DEF LEPPARD Singer Offers Update On Covers Album, Upcoming Touring Activities

DEF LEPPARD's official web site has been updated with a brand new interview with the group's frontman Joe Elliott. A few excerpts from the chat follow:

Q: What was your general impression of the "Rock of Ages" tour?

Joe: "From our point of view, it was definitely an extremely big success! I was a little sceptical at first about co-headlining with anybody. As much as we did have a lot of fun playing with BRYAN ADAMS, to me it was kind of like, 'OK, does this mean we've lost our standing to a point where we're not capable of headlining?' But once I sucked it up, I got it. I thought it worked fine for COUNTING CROWS and LIVE — didn't seem to do them any harm to go out together, and it certainly didn't do BOB DYLAN and WILLIE NELSON any harm either. No one ever thought any of them weren't able of going out on their own. So once I got my head around it, it all worked out fine and from all points of view it was a roaring success!"

Q: Were you OK with the fact that you were touring on the back of a "best of" album?

Joe: "Yeah, a bit. We didn't have no new material to promote (save one new track on the 'Rock of Ages' album),so for me, it was a bit like treading nostalgia — which is the one thing that I've always promised myself we'd never do! I don't really want to do that, ever. So we all insisted that we'd do at least a couple of things we'd never do before. In the 85 minutes that we'd get to play our set, we chose to do the two song from our upcoming covers album. 'No Matter What' was also on the 'Rock Of Ages' album, of course, and then there was 'Rock On'. So besides all the hits, we did manage to present some new material as well, which was OK."

Q: After co-headlining with BRYAN ADAMS for a bunch of shows, you turned headliner around September? How come?

Joe: "In all fairness, and with absolutely no disrespect to Bryan, it was pretty obvious we had to be the headline act. At the beginning, nobody knew how it was gonna go but judging by all kinds of things, such as T-shirt sales or the reaction on ticket sales, most of the people were coming to see us. Because of that, the band's confidence went up a lot of course! The promoter's confidence in the band goes up, people wanna book you back, put you in bigger venues.....and all of a sudden we're playing the New Jersey Continental Airlines Arena again!"

Q: Could this tour with BRYAN ADAMS have worked in Europe?

Joe: "It's very different... He suffers in America the way we suffer in Europe. If this tour would've taken place in Europe, we'd definitely be opening for him, no doubt. He still plays stadiums in Europe, but can't really do that in America."

Q: You changed management in the middle of the tour. Was that good timing?

Joe: "It was very stressful! It turned out to be really hard, since there's a lot of history with (previous management) QPrime. As much as there's been a lot of frustration with the way they wanted to promote the band, I think that their version of us had grown apart from our version of us. Doing the whole switchover thing to HK Management was really difficult. One or two of us are not necessarily as brave to make a massive decision like this in the middle of the tour — you don't need the hassle. It wasn't overly pleasant to do it, but we dealt with it."

Q: On to this year, then. What are your plans, expectations and hopes?

Joe: "The only thing that's really set in stone is that we're having a photo shoot for the new album next week and after that, we're taking some time to get away from all this. Even though it's been quiet since the tour ended, we have been working so we need a little time off, write some songs and then collectively get together after that. The idea is, we got this covers album pretty much in the can already. We can start working on the next one so we can leapfrog ourselves. And instead of having lots of downtime, by the time we go out on the road on the next tour, we might have got half of the next album written — some of it even recorded, who knows! With that, when we go start working on the next record, we're a step ahead of ourselves. Put it like this..... with the BRYAN ADAMS tour, we had two identical stages. When we were playing a show, the stage for the next show was already being set up because if we would have only one stage, there wouldn't be time to disassemble the stage, ship it to the next town and build it up there within one day. So when we were playing one show, the other stage was traveling or being set up in the next town already. Basically, the Friday stage would be used on the Sunday gig. The Saturday stage would be used on the Monday show, and so forth. We're trying to do that with the albums as well now. Does that make sense?"

Q: What's the current status on "Yeah!" the long-awaited covers album and the subsequent tour?

Joe: "I think it's still scheduled for release in May, so organizing promo might be starting around March already. It's not gonna be full-on right away, but more like a day here, a day there, a weekend here, a week there..... We're supposed to be going out on the road in the summer, but keep in mind that there are places where we can get too soon. For a band to play a town where they just played some 4-6 months ago, you have got to be U2 or GREEN DAY, for people to want to see you again so soon. For us to go out this summer, it's gotta be something really special, so we have to make a big deal prepping this properly."

Read the entire interview at DefLeppard.com.