JOE ELLIOTT Talks DOWN 'N OUTZ, Future Of DEF LEPPARD

Jonny Abrams of Sport.co.uk recently conducted an interview with DEF LEPPARD singer Joe Elliott about DOWN 'N OUTZ — a project fronted by Elliott, backed by THE QUIREBOYS and playing rare tracks connected only by MOTT THE HOOPLE. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Sport.co.uk: Have you had much feedback from MOTT THE HOOPLE themselves?

Elliott: I don't think any of them have heard it except Ian Hunter. He thinks "England Rocks" is "very spiffy." Secretly I'm sure he loves the fact that we've done this. I sent John Fiddler"One More Chance to Run" and he said something like, "Wow, it sounds like you had more fun recording it than when we did it!" I haven't heard anything from Overend Watts but when I saw him after we played our set at Hammersmith he came up and said, "I almost cried. I can't believe those songs mean that much to you. I didn't think they meant that much to anybody." Ian's comment was, "Get 'em off, they're going down too well!" (Laughs) The worst that's going to happen is that somebody who's a big MOTT fan will say, "I prefer the originals." The opposite of that is that a lot of people — maybe DEF LEPPARD fans or QUIREBOYS fans or whatever — might say, "Wow, I've never heard these songs before." You only have to look at the comments under the "England Rocks" video on YouTube to see the vastly different interpretations of what we're doing, from "they should just go back to being DEF LEPPARD" to "this is brilliant and LEPPARD fans will love this because it shows where their roots were" and all that kind of stuff. From the actual MOTT camp, I've had nothing but good wishes and good advice, really.

Sport.co.uk: Where does DEF LEPPARD stand now?

Elliott: We're having a year off the road. After 32 years' unbroken service to this band and five years of non-stop touring, I was the first of us to say, "I'm not doing it next year." I can't be wheeled out to sing those songs every night for no reason. Unless we've got a new album out, what's the point? I don't need the money that badly so if I don't get any artistic satisfaction from it then there's no point. So we're taking a year off to recharge our batteries individually so that when we come back together, there's a new, refreshed energy for us to exploit, if you like. We're all relaxed, doing what we want to do, and we don't have to report in every day. If somebody wants to go and climb Mount Everest and I don't find out about it until they get back down then good for them! I don't need a daily update or a Twitter, thank you very much. But we are doing stuff to prepare for next year. Literally this week we're going to be ploughing through live recordings because we're going to release a live album, so we've basically got to listen to all of them, decide which nights we were on fire and use those versions. There's talk of a box set and we're writing some new stuff. We can be at home writing and emailing bits and bobs to each other — "here, I've got this song, it needs lyrics" — so we don't have to be in the same room to do that. So we're doing bits and bobs under the radar that, by the end of this year, will become a nice, big lumpy mess that needs sorting out, if you like! But we are going to be back out next year, for sure.

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"England Rocks", the new video from DOWN 'N OUTZ, can be viewed below. The clip features cameo appearances by Alice Cooper, Brian May and Ian Hunter, among others.