Joe Elliott has graced some star-studded stages in his time, but none that match the wealth of talent, which gathered in March at New York’s Barclays Center to celebrate Def Leppard’s induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. The band’s new album is The Further Adventures Of.“I was standing there with a daft grin on my face thinking, ‘It doesn’t get any fucking better than this!’” I never regretted moving here.”ĭown ’n’ Outz play Academy, Dublin, Thursday, Dec 18. From the moment I laid eyes on Ireland, it struck me as special. OK, so things were different from now: but you can say that about anywhere. The part of London where I lived… that was grim. Many wondered why one of the world’s biggest rock stars would wish to put down roots in grim, recession-becalmed Ireland. In the mid-1980s, at the height of Leppard’s popularity, Elliot relocated to Stepaside in Dublin, where he still lives. We wrote really, really catchy choruses - it’s what we did,” Elliot says. What we had trouble with was coming up with what people called ‘the credible album tracks’. Whether it actually turned out to be a hit or not was another matter: they had the potential to be hits. We always had a ‘hit’ - the song that was the obvious single. “Of all the rock bands, apart from Bon Jovi, perhaps, I don’t think there’s anyone more commercial than us. So long as the band were churning out mega-hits such as ‘Animal’ and ‘Pour Some Sugar On Me’, the label was happy to leave them to it. Whatever other grumbles he may have about the music industry, Def Leppard never had to worry about external interference. Nowadays, you get one shot - if your album doesn’t sell, you are dropped. You had a security blanket for five or six years. People wanted the security of having a record deal - if you had a deal in the 1970s, 1980s, even the 1990s, you were looking at three, four albums. “Twenty years ago, if someone said that you’d have called them a liar. The Down ’n’ Outz, who earlier this year released their second album of Mott-related covers, co-exist with Def Leppard.Įlliot is in the middle of writing a new Leppard album, which will be the first the 100m-sellers have released without a record label. We realised their might be legs in the project.” They couldn’t believe what they’d just heard. Then, we went to the bar before Mott’s set and were nearly knocked over by all these kids rushing up. It was only supposed to be for 45 minutes - we rehearsed, did the gig, enjoyed it. It was a very 1960s kind of attitude: you know, ‘Any old name will do’. I put a ‘z’ on at the end, the way Slade might have. I was reading a newspaper article about Alex Higgins, the snooker player: the phrase ‘down and outs’ was used. “We didn’t even have a name until about a week before. “It was as if The Beatles had reunited and, as the support act, someone was performing ‘Live and Let Die’ and ‘Imagine’,” says Elliot. He would perform songs associated with Mott the Hoople, yet not part of the classic catalogue: tunes from frontman Ian Hunter’s solo career and from spin-off projects, such as Mott and British Lions. He was put in contact with British heavy rockers, The Quireboys, who agreed to be his backing band. “I was thinking… ‘Well, Def Leppard can hardly open for them?’ That would be ridiculous.
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