DEF LEPPARD's 'Viva Hysteria!' Shows To Be Professionally Recorded

Jeb Wright of Classic Rock Revisited recently conducted an interview with DEF LEPPARD guitarist Phil Collen. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Classic Rock Revisited: The big news is that DEF LEPPARD is going to do a residency in Las Vegas at The Joint at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino.

Phil: We are going to do "Hysteria" from start to finish. We are actually doing two sets; we are going to open up for ourselves. We are going to do 45 minutes, take a break and then do "Hysteria". We are learning hundreds of songs and we are going to be doing songs that we've not played in years, or that we've never done. It is going to be really great. The first set will never be the same; we will change it every night. They will all be DEF LEPPARD songs. We may play songs that we've covered of other people. It is going to be very fun for us. We are not sure what we are going to play. We are digging stuff up from the first album and the second album and we are just going to really do a lot of stuff that the fans will love.

Classic Rock Revisited: How did the whole residency at the Hard Rock even come up?

Phil: Joe [Elliott, DEF LEPPARD singer] and I have wanted to do this for probably ten, or fifteen, years. CHEAP TRICK used to do this sort of thing in theaters. They would do the entire "Dream Police" album, or something like that, and we thought that was cool. We wanted to do something like that. The Hard Rock people came to us and asked if we wanted to do the residency and if we would play an entire album. We said we wanted to do "Hysteria" in its entirety because we've never done that before.

Classic Rock Revisited: You do play a lot of those songs in your main set, but you've never done the whole thing.

Phil: We've never played it all the way through. And, we've never done it like this, with no gaps and no talking in-between songs. It is going to be really tricky to do it. When I've seen bands before, there are times where I really want them to play the next song that is on the album that they are playing right then. Now, we are going to do just that. It is going to be great.

Classic Rock Revisited: What will the stage show be like?

Phil: We are going to do something really special. We want the production to be really cool.

Classic Rock Revisited: Are you going to record any of the Vegas shows?

Phil: Absolutely. We are going to do "Hysteria" live.

Read the entire interview from Classic Rock Revisited.