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I started out in a band called Atomic Mass. We played a lot of old Thin Lizzy and T. Rex tunes in clubs. We fired our vocalist one day and hired Joe in his place. That's when things started to happen. We got Steve Clark and Rick Allen to join up and Def Leppard was born.
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We were not into punk. We were all heavy rock fans before we formed this band.
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With some of my previous relationships, they never really felt right even from the beginning but I persevered with them.
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We used to have two album name columns for Hysteria. There wasn't much in the 'serious' column. Animal Instincts is the only one I can remember. Then there was the 'joke' column. Most of the titles in that one were takeoffs on Pyromania, like Paranoia. One of those was Hysteria. As I remember it, Rick came up with that one. He meant it as a joke, but it caught us all in a serious moment and, for some reason, it stuck. Peter Mensch liked it, Joe said, 'Well, it's alright,' and I said, 'I don't mind.' So it stuck. Nobody objected to it, anyway.
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I was having a rare weekend back in Sheffield at my local pub and somebody asked me what we were going to call the new album. I said I wasn't sure yet. Somebody turned around and said, "Why don't you call it Halley's Comet? It comes around about as often.' In fact, Halley's Comet has already been out and we are still recording.
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At first all we wanted to do was be successful in our home town.
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Well, I'm getting better. It'll never be as it was. It affected the right side of my face. It's no big deal. You look at this guy here, and to think I've got problems.
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We are more than paying our own way toward sheriff services.
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When we started this band, we always concentrated on the songs. If we had five good songs together, we wouldn't just slap four more 'okay' ones together just so we could go out and play. That's why we spent so much time in that spoon factory in Sheffield before we went out to play. We did that first gig only because Steve was so pissed off and threatening to quit if we didn't go and play a gig. But there was always that feeling there - that we have to do it right. Or we don't do it at all.
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There's so much that has been before the human race, and just contemplating that and then the earliest forms of communication, hand claps, body slaps and then ultimately the drum, which was really the first way that man could imitate the first sound they heard: their mothers heartbeat.
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It was great to do something different, so mixing it all about keeps things fresh.
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We're a pretty level-headed group. Most people think that it is wild parties and girls, girls, girls every night. We only wish.
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If you have no worries and no responsibilities, having all those girls around is brilliant. And it's still brilliant if you have responsibilities and you can keep them. But it becomes difficult if you start doubting the responsibilities. That's when you can spoil it.
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It's funny, cause influences can come from any angle. It could be a line in a book, it could be a song..... I've never really thought about it, if I can only get influences from rock music. Cause, the rock angle of it, is inherently in me - that will come out, regardless of what kind of song I'm trying to write. So consequently, I never really think about it.... I'm a great one for listening to the radio, especially when I'm in the car. I'd much rather listen to the radio than to put on a CD. So basically, I just get influences and ideas from anywhere. If anything, rock would be the last thing I'd let myself be influenced by like that, because I know that the rock influence comes out naturally anyways, so rock is probably one of the least examples that I would actually choose from.
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The most painful thing was falling off the stage in Sydney, Australia on the last song of the set, 'Sugar.' I was bruised all over. I don't know how the guitar survived, much less me.
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We're doing what we want to do. Basically it's just down to the fact that we're all posers. We all want to go out on stage, pose, wear dinky white boots, tight trousers and have all the girls looking at our bollocks. That's us. We like showing off, we're arrogant bastards, it's just like ... over the top.
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Being in a band is all about compromise. When everybody can compromise and still feel they're going in the right direction, then you have a happy band.
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A good one was the album Adrenalize title. I wanted to call the album Dementia. I like the idea of having a trilogy of albums ending with 'ia'. Phil thought it was cool but wondered if it was a little contrived, like we were running out of good ia-sounding words. Joe hated it with a passion. After two and a half hours of discussion, he was so pissed off that we were still talking about this one word that he just turned around and said, 'Well, as far as I'm concerned, you might as well call the album BOB!!
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There was never a question of folding up or Rick not being able to do it - it never came up. Through Rick's attitude, we knew that he would pull through.
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I've done songs, which have gone out to other artists or whatever, with me singing on, but they're just demos. There is a song called CANDY IN YOUR HANDS, which I think nearly became a Def Leppard B-side. It's got me playing on it and singing, cause no one else performed on the track. So, not in a Def Leppard sense, but we always release "rare" songs, so there's always a chance.
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But it just so happens that when you're in the public eye, everything gets reported.
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I think fantasies should be kept to oneself, not shared. Or at least choose who I wish to share it with.
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I feel so incredibly vulnerable and exposed when I have to talk into a microphone and bare my soul so to speak.
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And really, it's my home life that my own personal foundation is based on and not necessarily the life within the band.