![]() ![]() ![]() “And there’s a big difference between being wrong and being different. “For all the criticism we’ve had about us going in the wrong direction, we always knew that we weren’t,” he says. Not a bit of it, reckons Joe Elliot, the group’s irrepressible lead singer. Writing in Creem magazine, Deborah Frost opined that “Def Lep have lost their youthful kick, attitude, and focus”. But as drummer Rick Allen counted his colleagues into Stagefright, the evening’s opening song, fewer than half of the seats in the vast Tacoma Dome had been sold.Īdding insult to scarcity, by now bassist Rick Savage was getting used to fielding autograph requests from people who believed him to be Jon Bon Jovi. The band were secreted to the stage inside laundry baskets. What they didn’t have, at least in Tacoma, was much in the way of an audience. They had a giant lighting rig and a hallucinogenic laser show. Embarked on the initial North American leg of the tour in support of their fourth album, the lavish and lavishly expensive Hysteria, the Sheffield group performed on a stage that stood in the centre of the arena floor. ![]() I’m sure they’ll be in top form, and so will we.On the first day of December 1987, Def Leppard arrived for a concert at the Tacoma Dome in Washington state. We’ve all had that, so I wasn’t worried about it at all. “They get over whatever it is and sort it out. “That’s what bands do, especially the bands that have been around for a long time,” Collen says. We’ve got some amazing songs, and people just love hearing all of them.” The joint tour has been talked about since last summer, and Collen says the Def Leppard camp was not unduly concerned by the social media dust-up between Journey members Neal Schon and Jonathan Cain. “I remember before, they would finish with ‘Don’t Stop Believin'” and we’d open up with one of our classics, ‘Let’s Get Rocked’ or one of those things. “It’s the songs, the classic songs,” he explains. The two groups have toured together before, and Collen considers it still a fail-safe package. Part of the campaign will be a summer tour with Journey, which will include arenas, amphitheaters and even some stadium shows. It’s totally exciting, the fact we can finally bring that to people in a different format.”ĭef Leppard's Classic Albums Now Available on Streaming Services “When people say, ‘Any new Def Leppard stuff?,’ yeah, we’ve got some new stuff, but it has to be on the back burner ’cause we’re kind of promoting the whole catalog now. “Yeah, we basically have 12 albums to promote - again,” Collen says. We weren’t going to budge, but we agreed on something and it sounded great and we shook hands and there you go.” Now Collen and company feel like they’re promoting a new release, in a way. “The industry expected us to just roll over and put it out basically for free, or a small amount. “We didn’t want to get ripped off,” Collen says. The group recently released its catalog to digital streaming services after being a longtime holdout. That’s the exciting part.”ĭef Leppard, meanwhile, has rolled out some major endeavors for the year. So I think the great thing is to roll the dice and see where it takes you. That’s not inspiring, and you’re just copying something. I think if you stay locked into a specific format you end up being a karaoke band. “Zeppelin and the Stones were both blues bands and they just took it somewhere else, and that’s the part that interests me. “It’s taking the original inspiration point,” explains Collen, adding that Stone Temple Pilots‘ Robert DeLeo remains a member of Delta Deep, though Craig Martini is playing bass in his stead on the G3 tour. As for what the next Delta Deep album may sound like, Collen anticipates more of the same but plans to push the diversity the group explored on its debut and on the live album. ![]()
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