Def Leppard Quotes
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Goodbye Pete Willis, hello Phil Collen. We decided to try to do something that no other rock band had tried before - blueprint "Sgt. Pepper". A period in time when we allowed our Pop sensibility to come to the fore ... and guess what? Our first major success...huge in the U.S. ... but nowhere else ..
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My Levis split and my bollocks fell out. I had no idea at first.
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We thought a lot of the heavy metal stuff was ridiculous. And we still do. We didn't want to be Duran Duran either, so we were somewhere in the middle. We always felt a little bit different because we were never really part of any movement. People said what we were doing wasn't pure rock and stuff like that. Then we said, yeah, but what we did was better than pure rock.
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Being a songwriter, singer, and a great part of a unit is more important than being Joe Guitar Hero.
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Zeppelin were a blues band but also so much more, as were The Stones.
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That's why 60,000 people go ape when the Stones play 'Satisfaction.' The songs are part of their legacy, and you fall back in love with them over the years.
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Some weird blue sh*t that someone gave me during our 1992 Australian tour. I didn't eat it.
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In England, rock music very rarely infiltrates the charts, but country music even less so.
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Before we became engaged, my wife was having surgery to have her spleen removed. I drove to the hospital and got into her bed so she would get up next to me before the surgery.
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When anything happens to us we always pull together, not only personally but musically. You get on with working and it seems to take your mind off whatever bad things seem to happen.
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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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With Dio, my first time to Japan, middle of summer, and it was rainy, hot, humid. We went on at 2 AM after Foreigner and Sting and there were a couple of Japanese bands before us. Mama's Boys went on at the crack of dawn. They were serving breakfast backstage.
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My 33rd springs to mind. We were in Omaha, NE, playing in the round with the whole place singing 'Happy Birthday' - I felt like I was standing on a huge birthday cake. Very weird.
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I didn't graduate and I never went back to reunions, so I don't really know.
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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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F*ck, I can't remember. Jesus, we are getting boring! I suppose the last one I recall was at Sav's (Leppard bassist, Rick Savage). He's got a place in Dublin. It was very cool, but I left at 2am when a lot of people were just arriving. When you don't drink, you tend to leave before people start slobbering all over you.
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Any time I can get off is my favorite holiday. I don't pay too much attention to traditional times because we're often working on Christmas and have to celebrate in January. But I love Christmas. The old clichés are true. To watch someone's face when they're opening a present is mind-blowing really.
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When doing the mix, there's five different pairs of ears. We all hear it differently. We said we'll be mixing this album for the next three years if we don't let someone take charge. We let Mutt mix it.
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These are very difficult times for new artists. Back in the day, a hit song could really seep into a person's DNA with radio and MTV. A hit today is not the same as a hit twenty years ago. Now there is so much competition, it is very hard to reach the people. The music scene is so overly saturated. There are no gatekeepers like there used to be.
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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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The big thing that everyone forgets, you're famous and on TV and everything, but I think there's something very rewarding to be able to write a song, record it, and have it turn out as you heard it in your head, or even better.
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Just the same way I'd say a prayer before going onstage, taking that even further and using the drum to inspire people. And using that as a vehicle for the intention.
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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 drink loads of water, so I'm always nipping off for a piss when we're doing a gig.