With new album Songs From The Sparkle Lounge imminent, Def Leppard singer Joe Elliott chooses his essential Leppard tracks, from Photograph and Animal to new song Love
In this Def Leppard interview, vocalist Joe Elliott chooses his essential tracks from both new Def Leppard album Songs From The Sparkle Lounge and the band's extensive back catalogue.
Joe Elliott's Essential Def Leppard Songs
Photograph
From: Pyromania
Joe: “Because for the kind of music we make, it is the classic pop song. It’s got all the right bits to it – it’s got a good storyline, it’s got great heart behind it, great melodies, brilliant guitars and it’s all wrapped up in about three and a half minutes, which all the best songs are. We took a leaf out of the Beatles’ and the Stones’ book and kept it short.”
Animal From Hysteria
Animal
From: Hysteria
Joe: “I think Animal, again, is another classic pop song. It’s got all the ingredients of a song that I would rush out and buy myself if it was done by somebody else and that’s how I normally judge our stuff.”
Eye Of The Hunter
From: Pyromaniac
Joe: “Eye Of The Hunter from Pyromaniac is a great rock track. I love the beginning riff and I know it’s one of Clarkey’s (Phil Clarke, guitar) favourites. I know the lyrics are a little Rambo-esque but it was basically me sitting down right in the middle of the Falklands War and going: ‘This is a bit like Vietnam, isn’t it, but it’s on the other side of the world and it’s the English version.’ We just decided it was a rocky enough track for us to not just write the poppy lyrics but to try something with a bit of an edge to it, which we have done before and we will do again.”
Have You Ever Needed Someone So Bad?
From: Adrenalise
Joe: “I think that’s probably one of our better slow songs. It was from the Adrenalise album – I actually preferred it to Love Bites, which was a bigger hit for some reason in America and in England. That said, Love Bites got to Number 1 but the other one actually sold more.”
New Def Leppard Album Songs From The Sparkle Lounge
Love
From: Songs From The Sparkle Lounge
Joe: “I’ve got to take my hat off to Rick Savage and I will take a plaudit for forcing him to do it. I earned it for pushing him and saying: ‘You’ve got to finish that song that you started.’ He may well have done anyway but I definitely gave him a push over the edge. I think it’s the most ambitious thing that he’s ever written and it was certainly a stretch to do. We’d certainly acknowledge the Queen influence on that song but we tried to put our own spin on it. I think a few of the tracks on the new album actually reference other bands – there’s a track on there called Bad Actors which is kind of from the AC/DC book of songwriting but so what, you know? It’s good to do a song like that every now and again.”
New Def Leppard Album Songs From The Sparkle Lounge
C’mon C’mon
From: Songs From The Sparkle Lounge
“This song would absolutely have to be on there because to me that is just like everything that we grew up listening to, all crammed into three and a half minutes. It’s got every aspect of Radio 1 in 1972 to 1973 for me. It’s Slade, T-Rex, The Glitter Band, you name it…it’s all that groovy pop glam stuff and I’m immensely proud of making a record that sounds like that.”
Promises
From: Euphoria
“Again it’s another classic Leps song – it’s got melodies, it’s got all the arrangements and all the subtleties and dynamics. Dynamics is a word that gets used less and less these days but for us they’re very very important. We like the way that songs build then go back down a bit, crescendo back up again. It’s a very important aspect for me and something that you can’t ignore.”
Die Hard The Hunter from Pyromania
Die Hard The Hunter
From: Pyromania
“Eye Of The Hunter from Pyromania is a great rock track. I love the beginning riff and I know it’s one of Clarkey’s (Phil Clarke, guitar) favourites. I know the lyrics are a little Rambo-esque but it was basically me sitting down right in the middle of the Falklands War and going: ‘This is a bit like Vietnam, isn’t it, but it’s on the other side of the world and it’s the English version.’ We just decided it was a rocky enough track for us to not just write the poppy lyrics but to try something with a bit of an edge to it, which we have done before and we will do again.”
From The Inside
From Retro Active/ Have You Ever Needed Someone So Bad? B-side
“This song is absolutely not typical for us whatsoever. For me, it’s a bit of a departure in that we actually sat down with an acoustic guitar and we wrote this song. I actually wrote it for a TV show in Ireland but we ended up recording it and putting it on Retro. It was all written about a walk over O’Connell Bridge in Dublin once, where I saw, in the middle of the day, about six kids with needles hanging out of their arms. Just sitting on the floor asleep, brain-dead on heroin. So it was my attempt at writing about the drug from the drug’s point of view, as in ‘From The Inside’ and what it was doing to the kid. It was the first time I’d really written an observational lyric before – this was actually poetry set to music rather than a set of words made to fit a song. And it was sad poetry as well because it was heartbreaking to see. They were all about 16 years old and half of them are probably dead by now, or they’ve wasted half their lives on this terrible drug.”
Def Leppard's Earliest Release
Getcha Rocks Off
From: The Def Leppard E.P.
“I think it’s worth noting a song like this off the Def Leppard E.P., just because of the actual energy and power. That songs was one of those things that we just banged together and it had a natural momentum. It didn’t have a great deal of thought behind it. Pete (Willis, former guitarist) came in with a riff and we went from there. Really, it’s got all the faults that you might expect it would
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