Deflepvh1: 8.5 thousand people in the parking lot. It was sweltering hot, it must have been close to a 100. And they were fantastic crowd. It was nice to be back. And we are, as I speak, doing a signing session in the store and there are about 3,500 people here.

VH1Voche: (We're talking to Joe Elliott folks.)

Question: What was your influence for "goodbye" and "paper sun"? thanks and I love you guys.

Deflepvh1: Goodbye was written by Rick Savage and the influence was ....it became Lepardized and we made it less specific than it was. But it was hands reaching out above adversity. Paper Sun musically we created what we call the "epic" song for the album and lyrically, we were just about to do the lyrics and they were just showing the carnage from Ireland, when a bomb had gone off, just over a year ago and watching it with the sound off on TV, it was our observations of a terrible, terrible thing that happened.

Question: On the last tour you switched over to using Marshall's. Are we going to see that mighty black wall again this year?

Deflepvh1: That is affirmative... Yes, a mighty big yes (say the men in black).

Deflepvh1: They're screaming at me: Yes! Yes! Yes!

Question: Will Def Lep put songs not included on the CD as b-sides as they have done in the past?

Deflepvh1: Absolutely, we've got loads of them. Some titles that will hopefully come out soon.... Immortal, I Am Your Child, Worlds Collide, Burnout, Gone, Lifeless, Candy In Your Hands and then three cover songs that we've done -- Stay With Me, an old Faces song. Rebel, Rebel by David Bowie, from '74. And an Ian Hunter song called Who Do You Love?

Question: Is there any plan to re-release the videos on DVD with extra footage?

Deflepvh1: One second, let me ask the experts.... Deflepvh1: Let's come back to that one. Deflepvh1: Someday they will be out on DVD, yes. Not immediately. But whether there's any extra footage, maybe not. So there may be a new DVD out with some previously unreleased stuff, but not old stuff with new footage or anything like that.

Question: Every show you do is great from the fan's perspective...what makes a show great for you?

Deflepvh1: A great audience, a decent performance, no mistakes. And good interaction with the crowd. Because if we do a similar set every night, it becomes tedious. The difference between doing a sound check and doing it for an audience, is you get a reaction from the audience. Yeah, they were, actually. And we've always been one of those bands, the bigger the crowd, the better we are.

Question: How much of Rick Allen's drum set is acoustic and how much is digital?

Deflepvh1: (asking Rick) ... kick, snare, high hats and cymbals are all acoustic. Toms and foot pedals are electric with triggers on them for certain sounds.

Question: Does Def Leppard have any secrets to hit songs?

Deflepvh1: If we did, every song we put out would go to #1. No, there is secret. People can write to formulas. The secret of writing a good song is capturing a moment in time, it's having a good hook, and having a melody that's memorable, having a lyric that's meaningful...there's no secret.... it's very easy to write a song, it's very difficult to write a hit song. Otherwise, everyone would be doing it.

Question: What happened to the tracks Telephone, Space, Kickin' It, and No Matter What? Were they just working titles?

Deflepvh1: Kickin' It became All Night. The other three, they didn't make it, they're finished songs, Telephone actually was called Telephone... it came from the same place as Lifeless which was mentioned in the B side question. It's a song we may possibly do at some other time. Space isn't quite there, but it's nice to have something on the shelf the next time we do an album.

Question: Does Def Leppard have a special 'magic' connection with Mutt Lange?

Deflepvh1: We have a very good working relationship with him. It's special too the point where he still wants to do it and we still want to do it. It's special in that we've been working with him since 1981. It's a dream team together and we love the guy and we like to think that he loves us.

Question: After I see one of your shows, I'm totally hyped-up....what do you guys do after a show to unwind?

Deflepvh1: A lot of it takes care of itself. Physically, when you've been on stage for 2 and a half hours, you're already winding down. And we've done that since we were in our 20's, it's not an aging thing. Now the mind slowing down, that's another thing. Me, I talk a million miles a minute and I get told to shut up sometimes. I may sometimes have a drink or two but the others don't drink anymore and I have no idea how they wind down.

Question: Hey you guys welcome back!! We have been waiting for you! When will you be heading to Southern California?

Deflepvh1: I don't know when we're going to be in Southern California. We will be starting our North American tour on the 16th of July and we're doing a lot of state fairs, which we've done before. We'll be here for 8 weeks, while the weather's good enough to do that. Then we go to Britain end of September, basically most of October in Britain. And then if the album does well, we'd like to come back to North America and do some proper Def Leppard show. We'd do a different show indoors than outdoors. And we want to keep people excited about it and ourselves.

Question: What is it about albums ending in ' ia ' ? :)

Deflepvh1: Just me, I'm a sadist. The 'ia' as regards Euphoria is more a coincidence than a corporate committee decision. I remember when we actually suggested using Euphoria, I said You know what they're going to say? But it's such a nice word, it rolls pleasantly off the tongue. It's simple, it sums up the meaning of the album very well. It's an uplifting record, we hope we give a feeling of Euphoria to the listener.

Question: My I ask why you chose Wal-Mart to launch your album? I have always enjoyed your music-thanks!

Deflepvh1: We chose Wal-Mart for the same reasons we do anything like this--it was advised to do this. The record company wanted to do something a little different, than some nightclub where it's all record company execs and we wanted to do it where people who normally couldn't get into something like that could see us and we wanted to do it somewhere warm and large with a lot of great people. We've been signing autographs for two hours now and the queue doesn't seem to be shortening at all.

Question: What do you guys like to do when you are not working?

Deflepvh1: There's not many days in the recent past or going too in the near future when we haven't been working. I can't remember not working, a actually. For me, personally, I like to spend 12 hours a day in bed. I like to watch movies, I like to work out, I like to play golf. Vivian probably likes to play with his baby. We just basically work so hard all the time, I defy anyone to say that we even know how to relax. We relax by going on stage. It's the one place the phone doesn't ring.

Question: where is the band calling home these days?

Deflepvh1: On the road for the next year. Me and Savage live in Dublin and have done for the best part of 10 years. Rick, Phil and Vivian live in Los Angeles. Other than that, we live on the road. So the fact that we don't all live in the same city, but it works very well, it's not a problem. When we're on the road, we're all together anyway, on a plane, on a bus, in a hotel. We'll go our separate ways after that, and then we'll get back together to do another album, with any luck.

Question: What are your plans for the next single?

Deflepvh1: I think it's going to be "Goodbye" . I think that's the deal.

Question: All of the previous Lep albums have had very visually exciting covers. What is the story behind Euphoria's cover?

Deflepvh1: We finally wised up to the fact that we sell a hell of a lot more CDs than we do vinyl. Consequently, the CD is small, we wanted a sleeve that people could see from 15, 20 yards away and say, ooh, I recognize that. So we went for a design that was basically just bait, that's what it is , eye bait. And we wanted people to be able to see it from a distance and see exactly what it was.

Question: What was it like working with Jim Steinman, and are there any other producers out there you'd like to collaborate with?

Deflepvh1: It was a very negative experience working with Jim Steinman. We mistakenly confused song writing ability with production ability. He maybe better now, but in 1984, Jim wasn't a good producer. We don't hold any grudges against him, he's a good guy, but just not a great producer for Def Leppard. As regards working with other producers, nothing that we'd particularly want to do. We talked with a couple of guys before Euphoria, but we didn't think they would work well with us. So many producers that we've listened to recently seemed to contribute nothing. So, consequently, we're extremely happy with the production team we have right now, which is Pete Woodruff and Def Leppard.

Question: On which album did you have the most fun recording?

Deflepvh1: Whoa. All Through the Night. Because it was our first, it was done in three weeks and we were blind drunk every day. And consequently, it's my least favorite album. I've learned since that you don't necessarily enjoy making an album, but you can enjoy listening to it for many years afterwards, so as I've said before, I don't mind serving the prison sentence, before I do the crime. But we had a great time doing this last one, we got along, we got the job done and it was pretty painless.

Question: Hey Joe! Euphoria is great but will you be playing songs from Slang on tour?

Deflepvh1: Yeah. We will. We don't know which ones, we don't know how many, but we'll certainly be playing a minimum of one, maybe more.

Question: Are there going to be any videos for Euphoria?

Deflepvh1: Yes, we've already shot one. We shot a video for Promises about three weeks ago in Los Angeles. It's just been added to VH-1. And it'll be on the Rock Show, which I guess is on every night. It's very much like the Star Wars movies, it was done blue screen and it's very cool, very spacey.

Question: When are you slotted to be on with Howard Stern on Fri. What time... by the way, Love you Joe!!

Deflepvh1: Yes, we are. And we're going to play an acoustic song on Howard Stern, as well. It'll be a surprise. We're scheduled to be on somewhere between 8 and 10 Eastern time.

Question: Hi Joe!! Just wondering why the words to the songs aren't in the CD?

Deflepvh1: We didn't fancy putting them in this time around. In the Slang album, we literally tried to write lyrics that would look good on paper. For this album, we wrote things that were more frenetically connected to the music, and they don't look so well on paper. We thought we'd put more photos in instead.

Question: Joe was the entire CD recorded at you house in Dublin?

Deflepvh1: The entire CD was indeed recorded at my place, Joe's garage, Studios 1 and 2, which is the real studio, plus an over spill studio, which is one of my bedrooms. We did it 6 weeks on, 2 weeks off, 6 weeks on, we finished March of this year, so with the breaks that we took, it was about a 10-month album. It was the same studio where we did the Adrenalize album.

Question: Great new album, but I am wondering if you have any other old songs with Steve Clark you might ever release?

Deflepvh1: No, we don't. It was a half-finished demo of a song called Bad For Me, Baby that we did with Steve. But we're not really sure if the tapes still exist. But we've moved on, I don't know, if we found them, we might include it as a bonus track somewhere, but the slate is pretty clear.

Question: Joe, have you done much recording away from Def Leppard?

Deflepvh1: Not really, no. I did two songs for a film back in 1995, When Saturday Comes. And I did two songs for the soundtrack of the movie, they were credited to me. But in actual fact, the title song, the song that ended up getting called Jimmy's Theme, the song was originally Song for Ronno. It sounded good for the movie, so consequently I had to change the name. But the tracks were played by me, South and Phil. Question: What groups do you currently listen to?

Deflepvh1: We don't listen to ourselves, only when we have to learn the songs. We listen to Bob Cherry, we think he's totally cool. We'd love to tour with him. We met him about three weeks ago and they were absolutely fantastic.

Question: Where do you see Def Leppard in 10 years, 20 years from now? Do you think you'll be like Rolling Stones, still rocking?

Deflepvh1: I would hope so. I will be, in 20 years time, I will be 59. So who knows? I don't know, realistically, 20 years sounds like a while. We feel very privileged and blessed that we've done and apparently, in 1999, are bigger than we might expect to be.. But you know, Aerosmith is about 15 years older than we are and the Stones are 20 years older, so it's not out of the question.

VH1Voche: Thanks, Joe and the band.

Deflepvh1: Nice to be back. We'll be in touch. Keep the faith.