DEF LEPPARD Guitarist Talks About MAN-RAZE Project

November 8, 2005

Rockdetector.com's Mark Brimble recently spoke to DEF LEPPARD guitarist Phil Collen about his new MAN-RAZE project, a union with his former GIRL colleague Simon Laffy on bass and Paul Cook of the SEX PISTOLS on drums. Although the band made its live debut on September 27 at The Spitz venue in London, and a single, "Skin Crawl", is in the shops now, the group's debut album is still in the recording stage. An excerpt from the chat follows:

Rockdetector.com: I have read that you also recorded dance remixes for some of the songs. Is that true?

Phil Collen: "Yeah, there's a couple. There's a song called 'Halo' which I haven't heard the mix of yet but apparently it's incredible. It's kind-of a rock, dance and industrial-type thing. It's a bit like an updated version of THE PRODIGY. It's that kind of style. I'm still dying to hear the bloody thing!"

Rockdetector.com: How many tracks have made the final list for the first album?

Phil Collen: "We've got 12. But interestingly enough we'd actually finished the album, but when we started rehearsing and playing the gig we all thought we should make a few changes to some of these songs. That's one of the things with DEF LEPPARD that we're always complaining about. We never really get a chance to road-test songs. It's happened a few times that we've done a song and thought 'this is great', then we played it live, and then we heard the album back and thought 'oh my god, this is too slow' or 'wouldn't it be great if we put this part in that song'. So I think there is something to be said for playing stuff live beforehand."

Rockdetector.com: Was "Skin Crawl" picked as the first single because it is the most commercial or are there other tracks that were considered?

Phil Collen: "Oh, there are some way more commercial tracks than that but we didn't want to go off with that stuff straight away. There's one track called 'Closer to Me' that kind-of has reggae themes but with a lot of percussion which is really quite poppy. But I think 'Skin Crawl' was kind of representative. It's a rock song that's got a few different dimensions to it."

Phil also discussed future plans for DEF LEPPARD, former glory days with GIRL and how he nearly joined IRON MAIDEN. Read the full interview at Rockdetector.com.

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