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Post by Greta on Jul 16, 2019 17:02:42 GMT -8
My transcript of the interview. I'd never heard the Rock in Rio heartbeart story before.
Neil Jones: It’s Neil Jones here at Download. We’re in the dressing room here with Def Leppard and Phil Collen. How are you, sir?
Phil: I’m wonderful, thank you, yes.
Neil Jones: I should say the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Phil Collen. Has it gotten bored yet? Bored of hearing that yet?
Phil: No, no. That’s fine. We’re not really one for award ceremonies and shows like that, I’ve gotta say, you know, it’s kind of—they’re always a bit self-important and stuff like that? And that’s not really who we are. But we’ll take it! We’ll take it anyway. It’s kinda nice that, well, you know. Other people actually—there’s a perception that goes with that. So it’s like all of a sudden they kind of treat you different. It’s weird.
Neil Jones: There’s a lot of bands who say they’re not bothered about it but then, when they get the nod, suddenly they are interested. It is the one to get though, isn’t it?
Phil: Apparently. Yeah, I’m, you know. Like I said, not really into that part. I think the real—when we done the Diamond Award ceremony, that was really cool. Because we had, you know, if you go ten times platinum or more in America, you get a diamond album. So the first one we ever did, we’re up at the podium and there’s like Jimmy Page, Elton John, Billy Joel. It was just nonstop and you’re like … whoa. And then it really kind of hit home. So that one was really special. And you know, again, you know, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, there’s a vote. There’s a vote that’s, obviously, it only counts as one vote, the fan vote, which was overwhelming this year. We were so proud of our fans. And for them it was just great, ’cause they were like—I’ve actually had people that were almost in tears that we actually hadn’t been nominated ever before. So when we got that, it was great for them. You know?
Neil Jones: And when you did that Diamond Award then and you saw Jimmy Page and Elton John and Billy Joel, was that a penny-drop moment when you thought, “We are now in that category”?
Phil: It was! And what was funny, you know, everyone was in the foyer if you want or whatever. It was in New York. But when we got up on the podium and said thank you, it really hit home. We’d been, like, busy for forever. We hadn’t taken any time off. It’d just been like tour, album, tour, album, forever. That was the first moment we actually got to reflect and go “This is actually pretty amazing.”
Neil Jones: [laughs] It can really go to your head. It sounds like you, in all the years we’ve been interviewing Def Leppard, all of you seem like you’ve got your feet very much on the ground.
Phil: It is. I think part of the British upbringing, you know, it’s always been a struggle. It’s, you know, very working-class beginnings origins. We still kind of apply that kind of mentality, you know. It’s still—if you want it to work, you’ve gotta work. You can never stop that. And that’s important. We see that working all the time. So we consequently apply that, you know, if you start laying back and taking it easy, someone else is gonna be there.
Neil Jones: It’s a working-class mentality as well, you know. I know the guys are from Sheffield. You’re from London, but it’s a similar sort of thing as an upbringing, isn’t it?
Phil: Absolutely, you know, again. My mum and dad were down the air raid shelters and stuff. My dad was a truck driver, a lorry driver, and yeah. We were all the same thing, the same person, really.
Neil Jones: Yeah. So, listen. You’ve been touring, obviously, the Hysteria album. I’m not suggesting you ever go through the motions, but, you know. Same thing every night … do you ever have to dial it in?
Phil: No! It’s different every night. And a lot of the time, you know, we done that tour in the States with Journey and it was arenas and stadiums. So every night was very different. And we’d flip-flop who was headlining. So again, that was different. Then we had to do Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK, just the Hysteria thing. Before that it was kind of like just a bit of everything, you know. So, them songs are really hard to sing and play. Like some of the Hysteria stuff. There’s like four songs, Run Riot, that’s always a struggle. And that actually never gets any easier. So there’s that one. And I actually quite look forward to it ’cause you never know if it’s gonna go t*ts up and kind of have a, you know, go off the tracks side moment. But for the most part we keep it together. [laughs]
Neil Jones: I mean, you know, Hysteria is a sonically perfect album. Mutt Lange, you know, had the Midas touch that album as well. When you were doing the album, when you were layering those harmonies, was there a part of your mind that was going “we’re gonna have to do this live”?
Phil: No. Never. Because some of the songs it was like, well this is gonna be impossible. And we always thought about the Queen thing, you know, Bohemian Rhapsody. And you go—you make a record to be immortal. You figure the other stuff out and we actually had a funny story. Love Bites which has banks, millions of vocals, with all these guitar parts and everything, we’d never played it as a band. Everything was done separately, obviously, on that song. It was all like, bit here, and then, three months later you do another bit. Song goes to number one in America on the Billboard charts and we’re … oh. We’ve gotta play this song!
Neil Jones: [laughs]
Phil: So we had to go into—I remember where it was. It was Vancouver. We had to go into this rehearsal room for two days and just keep playing this thing, working. Me and Steve was like, you know, if there was four guitar parts, you’d have to make a collage of two, you know. Okay, we can do that.
Neil Jones: [laughs]
Phil: And then you’ve gotta sing it on top of it and it was SO hard. I remember going oh my God, just, this is gonna be awful! And it was really crap for a while. And now, we just, it’s like breathing. We don’t even think about it. But yeah, so back to that original question, that was a—you can’t worry about that. You can always do a version of it anyway.
Neil Jones: Yeah. I caught the O2 gig in London and, you know, so many bands these days rely on a lot of technology behind the scenes.
Phil: Yeah.
Neil Jones: And I always pay a lot of attention just to see who’s live. But you guys are the real deal there, aren’t you. Those harmonies are for real.
Phil: They’re real. I mean, we’re really proud of the fact that we don’t use samples or tapes and that and it’s really singing. And some nights you can hear it. Which is great! You know, absolutely. And it also keeps it exciting. You know, it means you put more effort and energy in. We’d be warming up. Joe’s already started if he hasn’t been doing interviews. We do about an hour or so, sometimes two hours, of vocal warm ups every day.
Neil Jones: Does that adrenaline always kick in? You’ve done so many big gigs now, but when you walk up the stairs and you hear the crowd, is it always the same?
Phil: I don’t—and this is really funny. You know, Rock in Rio, not last year, the year before. It’s like an alter-ego going up on stage, you know. And again, it’s the air, it’s like a different person. It’s not me. I’ll go up there and it’s like—I actually thought I was gonna walk out on stage, there’s 90-odd thousand there. I want to see if my heartbeat beats any faster. And it actually didn’t.
Neil Jones: Wow!
Phil: And I’ve done that a few times and thought wow, that’s interesting! So, for the most part, no. But there’s something else going on, you know, it’s the performance, and it’s the band. And you know, we’re really all so proud of our band, you know. So even if one of us has a rough night, the band is usually on fire.
Neil Jones: Do you think if you could rewind the clock and test your heartbeat for your first gig with Leppard it would be going nineteen to the dozen?
Phil: It would. I remember we are on the Marquis in London and my guitar strap broke on my first solo—I was think it was Rock (till You Drop). We’d just recorded Pyromania and it went [strap breaking sound] and I’m just looking at them like … I had to do it on the drum riser.
Neil Jones: [laughs] Baptism by fire.
Phil: Absolutely.
Neil Jones: We were talking earlier about playing the same songs, but you always like to scratch other musical itches. You’ve done Manraze, of course. Is that still an ongoing concern? Is there more stuff to come?
Phil: There is. You know, I done the G3 tour last year. I got some of the people from Delta Deep, which is an extreme blues project, but yeah, I think I may even do a solo album. So I’ve got all this stuff floating around what I would do, you know, Paul Cooke said, “Instead of Manraze, you should’ve done a solo album.” And I thought, well that’s an interesting thing, you know. So I may do that. You know, it’s just getting time because it’s just getting busier and busier and busier. Which is great.
Neil Jones: I was gonna say. It’s not a bad problem, to be busy. How far does that schedule map out ahead?
Phil: Um, we usually like to have a two- or three-year plan on the go, but it opens up. And it’s got really silly right now, which is great. I mean I’m so pleased and happy about it. We all are. It’s not like “Oh God, we’ve gotta do more.” I’ve dreamed of this since I was a kid and to do it at sixty-one years old, run around, act like children, and we actually get—the singing gets better, the playing gets better, the performing, the songwriting. We couldn’t have done this thirty years ago. This is a different band.
Neil Jones: It’s like top of the game.
Phil: Yes.
Neil Jones: Whatever reason your journey’s taken you, you’re at the top of your game, aren’t you?
Phil: Yeah!
Neil Jones: And you are, let’s be real, you’re barely seen with a shirt on. But if I had the body you’ve got, you know. You always work out a lot. I know that you’re as a vegan as well, but you like to look after yourself, don’t you.
Phil: Definitely! And I feel better than I did when I was thirty. I mean absolutely. I haven’t got any creaks or aches or joint pain. And I see a lot of my mates that I used to go to school with and they’re like [groans] “it’s a slow thing,” and it’s like, no. It’s really good.
Neil Jones: You are defying the laws of aging. And you’ve also found time to do your own, to be Mutt Lange and produce your buddies in Tesla. Shock is another sonically amazing-sounding album. Did you pick up stuff from Mutt?
Phil: Everything. [laughs] Everything I played I got from him. We did a lot of the stuff on tours. Especially the guitars. We’d be in, you know, a room like this, and it’d be, you know, today we’ve got half an hour. Let’s do a guitar part. Let’s nail that. And we done that pretty much for a whole tour and then got in a studio and we had about a week and a half to finish off lead vocals and drums and stuff like that. So it was amazing and it was again, you know, the trick is to be inspired. And to inspire everyone. So okay, you know, if you go, we want a song that sounds a bit like this and something like that. Somebody will go, “Well what about this?” You know, Frank would come up with something that sounds like Bread! David Gates and Bread. If we worked on it and changed it a bit it ended up sounding more like Oasis, you know. So you just do that and it’s so exciting and rewarding.
Neil Jones: I was chatting to Troy earlier and he actually said, which amazed me, that he hadn’t listened to any demos and that the first time he heard of the songs was when he was playing them!
Phil: Yeah.
Neil Jones: That’s extraordinary!
Phil: It was great and I actually got into overplay, you know. Just going like, well, you know, just overplay, and we can mess with later on. I just want you to do whatever. Just breathe it, just feel it, and do that. And it was great. Some of the songs he was doing like a Keith Moon type thing and he wouldn’t have done that had it been like, worked out and stuff like that. We’d done all the guitars. In Def Leppard, we do the drums last because we change the vocals, we change guitars. Mutt always does that. And at the end you go, okay, the drum can be sympathetic to the song and what’s going on. ’cause if you do it the other way around, you’re kind of stuck and it’s a bit rigid and that. But with this, you know, it just flowed. And getting Troy to do just to do that and like I said, some of the stuff was really overplayed. You know, everyone was going, really?! And I was like yes! This is great. You know?
Neil Jones: [laughs] So listen, final question for you. An inevitable question, some would say, as a journalist. But future Leppard material?
Phil: Started it last year, actually. Slow process with Def Leppard [laughs]
Neil Jones: [laughs] Never knowingly in a rush!
Phil: I know, right? And it’s getting stuff done. But same thing, you know. We actually recorded a single, you know, a Christmas song, while we were in tour on Florida last year. It was like a hundred and something degrees and here are we doing this Christmas song backstage! We’re singing it and everything. So we’re gonna do the same thing. We start with basic tracks. You do some guitars, do a few more, do some vocals, and then right at the end you do the drums. Or as you go, you know, you kind of start figuring them out.
Neil Jones: Well listen. Def Leppard, top of their game, headline Download. To people of our age it will always be Donington.
Phil: I keep saying that and when I saw Download it doesn’t feel right.
Neil Jones: Exactly. Well listen, you get to go on stage. I’ll let you get limbered up, but for now, Phil Collen, thanks for speaking to us.
Phil: Pleasure. Thank you.
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