DEF LEPPARD Singer JOE ELLIOTT Is 'Back To Normal' After Battling Vocal Issues

DEF LEPPARD guitarist Phil Collen was recently interviewed by the Corpus Christi, Texas radio station C101. You can now listen to the chat below. A couple of excerpts follow (transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET).

On how DEF LEPPARD frontman Joe Elliott is doing, less than two months after the band was forced to postpone the last ten dates of its tour with STYX and TESLA due to Elliott suffering from vocal issues:

Phil: "He's great. We toured nine months last year and Joe was actually touring with walking pneumonia for most of the time. And when he got better… He actually got a nasty cough just after Christmas, after pneumonia had gone, [he got] this awful hacking cough. So that's really what kind of messed him up. You know, when we'd done these dates in Florida… We'd only done one show and, all of a sudden, his voice just kind of went out. And the doctor said, 'Look, you've gotta stop singing for a month.' So he's doing great now. He's actually all back to normal."

On the setlist for DEF LEPPARD's upcoming tour with REO SPEEDWAGON and TESLA:

Phil: "It just keeps updating, upgrading, getting more muscular — the whole thing — every time we go out. We're obviously gonna be promoting the new album, 'Def Leppard', so we're gonna try and put newer songs in as well. I mean, that's always a tough one — you know, when you put a new album out, you'd love to play everything, but the fans obviously wanna hear classics as well. So we're kind of [doing our best to] dance across that line, where you play new stuff, but not too many."

DEF LEPPARD's latest, self-titled album entered The Billboard 200 chart at position No. 10 with first-week sales of just over 30,000 units — nearly all from pure album sales.

The album is the band's first studio effort since "Songs From the Sparkle Lounge" in 2008.