DEF LEPPARD's JOE ELLIOTT Discusses Making Of 'Sparkle Lounge'

May 3, 2008

Gary Graff of Billboard.com recently conducted an interview with DEF LEPPARD frontman Joe Elliott. An excerpt from the chat follows:

Billboard.com: "Songs from the Sparkle Lounge" sounds like a kind of default DEF LEPPARD album, something that's almost "easy" for the band to make.

Joe Elliott: Well, yeah, I suppose that's one way of putting it. There was a thought process behind it that we wanted to deliver a specific kind of record, but that specific kind of record was, if you like, a non-specific kind of record. We weren't going to try to theme it to the point of "Pyromania", where it's got a drum sound that was definitive in 1983 ... [or] "Hysteria", when we had a definite, like, overall '80s sound. With this one it was a case of, "Let's just hone in on the songwriting and we'll use 2008 production techniques, if you like, to make it sound more like a '70s record." It sounds very complicated, but it actually wasn't.

Billboard.com: Did doing a covers album [2005's "Yeah!"] before this have any impact on "Sparkle Lounge"?

Joe Elliott: I think a lot of it is overspill from the "Yeah!" album. When we went in to do the covers record we didn't have to worry at all about one word or one note from a writing point of view; all we did was ... record these songs that made us all, [at] the age of 10 or 11 or 12, plead for our first guitar. So then when it came to this one it was a case of, "Alright, let's try to sit down and write some songs that, if we were out buying records, they would be the kinds of songs we [would] want to buy." So we all just sat down and wrote what we thought were meaningful songs.

Read the entire interview at Billboard.com.

Find more on

Prev More News Next

Comments Disclaimer And Information

BLABBERMOUTH.NET uses the Facebook Comments plugin to let people comment on content on the site using their Facebook account. The comments reside on Facebook servers and are not stored on BLABBERMOUTH.NET. To comment on a BLABBERMOUTH.NET story or review, you must be logged in to an active personal account on Facebook. Once you're logged in, you will be able to comment. User comments or postings do not reflect the viewpoint of BLABBERMOUTH.NET and BLABBERMOUTH.NET does not endorse, or guarantee the accuracy of, any user comment. To report spam or any abusive, obscene, defamatory, racist, homophobic or threatening comments, or anything that may violate any applicable laws, use the "Report to Facebook" and "Mark as spam" links that appear next to the comments themselves. To do so, click the downward arrow on the top-right corner of the Facebook comment (the arrow is invisible until you roll over it) and select the appropriate action. You can also send an e-mail to blabbermouthinbox(@)gmail.com with pertinent details. BLABBERMOUTH.NET reserves the right to "hide" comments that may be considered offensive, illegal or inappropriate and to "ban" users that violate the site's Terms Of Service. Hidden comments will still appear to the user and to the user's Facebook friends. If a new comment is published from a "banned" user or contains a blacklisted word, this comment will automatically have limited visibility (the "banned" user's comments will only be visible to the user and the user's Facebook friends).