Are we close to the point of seeing CDs disappear entirely? Could that happen?
Hey, listen: Vinyl's almost disappeared. 78's disappeared. I'm not a soothsayer, and I can't really say if people are going to give up on the physical side of intellectual property. But we may be a dying breed, those of us who still crave the idea of physically holding something while we listen to it. That's why we still put out the booklets with all the information in them, because we hope that people will still be reading it by the time they get to song five. It's like when I had 12-inch vinyl as a kid: I used to read the liner notes. If it took forever to read all the special thanks, it was my right to do that. Somebody under 25, maybe they genuinely just don't care. They never had it in the first place to miss it.
A lot of people hardly seem to even listen to albums all the way through anymore thanks to downloading and the iPod thing. How do you as an artist deal with that? Do you have an iPod yourself?
I do. In fact, I just broke it. It fell and got crushed in one of our live rig's hydraulics. It still plays, but I can't read the screen. I've got to find somebody to replace my screen. I'm on my fourth iPod now because the other three exploded.
You must have a lot of songs loaded up, then. How many on your current one?
It's a 60-gig, and there's 37 gigs used, so about 10,000 songs. I'm trying to get all of my collection on it when I go on tour so I don't miss anything.
I'm the same way. I've got about 13,800 on mine.
It's taken me ages to get them on there. I've got them all backed up back home, so I can bail myself out, but it's a pain in the arse.
But back to your original question about albums and downloading. It's kind of a double-edged sword. The songs on our album, Yeah!, are by artists whom we didn't necessarily buy albums of. When I was a kid, a 7-inch single was all you could afford to buy, maybe one a week. You'd have to be very frugal about what you might pick. For example, nobody bought into the idea of buying a Sweet album, they bought into the idea of buying a Sweet single. We go on and on about how great "Hell Raiser," "Action," "Blockbuster," and "Ballroom Blitz" are, but ask anyone outside of me and Phil [Collen, Def Leppard guitarist] to name an album track of theirs, and they couldn't do it.
So if someone decides to buy the single or a track off our new album from iTunes or wherever, to me it's just a digital version of us going into a record store and buying a 7-inch single. I don't really have a problem with that. If they're buying the single, they're buying into the myth of the song and not into the band. Like everybody, I understand and get that people may love "Pour Some Sugar on Me" but not really dig us. Like I bought Jo Jo Gunne's "Run Run Run" when I was 12 — it's the only song I ever heard of theirs. I don't know if they're a good band or a bad band. But I have fond memories of them by the fact that I haven't "tainted" them. I haven't heard a second song that I've thought was awful.
The Now! albums are huge sellers because you get the cream of the crop, the hit singles. And if somebody just wants one or two K.C. and the Sunshine Band songs instead of an entire album's worth, then you have the opportunity. I know it's a little weird. It's like buying one slice of bread instead of an entire loaf. But if that's all you want, you should be able to buy it.
Yeah!, Baby
Speaking of Yeah!, I have to say thanks for putting together a pretty cool covers compilation.
Yeah, it is pretty cool, isn't it? We're very happy with the way it turned out.
But the songs on Yeah! specifically were on the radio when we were 12 and 14 years old. And radio in England was in such a sorry state — as opposed to now, with satellite radio and a thousand other choices. Back then, there were two outlets for music that were of any use to people our age. One was Radio 1 on the BBC, which was only a Top 40 station. So, for every Sweet song that we got to hear, we had to sit through Donnie Osmond, Perry Como, or whatever. And the other station was Radio Luxembourg, the pirate radio station that had a slightly more adventurous playlist. That's where we got to hear things like ELO's "10538 Overture." I mean, it got played on the BBC, but it got played four times as much on Radio Luxembourg. When you hear a riff like that when you're 12 years old, it comes under the banner of rock, even if it was on 7-inch vinyl and was the most commercial, lead-off track on the record.
That's why we always had leanings toward pop music. We've stood and waved our arms in desperation at the media, saying, "Look, we're not a f---ing heavy metal band; why don't you get it?" We tried talking to people about it, but figured they might get it if we sang it and played it instead.
People do like to label things. It's interesting that you mentioned the state of radio and satellite radio. How do you get your music on the radio these days?
If I knew anything about that, I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing for a living! I'd be a radio guy! [both laugh]
It's a lot more difficult for a rock band to get on the radio now than in the '80s. I think the '80s were easier than the '70s, but the '70s were probably better than they are now. It's easy for a Christian act and people like that because they make music that's designed to get on the radio. Rock bands, by the nature of what they are, are much more maverick and independent than the commercial bands like Bon Jovi or whomever you care to mention. When we make records, we don't really take all the people's opinions into consideration. We make records as a statement. If we decided to make a recording that sounded like, I don't know, Judas Priest, or make a song that sounded like Robbie Williams, that's our choice. We will do it if we feel like it. We've always tried to be varied. You know, we do album tracks that are much more adventurous than the 3-minute pop song. But we like both, so for forever we will do both, because it satisfies our kind of hunger for a bit of variety.
For a lot of people, music has become like wallpaper. When you and I were growing up, when an album came out, that was our whole day. We listened to the record, looked at the liners, and did nothing else.
Everything evolves, but everything doesn't evolve in a good way. You talked about getting on the radio. If you polled all the managers and artists who actually know and have got the initiative to do it, most bands now are dying to get on the soundtrack of a videogame. They're not interested in getting on the radio. All their target audience are buying Nintendo or Xbox or PlayStation, and all these young punky pop bands want to do is get their song on a game, because they're not really going to get much exposure on radio. Radio is either too safe, or too classic. There's not really much room in between.
And every generation of artists can moan about how they don't get on the radio enough. I see a lot of people getting wound up about it. We listen from our side of things, and I don't think Madonna's got a right to say she doesn't get played on the radio. I'm sure she's not on as much as she used to be. Well, there are new females coming through — we've got Beyoncé, Christina Aguilera, and Pink, all these kids coming along and filling the void as artists. And as we get older and have other things to do with our lives — family or whatever — you don't put records out every 2 years like before. We're lucky; we never did that. We used to put an album out every 5 years. [both laugh]
Now you're playing catch-up.
We are. We've got quite a lot of the next album already written. But you won't be hearing any unrecorded material when we're on the road this summer and fall. It's hard enough playing new, recently released material to a virgin crowd. I just read an article where Pink Floyd played The Dark Side of the Moon completely before they recorded it [true — they did so in 1972 and early 1973]. And talk about getting bootlegged! So we don't want any of our new songs, which we may change the titles or arrangements of, all over the Internet because somebody took a recording device to one of the gigs.
So what we're gonna do is play things like "Hell Raiser," "20th Century Boy," "Waterloo Sunset," "No Matter What," "Rock On," and a few others. We'll interchange them night by night and see which ones stick and which ones go.
I'll give you one vote for doing "He's Gonna Step on You Again."
We haven't actually rehearsed that one yet, but there's no reason why we can't. It is a great song to do.
That was really cool of you to do that one on the record. I bought the John Kongos CD when Collector's Choice put it out [in 2004] just to get that song, because it's not something that you could ever get easily here in the States.
I wasn't even aware that it was released over here, ever. I'm sure there are only a few dozen Americans who have even heard of John Kongos. He was very big in South Africa, which is where he's from. He had two really big hits — "He's Gonna Step on You Again" and "Tokoloshe Man" — and then he just fell off the face of the earth.
Right, he disappeared. Then he somehow appeared on somebody's album that came out in 1983...
Yes, ours. Strangely enough, yes, we recorded some of Pyromania in John Kongos' studio. There's a completion of the circle there. It's a bit weird, really.
We decided that, besides the fact that we wanted to record "Step On," we actually put our hands in the air and say, "Yes, it's a fair cop — this is where we get the idea for rocking from."
Did you have any interaction with him because of the cover?
No. The only interaction we had was a bit second-hand. [David] Bowie gave us a thumbs up about it. He also heard "Drive-In Saturday" and apparently really likes it. Ian Hunter thinks "The Golden Age of Rock 'N' Roll" is the best version of a Mott song he's ever heard, and Paul Rodgers loves ours version of [Free's] "Little Bit of Love." Rod Stewart asked for a copy of the CD since [the Faces'] "Stay with Me" is on there, so the word's starting to spread.
That's not a bad line of endorsement to have.
It's pretty nifty.
Other Covers, Other Artists
If you were to do the U.S. version of this album, what kind of stuff would you choose? I know, for example, you and Phil [Collen] did "Under My Wheels" for the Alice Cooper tribute CD Welcome to the Nightmare.
That would be an absolute definite to include. Some international versions of Yeah! have some bonus tracks that we did, like "American Girl" by Tom Petty and "Search & Destroy" by Iggy and the Stooges. So there are a few things like that knocking around. Who else would we do? People on the heavier side, like Montrose, and probably more Iggy stuff. I'd have to sit and think about it for a while. There's a lot of stuff out there. We'd have to be careful. We couldn't do "We're an American Band" by Grand Funk, because we're not. [laughs] I love that song, but we couldn't do it.
Is there one thing you weren't able to cover for this project that you'd still like to do someday?
We've pretty much gotten those out of our system with the bonus tracks. Everyone did their own. Sav [Rick Savage] did a Queen song ["Dear Friends"]; he sang it and played every instrument. I did [Bowie's] "Space Oddity," and also sang and played every instrument, and Phil did "Search & Destroy." Vivian [Campbell] did "American Girl."
In fairness, I would have loved to have done "Street Fighting Man" by the Stones, but we made a pact not to go near the Beatles and the Stones, so we didn't. "Won't Get Fooled Again" by the Who would have been f--- all to do, but Van Halen have already been there and done it. "Behind Blue Eyes" would have been another one to do, but I think Staind or somebody...
It was Limp Bizkit, unfortunately.
Oh, well, they ruined it forever. There's a bunch of things. I could make a living doing cover songs since I'm such a fan of music.
A Def Future
Since you love you day job so much, do you see the band going until you can't go no more? Are you gonna be this generation's Stones and just keep going? As I speak on this particular day, yes, that would be the intention. We'd love to keep doing it. I don't see any reason why we'd want to stop. As long as there seems to be an outlet for what we're doing. You know, I think we're cooler than we were 10, 15 years ago. I'm enjoying every single minute of this rollercoaster ride that is Def Leppard. It's a lot of fun, and very artistically satisfying. There's a lot of artistic freedom that a lot of people don't have a chance to experience. It's a gift. It shouldn't be abused.I like that you guys don't mind taking chances with projects like Slang and X.
I don't think our fans just want us to make albums only "for the fans." The Stones will always be the Stones, and with AC/DC and Aerosmith, you know what to expect, and that's kind of the beauty of it. You kind of know what to expect with us, but you're not entirely sure. It's a path that we're gonna cut through this big field, and you know the big field is our kind of thing. We just have to decide what particular path we're going to take. We're always gonna wanna write pop songs, rock songs, and melodies with big choruses. Maybe one day we'll just do an acoustic album; who knows? We'll do whatever we feel like doing.
The Future of Recorded Music
more of this month's reviews
Back to Homepage
What's New on S&V