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News
Man Raze will be releasing their EP on October 24th. WOO
HOO!!!
New date added for Def Leppard. October 21st, 2005. Borgata Hotel
and Casino in Atlantic City. Yup. I'm going!
According to reliable sources, YEAH the new cover's
album will be released early 2006, with a world tour to follow. Also, Vivian's blues album, "Two Sides of If"
will be released as scheduled on September 27th, 2005.
Stupid Questions
Joe Elliott is faced with getting rocked, skimpy shorts, and Bryan
Adams by Dan Snierson
Have you spotted something strange lurking in your city this summer? Perhaps a hearing-impaired feline who likes it loud?
Def Leppard - those candy-coated metallurgists from England - are alive and scissor-kicking their way through a 59-date North
American tour to support a greatest-hits package, Rock of Ages: The Definitive Collection. They're also unleashing an all-covers
album, Yeah!, on Sept. 20. It sounds like the perfect time to give the man on the mic, Joe Elliott, the shock of ages with
some stupid questions.
[Guttural growl] Do you wanna get rocked?
No.
How come?
It's too early in the bloody morning. Gimme a break. Come 9 o'clock at night - absolutely.
How exactly do you get rocked?
According to Sammy Hagar, there's only one way to rock, but surely there have to be other ways. There's at least two and
a half ways to rock. You can rock with your legs wide open. You can rock with your arms up in the air. Or you can just stage-dive
and hopefully you don't come up with a broken neck.
In retrospect, do you regret the skimpy Union Jack shorts?
Are you kidding?
With all the women we used to get in those things? I wish I was still wearing 'em.
If you wanted to - and I'm not saying you should - could you get the guy from Ratt on the phone right now?
No. I met him once. He came to one of our gigs in 1988 and he was so out of his head, he couldn't even clip his laminate
onto his rope. We had to get our stage managers to do it for him. That's when I knew we didn't have much in common.
Def Leppard played a concert in Leeds a few years ago that was attended by Queen Elizabeth. How awkward was it when she
threw her bra on stage during ''Pour Some Sugar on Me''. . .or was it during ''Animal''?
It was ''Pour Some Sugar on Me.'' It was kind of awkward because her staff demanded it back after the gig. But by then,
we'd abused it. We use it as a hammock now.
Rick Allen, your one-armed drummer, uses a drum set with specially rigged foot pedals. On this tour, does one of those
pedals trigger a mechanism that rips your jeans perfectly every time?
No. I'll tell you how that happened. They were sliced with a razor blade and washed. At the beginning of the tour, those
jeans didn't look like that. They only looked like that after about 120 gigs and 120 washing machines. Then they got a bit
too obscene and they had to go because it wasn't so much a rock show anymore as a peep show.
You guys are coheadlining some shows with Bryan Adams. Fifteen years ago, wouldn't your mullets have been revoked for
fraternizing with someone in the ''wuss rock'' genre?
Mullets being revoked couldn't happen quick enough for me. You can stick them on Jeff Foxworthy.
I love that you know Jeff Foxworthy.
I know of him. He comes in the same category as the singer from Ratt. I don't have his number, either.
7/11/05
7/3/05 NY Post
Title - Still the most Def - '80s rockers pour more sugar on
it
Author - Maxine Shen
Only five rock bands in the world have sold over 10 million copies of two
original albums in the U.S. - The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Van Halen and ... Def Leppard.
Yes, the '80s band,
famous for asking girls to "pour some sugar" on them and claiming that "Love Bites." The group sold over 65 million
records worldwide in their 28-year history and duked it out with Michael Jackson and Prince on the pop charts.
Currently
on their greatest hits tour (playing with Bryan Adams), Def Leppard hits KeySpan Park on Saturday. Joe Elliot, the band's
45-year old lead singer, spoke to The Post from a stop in Portland, Maine.
Does it surprise you that people
still think of Def Leppard as the band with the one-armed drummer (Rick Allen's left arm was severed after a 1984 car accident)?
Not
at all, it's the most humanistic thing for people to remember. Everyone was raving on about giving us all this credit,
but we didn't do anything. All we did was wait for Rick, the same way you would for a family member that gets into and
accident - you don't kick them out of your family. I never think about it, I don't look at Rick and think, 'Oh, he's
only got one arm,' I just look at Rick.
You've been called a hair metal and a heavy metal band, but you've
got a huge female following. What's up with that?
We've joked about it, we're definitely more Duran
Duran than Iron Maiden. Twenty Top 40 hits in and of itself announces that we're not a heavy metal band. Metal
is mostly all about devil worship and Dungeons and Dragons fantasy stuff. For us, it's always been about human contact,
that's what we've always tried to get across in our songs, whether it be sleazy or classy. It's always about people,
not about swords and sorcery. I'd say that's one of the reasons why we have a female following.
Have
you ever considered pulling a Led Zeppelin and refusing to play one of your mega hits, like "Pour Some Sugar On Me" or "Hysteria?"
There
are certain songs that we'd be skinned alive if we didn't play. We only get sick of songs in rehearsals - doing "Rock
of Ages" to four walls. Throat-slitting tie. But once you see it in front of an audience and you get the reaction
your originally wanted to achieve and that you're still getting after 25 years, that's a fantastic feeling. It's our
greatest hits tour, sot it's hit after hit after hit, that's a beautiful feeling.
After all these years,
does Def Leppard still live the rock 'n' roll, partying lifestyle?
We try to be healthy and balanced
- until about midnight, when the wine comes out. Well, at least for three of us. Two guys in the band are vegan
teetotalers. There's a nice array of weights laying around the dressing room as well. But that's not really a
change, besides Bob Marley and the Wailers, we were probably the only band on the planet that would do a sound check and then
go out and play soccer. But when the sun goes down, we've been known to let our hair down a little bit, obviously we
lost a guitarist to that, in fact we lost two. We've had both sides of the coin.
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