swimming Pools.."
[Phil] "Very Punk Rock..."
[Steve] "..and Crumpet.." (Joe laughing away...)
[Viv] "Yeah and the automatic Porsche convertible. Don't forget that."
[Steve] "Eh. I don't have it anymore. I got rid of it for the kids."
[Joe] "For the kids maan..."
[Steve] "I gave it away to a punk rock orphanage. Poor punk rock kids..I gave it away...charity" (laughter)
[Viv] "So they could strip it down and sell it for parts? Is that how it works?."
[Steve] "Yeah something like that. Um yeah so you got a bit of stuff."
[Phil] "Yeah. I've got some stuff for you."
[Steve] "Man-Raze."
[Phil] "If you play track 1. That's called 'Skin Crawl'. And I don't know if we've got time later on to play anything else. But there ya go that's the most finished song out of the lot of 'em."
[Steve] "So it's Paul Cook on drums, the geezer from Girl..."
[Phil] "Simon Laffy..."
[Joe] "The geezer from Girl..." (laughing)
[Steve] "And you're singing?."
[Phil] "Yeah."
[Steve] "Let's hear it."
[Joe] "Exclusive."
[Steve] "What's it called?."
[Phil] "'Skin Crawl' this is. By the Man-Raze!."
(plays 'Skin Crawl' by Man-Raze. lasts for just under 4mins. Slang-Era type rocking sounding tune/very good stuff. Cross between the Truth? (Original & Studio Versions) without the harmonies.)
[Steve] "You're listening to Jonsey's Jukebox on Indie 103.1 and that was er Man-Ray featuring Paul Cook on drums...it sounds so not like him. So is that not him on that track?"
[Phil] "Well. We programmed this stuff as well on that track."
[Joe] "But he programmed it right?."
[Phil] "Yeah he's doing stuff and actually we've done a version where he's playing along to that but we haven't, ain't slotted it in yet. We're doing bits and pieces, the next track on there half the chorus is missing but it's got real drums all the way through it. But you know they're all at different stages. This is all unfinished stuff."
[Steve] "Are you gonna,,what you hopin' to get a deal from it?."
[Phil] "Yeah we actually, we wanna put it out. Ya know we got like 9 songs together at the moment."
[Steve] "And are ya gonna go on the road, Maybe?."
[Phil] "It'd be nice to do some gigs yeah."
[Joe] "Can we support ya?."
[Phil] "I dunno. I'll have to have a word with my manager." (Joe laughing)
[Steve] "Talk to my lawyer..."
[Joe] "That's it. Get your lawyers to call my lawyers and we'll see what we can get."
[Steve] "So where are you living now Joe?"
[Joe] "Dublin and spending my time between there and here at the moment."
[Steve] "What do you like about Dublin? The Tax thing?."
[Joe] "Well that was...it wasn't so much Dublin. it was staying out of England er 20 years ago. We'd done 10 months out and our lawyers said 'You'd be stupid to go home
now' You know you can keep it all if you stay and you never know how long it's gonna last and coming from the working class thing ya Dad's going 'That amount of Tax, that's my life!' So 2 months in Dublin didn't seem like hard work. But it pretty much was because we were all drinking heavily at the time and tryin' to follow up an album that was huge and we were feeling all that crappy pressure.
But I actually fell in love with the place. I just liked the people. I'm about 13 miles outside of Dublin. It's just real green and open there's like 4 million people in the entire country but it's the same size as England where there's 40 million people. It's nice but then when I want to get nuts I come over here."
[Steve] "I did a show in Dublin with Phil Lynott once. We were The er..."
[Viv] "Greedy Bastards."
[Steve] "The Greedy Bastards and we did a show at that..some place that burnt down. The Starlight?.."
[Viv] "SFX?."
[Joe] "Yeah I know it."
[Steve] "And I remember getting hammered on the old Guiness there and the night before the gig we went to see...some club where there was a band playing and they had all the Irish instruments and I got up on stage and smashed a geezers violin up, to pieces. That's what someone told me the next day anyway." (laughter)
[Joe] "Bet it sounded good though."
[Steve] "It did 'kin smashed up yeah. And U2 opened for us, that was their first show apparently."
[Phil] "Really?." (14th gig according to a U2 site: 1st Dec 1978 The Stardust. w/Gary Moore, Brian Downey, Scott Gorham, Paul Cook.)
[Joe] "Wow fantastic."
[Steve] "Yeah but I had a good time there."
[Joe] "It's a good place. It's a lot better now than it even was then. It's a lot more cosmopolitan. They're just opening Starbucks there now it's catching up ya know. But the charm for me is when you get out of Dublin and it's just like..."
[Steve] "Cows and..."
[Joe] "Yeah it's just like 50 years ago. People leave the key in their frontdoor and you can let yourself in for a bottle of milk."
[Steve] "You can?! What's the addresses?..." (laughter)
[Joe] "You don't get drive-by shootings that often. It's pretty cool."
[Viv] "Drive-By Shellaillagh." (laughter)
[Joe] "That's it Drive-By Shellaillagh." (Viv says something in Irish accent after this..)
[Joe] "But I used to hate this place (LA) and then I realised it wasn't the place it was the people. And it was like the late 80s when it was all the big hair and spandex."
[Steve] "Cocaine and shoulder pads, yeah."
[Joe] "We spent our entire life being branded into that kind of category by the press and running away from it..."
[Steve] "Jeans with holes in..."
[Joe] "We don't belong in that category. We don't believe we belong in there and I hated all that 'Hey man wanna party?' And luckily it's all gone away."
[Phil] "But we are gonna bring the shoulder pads back...I think."
[Joe] "Yeah, I'm gonna wear them under my trousers though."
[Steve] "Knee pads..."
[Viv] "Knee pads yeah."
[Joe] "I'm gonna bring in knee pads."
(Go to page 3 for more).
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