Def Leppard
Metal Hammer
July 1999, issue 64
page 65-66

"We're not ashamed of who we are," says Def Leppard frontman Joe Elliott regarding their propensity for ludicrous lyrics. Val Potter heads to Joe's Irish gaff to hear plenty more.

Joe Elliott lights up a cigarette - as he habitually only smokes the first third, the ashtray is soon full of lengthy butts - leans back on the squashy cushions of his sofa and contemplates the panoramic view from the windows of his massive living room.

The Irish countryside, with Dublin in the distance, is spread out before us; mist is starting to creep towards the house, but on clearer days, Def Leppard general factotum Malvin Mortimer tells me, you can track the progress of clouds across the sky and ring a mate in town to warn them that rain is on the way.

Right now, with a newly completed album in the can, life should be sunny for the Leps, but a slight, underlying defensiveness in Elliott's normally bullish attitude towards his band's output indicates that there might be a small cloud on the horizon. The forthcoming record Euphoria, is the first since the band took a left-turn with 1996's Slang, abandoning their trademark harmonies, big production and tongue-in-cheek lyrics for a sparser, harder-hitting approach. They won critical plaudits from unexpected quarters for trying something new, but the fans didn't seem so impressed. Consequently, while retaining the live feel of Slang on Euphoria, the harmonies, daft words, and lush arrangements are back with a vengeance - and Elliott must be aware that if the return to their former sound doesn't pay off, there's a risk that the band may have painted themselves into a corner.

"Slang was just something we'd been craving to do and we got it out of our system, but then we were happy to go back to making classic Def Leppard again," Joe explains. "In 1996, I don't think we could have made Euphoria, we would have been laughed off the face of the planet. I suppose people can say we've gone back to what we used to do, but I think it's more a case of nobody makes records like us and if anybody's got the God-give right to do it, it's us!

"We're not ashamed of who we are, and you know that there's people crying out for it. We shifted over 600,000 albums on back catalogue stuff in America last year. If there's that many people re-buying the old stuff, they must surely be at least slightly interested in hearing some new Def Leppard that sounds like the classic Def Leppard."

But equally, you must realise that Def Leppard are setting themselves up for critics to sneer that, after trying something new that didn't work out, you're now returning to what's worked successfully for you in the past?

"Sure, we're very aware that people are going to do that," Joe nods. "If somebody likes it, they're going to d say, 'It's return to form.' If they don't, they're going to say, 'It's return to formula.' Look, if people don't like it, then fuck 'em! I really don't care. We like it, and we're not trying to tailor a record for anything other than something that makes us feel good."

Certainly the time currently seems ripe for an album like this, with the burgeoning success of bands like Backyard Babies and Buckcherry, who just play good-time rock 'n' roll with no particular 'message' in their songs.

"Which is a message in itself," Joe agrees. "Our message has always been: just enjoy it. We can all aspire to write 'Like A Rolling Stone' or 'The Times they Are A Changing,' but 'She's got a hubcap diamond star halo' sounds so much better! Gimme 'Get It On' any day!"

Ah yes, while we're on the subject. In the past, songs like "Let's Get Rocked" and "Make Love Like A Man" have drawn flak for the absurdly chest-beating nature of their lyrics and the band have really excelled themselves once again on some of the tracks on Euphoria. Aren't you about to get shot down in flames for a politically incorrect song like "All Night," about, um, "doing it" all night, complete with orgasmic "uhs" and "oh yeahs."

"Mmm, we knew that," he grins, taking a gulp from his mug of tea. "But we've figured it out: if you're the solo artist, you can do anything. Prince can write a song called "Come" and it's just a girl moaning, and it's genius! A band does it, and they're a bunch of sad old tossers! You know you're never really going to change anybody's minds, but you want to challenge them, shove it in their faces and go, 'Yeah, why can he do that, but we can't?' That's the reason we do it - to get up people's noses more than anything."

But come on, aren't you going to feel just a little bit silly singing that live?

"Well, we might not do it live!" he laughs, adding more seriously, "No, I won't, because you go into character. I was struggling to sing 'Let's Get Rocked' when I was 32, thinking, 'I can't sing this!', and now I've got to do it and I'm 39. You go through this phase. I'm sure Steven Tyler did. He's probably more comfortable singing some of his more crass lyrics now than when he was 35. I think you go through like a mid-life crisis of, 'Oh, I really want to write sensible lyrics.'"

And then you write an album like Slang?

"Yeah, exactly! I think one of the best lyrics I've ever written is 'Where Does Love Go When It Dies.' But nobody cared! The lyric subject on 'All Night' is just a vehicle for the voice and with that kind of song, you don't want to be writing lyrics like 'Jeremy' or 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' - it ain't gonna work. It's a good-time bit of fun, and if James Brown or Prince did it, nobody would bat an eyelid."

And just to make quite sure that the critics get the message, the heavily Glitter Band-influenced "Back In Your Face" (I'm back in your face/Like I've never been away/I'm back in your face/And it's where I'm gonna stay") waves a gleeful two fingers in their direction and stomps all over their objections.

"Oh, big time! Absolutely!" Elliott laughs. "It's dead simple - tribal almost in its simplicity - and that's the thing that gets people's feet tapping. If you put a glam rock compilation on at a party, people start getting happy. Without being a party band, we're trying to create a party atmosphere."

Talking about parties, when Def Leppard were upcoming young bucks, tasting the first fruits of success during the '80s, they had a reputation for being something of a party band.

"Were we? Go on then, tell me all about it!" Joe teases.

But now they're older, wiser and more accustomed to being one of the world's premier rock bands, presumably things have calmed down a bit in the '90s.?

"Well, they have, yes," he admits. "The whole thing of having parties full of naked women - I never went to one! Certain bands have got reputations and they're always slightly overblown. I don't want to get anyone into any trouble, but I remember when we toured America with Europe - this nice, poufy-haired bunch of mild-mannered Scandinavians? Wrong! They were the biggest animals I've ever seen - they made Guns N' Roses look like a vicar's tea party! Un-be-lievable, some of the things they got up to. In fairness, not Joey [Tempest], but the others were monsters. We did have a couple of parties backstage, where things were done out in the open by certain people - but I missed it all, cos I was doing a fuckin' interview with Rolling Stone magazine!

"We did have some strange times, I've got to say. There was definitely a willingness on the part of a lot of ladies to indulge us. But everybody's got steady girlfriends or they're married now, so it really doesn't happen any more. But you can't help but smile when you go onstage in front of God knows how many people and there's some girl on her boyfriend's shoulders and she's got her top off! It's much more fun than pulling nuts and bolts out of a machine!"

Did the death of guitarist Steve Clark, from a combination of alcohol and drug abuse in 1991, make you collectively reassess your lifestyles?

"Yeah, it did a little bit," he answers slowly. "I'm not saying it stopped me drinking - it didn't - but it stopped me drinking maybe as much as I used to. It also made me realise that people are different and some people just can't do what he did.

"Steve took it way too far. He did things that nobody should have been allowed to get away with - and eventually, he didn't. It caught up with him and it killed him. Pete Willis [the other original Def Leppard guitarist] was the same way. It didn't kill him, but it killed his career.

"I like drinking, who doesn't? Well, Phil doesn't," he corrects himself with a grin. "Rick [Allen, drummer] doesn't drink anymore, Vivian [Campbell, guitarist] and Sav [bassist, Rick Savage] drink beer, I'll drink Scotch, and that's about it. When you see what happened to Steve, you can't help but re-address situations a little bit. But at the same time, he was an alcoholic. When you're naïve to it all, like I was and I guess a lot of us were, you say, 'Why don't you just stop?' You don't realise that it's actually a physical addiction, and it's not that easy. I don't regret my first drink - I regret Steve's first drink."

Def Leppard have won a lot of public admiration for the way they're fought their way back from two major tragedies: first Rick Allen's involvement in a horrific car crash and the subsequent amputation of his left arm, and then Steve's death. It would have been hard enough for a band to survive one such incident; to have both happen to them seems an unbelievably cruel stroke of fate.

But the band were subject to unwelcome headlines a few years back when both Rick and Joe were arrested on charges of domestic violence, after the former beat up his wife in public, and the latter had an explosive row with his girlfriend, Bobbi, in a hotel room. Was the subsequent publicity detrimental to Def Leppard's popularity?

"I think it may have upset the apple-cart for a couple of months, I don't think it did any lasting damage," Joe replies guardedly. "People don't know the ins and outs of it all. I mean, right now, there's all these women in the papers tearing the head off Pamela Anderson for going back to Tommy Lee. Maybe he is a changed man. The whole ethic that we're supposed to live under is turn the other cheek and forgive, give somebody a second chance. I don't know what their situation is, maybe Tommy was completely out of order, I don't know.

"The thing with Rick - and I'm not being demeaning to women in any way here - but when you've lost your arm and you're a drummer and you spend 11 years medicated up to the eye teeth to get you through the whole trauma of it all, sooner or later it just topples your personality over the edge a little bit and anything can spark off a rage that is completely out of character. When somebody has spent 30 years of being a nice guy and then in 10 seconds., loses it, it's an extremely small percentage - and I'm not trivialising this, I'm just being logical here. The only thing I can say is that they're still married, she love him to death, he loves her to death, they're got a beautiful little kid and everything in the Allen household is rosy.

"And it's the same thing with me. Rick's situation - and again, I'm not trivialising mine either - was a lot more serious than mine was. We were just having an argument in a hotel with the door open and a security guard from the hotel stuck his head in and said, 'Everything alright in here?' and I went, 'FUCK OFF!' and he called the cops. It was literally right in the middle of the OJ thing, where spousal abuse was not to be tolerated, but we did what everybody in a relationship does - we just should have done it with the door open.

"They took us away and they us out after an hour and a half. The most annoying about it was I missed Foo Fighters! David Grohl had said, 'You must come backstage' as apparently he's a big fan - and I was in the holding tank, going, 'Come on, they're going on in a minute!' And the cop was asking me for my autograph. It was very unreal.

"If there was any lasting damage, I would hope that it's over now and people just judge us for the music because I'm not a wife-beater and neither is Rick."

Divorced Joe has been happily living with Bobbi for a few years now. Is there any chance that he's about to follow the Metallica route, settle down and have Def Cubs, with future touring confined to short bursts of dates?

"Collectively, we will. Individually, I won't, I don't think," he replies thoughtfully. "I don't have this lust to carry on the bloodline. There are lots of Elliotts in the phone book! if it happens, it happens. But I don't get enough time to myself as it is. To do what I do really would be very difficult without a nanny and they you're got a kid that thinks the nanny its mother! That's what puts me off doing it.

"I think it's more responsible of me to make this decision than to get it wrong. I mean, Phil's got a great kid, but he's divorced and doesn't see him half as much as he wants to, and it must really tear him apart at times. And when you're away from home, it's more of a pull. I can go on tour for a year and feel comfortable about it, more so than maybe Rick can, I don't know. that's something we'll have to address if and when that's a problem. Sooner or later, people might say, 'I don't want to do this anymore.' Me, I want to do this until I drop dear! To me, this is my baby."

But what is it that keeps driving you when you've achieved so much with the band already?

"It's to keep re-achieving, I suppose. We used to say, 'What comes after doing Wembley?' I say, 'Two nights at Wembey!' Def Leppard was never going to be a five-year thing. We were never going to call the band 'Dog Piss,' or whatever that stupid band is I just saw got reviewed somewhere, where you know for a start you're limiting your chances of getting anywhere. Neither were we going to make music that sounds like Napalm Death. We wanted to make pop rock - basically, commercial rock music.

"We played South Africa on the last tour, the first time I'd ever been there, and we go onstage in Johannesburg in front of 50,000 people in a football stadium 16 years into our career and I'm thinking, 'This is not a bad thing!' I look at The Rolling Stones and I look at Aerosmith, and it inspires you, it really does.

"We're not doing it for the money - we don't need to do it for the money - we do it because it's what we do, and why should we stop? We work well as a team and we've never got on as well as we do now. It just gets better and better.

"If we row about anything, it's normally about the choice of photographer or which TV programme we're going to watch or which goal's going to win Goal of The Month! It sounds like a bunch of old ladies, but that's the fun of it! Al the energy goes into making a great record."

With the June release of Euphoria, Def Leppard will be embarking on the inevitable world tour, hitting the States first and then playing the UK in late summer.

"It's going to be extremely busy," Joe says, contemplating the rest of the year. "Right now, it's just mad, completely crazy. It will actually get a little easier once we get on the road, but that will come with its own problems. The first gig we ever did, Westfield School, 18 July 1975, Steve - tight blue jeans, white T-shirt, Les Paul down to his ankles - gets in front of the stage and goes [he stands up and windmills his right arm in a classic axe hero pose]. And he'd forgotten to turn his amp on! That was the start of our career, although things did get a little better!

"Those kind of things happen all the time, but you can't help it. If you get to bed late and you've got to get up early for a light, you always end up leaving your toothbrush behind. Hopefully, that's all. I've lost count of the amount of times I've picked Sav's wallet up off the plane seat - and Filofaxes get left in rooms and you're thinking, 'Oh Christ, the maid's taking Brian May's phone number!"

And how does Joe feel about the upcoming release of the new album?

"We put the effort and the work in, the rest is now up to the other people," he replies. "I think that we've made a damn fine record and I honestly believe that there are people out there that want to hear this kind of music again. We have come up with an album that is so not what is going on that it's either going to fall flat on its face or it's going to burst through the roof - hopefully, the latter.

"We're very happy with it and we've very, very confident, so I've got nothing but good feelings. I always used to be a complete optimist, but I think life just batters you down - Rick loses his arm, Steve dies, this, that and the other happens - and you become a realist. So I'm very aware of the fact that it might not happen either. But it won't be for want of trying."