Def Leppard guitarist Phil Collen was interviewed recently by the Liverpool Daily Record newspaper. Def Leppard play the Liverpool Echo Arena on July 15th during the second leg of their UK tour with Whitesnake and Thunder.

Interview Quotes

Phil Collen - "If you get anything successful, as soon as a parody of it arrives, it becomes really uncool."

"We had great songs, that were produced really well, which still sound classic. Then you got all these dreadful bands that were all about flash and image and completely missed the point."

"You got that from the Punk era to the 90s Alanis Morissette vocal thing, to all these girls yodelling. All these bands copying someone to an extreme and driving you nuts."

"Fortunately, that stuff they slagged us for just doesn't exist any more."

Collen says he's never smoked a cigarette in his life but tried pretty much every drug on offer during his younger days.

Phil Collen - "We just used to drink all the time on tour," he says. "The worst part during the Pyromania tour was there wasn't a lot to do apart from go out and get drunk. It was a pathetic situation to be in where there's nothing to do but that."

"Some people can deal with it and be blissful alcoholics and they're not even aware of it. I just wasn't a very good drunk. And obviously it killed Steve Clark."

"Anyone who drives when they are drunk...it is the most selfish, irresponsible thing you can do, I ended up doing things like that. Blacking out and waking up going 'Where am I?'. I remember waking up and feeling my ear and thinking 'God, I've got another earring - that wasn't there yesterday'. No tattoos thank God, that was it."

"We're going through a retro thing at the moment, but you always have that. The 70s were really uncool in the 80s, but in the 90s the 70s thing was great. Def Leppard are going through a bit of that." With a trace of that 80s bombast, he adds: "We're really cool right now."

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Full Interview -- Liverpool Daily Post