DEF LEPPARD Frontman: 'It's Human Nature Not To Latch Onto New Stuff'

June 3, 2005

DEF LEPPARD frontman Joe Elliott recently told the New York Times that, if all goes as planned, the band's summer tour with BRYAN ADAMS and their upcoming all-covers album will succeed in bolstering the band's popularity, which has slipped since the 1980s heyday of multiplatinum albums such as "Pyromania" (1983) and "Hysteria" (1987).

"It's a great way of reintroducing us, I think, to the masses who may have forgotten we exist," the 45-year-old Elliott said. "The hardcore we're fine with, they're good. But it's the ones who stop you in the airport and go, 'Hey, you guys still around?' This kind of lets them know we still are, on a slightly bigger scale."

Recent DEF LEPPARD albums such as "Slang" (1996),"Euphoria" (1999) and "X" (2002) haven't added additional platinum to the walls of Elliott, drummer Rick Allen, bassist Rick Savage and guitarists Phil Collen and Vivian Campbell — which, Elliott says, isn't so surprising.

"It's human nature not to latch onto new stuff," the singer said. "Let's be honest, not many people go to see a ROLLING STONES concert hoping that they're going to play something off the new album, and that's no disrespect to the STONES at all. But most people go to see 'Jumpin' Jack Flash' and 'Satisfaction' and 'Brown Sugar', and that's just the sad, tragic fact.

"It's hard to listen to the new stuff," Elliott said, "because you can't get the old stuff out of your head. I think the only artists that have managed to kind of buck that trend are U2 and STING. That's all I can think of off the top of my head."

Elliott said that he expects some new material to emerge from rehearsals for DEF LEPPARD's summer tour.

"It's one of those things we'll probably do in the evening, when we're just chatting, and we'll play each other the demos we've got," Elliott said. "We're constantly working. It's like the analogy of the old swan: It's all beautiful and serene on top but, if you look underneath the water, there's things flapping around at 50 miles per hour.

"That's what we're like, always splashing around and working on something or other."

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