Q&A: Def Leppard

Def Leppard are (left to right): Drummer Rick Allen, guitarist Phil Collen, lead vocalist Joe Elliott, bassist Rick Savage and guitarist Vivian Campbell (Credit: Ash Newell)

You’d think the guitarist for one of the biggest bands in rock history couldn’t walk down the street without getting mobbed by fans. But in Los Angeles, Phil Collen of Def Leppard manages to blend right in.

“I’m sitting outside Starbucks, me and my wife, and it’s great,” says the 53-year-old guitarist, speaking to Metromix by phone. “Sitting here and drinking a soy red eye and no one’s said a word.”

For Collen, it’s the calm before the storm. He and his Leppard bandmates are gearing up for a massive U.S. tour with Heart, to promote their latest record, “Mirrorball.” It’s an album of firsts for the band: first live album (plus three studio bonus tracks), first album available on iTunes, and first since leaving Mercury Records, their major-label home for three decades.

“It’s all coming into the next phase, really,” says Collen. “It’s pretty exciting.”

You’ve been playing together for so long, do you have to rehearse the old songs before a tour like this? Or is it pretty much all muscle memory at this point?
It is muscle memory but I think only because we’ve done it five years recently. We took a year off last year but before that we played five years straight. Mainly you have to run through all this stuff for the lighting cues, the sound and all that stuff. Not necessarily for the band but for the production of it all. It’s really important to get that kind of thing right.

You’re promoting a live album, “Mirrorball”—so can fans really expect the set list on this tour to be something of a greatest hits?
Absolutely. And it’s the first time they’re really be able to say, “Wow, these guys sound just like the album.” [Laughs] We saw Prince the other night and it’s amazing: He’ll dig into his career. He’ll go to, you know, something from early ‘80s or late ‘70s, stuff he would just pull out from every different era. But then he’ll rehearse with his band for four hours on a show day…and we just can’t afford that time. It would be great to do a tour a la Prince and do what he does: pull deep tracks, just do a verse and a chorus and a bit of a medley and stuff like that. But at the moment we have the luxury of a live album and three new studio cuts, which I’m sure we’ll try some of those as well.

I was surprised to learn that “Mirrorball” is the first Def Leppard album that’s going to be available digitally.
It is. That was really down to just legal issues, really, with our label [Mercury Records]. We’d been with our label for pretty much 30 years, so this was the first record not on the label. Also, the first time we actually had a break. We kind of closed the book on that, you know. The end of the last record we thought, “Let’s take a little break and do whatever.”

The digital holdout for your earlier material really just was because you and the label weren’t able to come to terms?
Yeah, it’s legal issues. If they would have [released the albums digitally], it would have been the record company getting whatever the percentage would have been, and us kind of suffering, like musicians usually do. So that never happened, and I’m kind of glad we held out. So there’s something to look forward to in the future.

You’ve also got a book coming out, “Def Leppard: The Definitive Visual History.” I understand it’s mostly photographs—but then all the guys in the band also tell some stories to accompany them?
Yeah, little snippets, little anecdotes. It’s a book all by the one [photographer], Ross Halfin, who’s been there since pretty much the first gig. Nori Watanabe, who’s one of our biggest fans—he’s from Japan—went through all of these gazillions of photos and actually compiled a shortlist for us to go over. So the little partnership between Ross, Nori and us just worked out great. And it’s very easy when you pull up a [photo] and you go, “Oh wow, that’s me and Steve [Clark, Def Leppard guitarist who died in 1991] in a parking lot in Amsterdam, and it’s raining”—you just have a little anecdote; what does that make you feel? So it was kind of cool doing that and there’s a lot of that in the book.

It seems like lately there’s been a slew of rock and roll memoirs; Steven Tyler, Sammy Hagar, Keith Richards. Have you or any of the other guys in the band ever thought about doing your memoirs or is that just something that you’re not interested in?
We’re not interested for the simple reason that if you sell that stuff, you have to kill everyone. [Laughs] I mean, I read the Keith Richards book, which I thought was amazing; it was everything I wanted to hear from him. He’s the iconic, ultimate rock star, rock freak, everything. But you can’t really go there; you can’t really do that unless you don’t plan on working with everyone again. You don’t want to throw people under the bus. Keith was cool with that, but you know, he’s Keith Richards; he can do what he f--- he wants. So I can’t really see the point in us doing [a memoir]; it would be pretty mild in comparison.

I don’t know. Based on some of the documentaries and stuff I’ve heard about Def Leppard, especially in the early days…
Yeah, all pretty mild, I’m afraid, when you compare it to the Keith thing. Oh yeah, another TV set out the window. Oh yeah, another groupie. It’s all passé.

When you first joined the band, they were in the middle of the “Pyromania” sessions—with Mutt Lange, who is famously one of the most perfectionist producers in the business. Was that an intimidating environment to walk into?
The first thing I did was the solo on “Stagefright” and Mutt said, “Wow, got it.”  So no, I wasn’t even slightly intimidated. Mutt’s my favorite musical person in the world—just super cool. I’ve been sitting next to him for years learning how to sing, how to play guitar. I just loved it. I think when I came in, I had a totally different approach to Steve [Clark] and to Pete [Willis, the guitarist Collen replaced]. I had a bit more fire and piss and vinegar. I’d been in a post-punk glam rock band before that…so that’s really what I brought to it. Some of the guitar solos that I replaced on the record—they were a bit bland. And I thought “S---, let’s turn this up a little bit.”