There has been much discussion on the noticeboards concerning the release of 'X', Def Leppard's tenth studio album. While many long-time fans have been bemoaning the lack of power to be heard on the album, others have leapt to their defence proclaiming that it's the quality of the songs that is important, not how heavy they are.

Paul Flanaghan caught up with the guys just prior to the UK Top of the Pops appearance and began by asking Joe if it was their intention to make a more commercial album, working with the likes of Andreas Calrsson Per Aldeheim and Marti Fredrickson.

Joe: Yeah it was. We discussed it, say about a month before the last tour finished, about getting multi producers in. We were even thinking of using five or six different people and making it like a 'Now That's What I Call Music' album, where it's all different you know. That was never going to pan out because it was really too far fetched. We got it down to three different teams: ourselves, Pete Woodroffe, Andreas and Per, and er Marti as well....of course we wanted to work with Marti after we all kind of enthusiastically grasped the Aerosmith thing 'Just Push Play.' And what he did with 'Jaded' was great, he made Aerosmith sound like they were about 23 years old. We thought, somebody said to us 'You guys are starting to get,' - excuse the pun - 'a bit jaded'. We thought we would mix it up a bit ourselves, and throw a bit more ingredients into the pie, just to jazz it up a little bit, that's why we did it. We liked what they had done with other people, the Swedish guys Per and Andreas just because they had done pop didn't mean they weren't capable of doing rock - they had grown up listening to rock. Max Martin co-wrote the song, he had done the Bon Jovi thing 'Its My Life - these guys grew up listening to 'Hysteria.'

Sav: Well they were big fans of ours from the eighties anyway, it kind of went full circle.

Joe: What we had was this like bizarre cross-over of Mutt Lang going from AC/DC, Def Leppard to working with Britney, Back Street Boys and Celine Dion, to what have you... so these guys working with the same people coming across to work with us, it was like these 2 producers in our lives, that one had gone from rock to pop and the other gone from pop to rock and we have always had hit singles in the past, so by virtue of the fact that they were hits it makes them pop songs, so we wanted to try to recreate the feel that 'Hysteria' had with the six hit singles which it did spawn eventually, so we tried to avoid making album tracks and making albums saying we will have the hits but its got to have the credible album tracks to go with it, so we said this time round, 'You know what, lets just make great songs,' and if they are all pop songs, they are still going to be guitar-based pop songs. Even the rolling stones had a top ten hit, its playing on guitars most of the time, it's just commercial. Pop is a strange word, pop's become this word that you think of as pap. 'Pop' is short for popular, and that can be anything from Black Sabbath to Charlotte Church.

Are you saying that the current music scene has influenced the way in which you wrote the album?

Joe: The current music scene influences everything we have ever done.

Sav: Not in any specific way, it's more just getting an overall feel of what is happening, not necessarily one specific artist or whatever but just a general feel of what is current.

Did you miss working with Mutt Lang on this album?

Sav: Well yes and no. Any artist on this planet would miss his contribution that he could make - they wouldn't miss sometimes what you have to go through when you are working with him. He knows what he wants and he will put you through torture if he thinks its worth it, and at the end of the day it always is.

Most of the lyrics are about women. Are they from personal experience?

Joe: They are not really about women, they are about human emotions. If you take 'Long Way to Go' it's not necessarily about women, its about loss, and that can be death or the end of a relationship... either/or, we throw a much wider blanket on it. I mean 'A Girl Like You' is about a girl and 'Everyday' is like that as well. We do it in such a way that a guy can be missing his mum because she died three weeks ago or his father or whatever. You know the album, to sum it up in a sentence - it's love, women...women, yes there's no record ever made that's not touched on relationships between man and woman - it's the most basic thing on the planet but its also envy, hate, greed, loss, jealousy... all that kind of stuff, its just human, emotional stuff. We have never written about dungeons and dragons, and stuff like that because they just don't exist.

Is there any particular reason why there's no lyrics on the CD booklet?

Phil: We don't like doing that because rock lyrics look crap when they are written down, it's like 'ooh baby' and pop lyrics, a lot of them look goofy, even the Beatles' lyrics that are really well written.

Is their any song on the album which was particular hard to record?

Joe: From a vocal point of view, 'Long Long Way to Go' was a bit of a bastard, because it was such a demanding lyric and melody. You can't just sing it like reading the news, you had to sound like you meant it, you have to get into character and put a different head on and sound emotional because its that kind of song.

Sav: I think also with a song like that, a lot of it is about the vocals. The spotlight obviously on all songs is the vocals but more so with songs like that, so as a unit we tend to be more critical. So we tend to be hyper critical on how Joe would do it, because we can and he is the one that has to do it.

Joe: 'Four Letter Word' for example was one of those songs. You've heard 'Twist and Shout' by the Beatles... Lennon sounds like his head is about to burst open. Well that's what 'Four Letter Word' was like, that's a physically demanding song, not so much from an emotional point of view, but a physical one, but it needed that energy and attitude so again you put a different head on, you do your stretch exercises, you go in there and you're pumping iron when you're singing a song like that.

Do you still feel the pressure of having to make an album that is expected to out sell the last one?

Phil: Not now. We did after 'Pyromania' because it sold so many, but then 'Hysteria' went and outsold 'Pyromania'. You see 'Adrenalize' only sold six million, which is a hell of a lot of records, and that was considered a flop, which is ridiculous, but the album before had sold 17 million so it was a big step down for us. So after that period you're not really that bothered. Once you have experienced that you think 'Right, the pressure's off there then.' But I guess it was disappointing that we only sold six million.

Who's decision was it to make 'NOW' the first single of the album?

Sav: Pretty much everybody's. It became pretty apparent really early on that this was the type of song... not necessarily that it was going to be the best seller, but as a single it felt it represented us in the right way at this time in our career.

Joe: You know its not the obvious single like when we did 'Hysteria' - in America, not in England - but in America we put 'Women' out as the first track which was like, you know, 'What are they doing?!' But we didn't want to go with a ballad for the first track with being off the scene for three years. We wanted to say, 'This is us in 2002' and you know it's guitars and drums, big vocals and it rocks and it was different. It sounds like Def Leppard but it doesn't. Somebody said that to me about that song and I guess it was a great way of summing it up in a naive kind of way. It doesn't sound like any song that we have done in the past, but its still got our stamp on it which is basically us moving... you know, shifting with the times. We don't want to be like Quo. We have not been that kind of band... we wanna do what Bowie's done and like what Queen did. It's like you can't compare 'Innuendo' with 'Queen 2', and you can't compare 'Heathen' with 'Ziggy Stardust.' We've always tried to move on. Sometimes you are limited if you are a rock band although we were less limited on this record because we opened our minds and our attitude a lot more.

What's your opinion of what's in the charts at the moment?

Joe: Well pop music at the moment all seems to be based around voyeurism. You don't just see the pop artist, now we see him getting out of bed in the morning, having his auditions, squeezing his zits, failing, falling down, crying and getting up again, and you know... it's not my thing. I'd rather just see the finished article, that's much cooler. I mean the way they market Britney Spears - she just comes out and it's there, it's the finished article. I'm not a fan of this Pop Star stuff at all.

When you go out and tour with 'X' later this year, can we expect to see the usual size production and stageshow?

Joe: I think what we have been talking about recently is, because we have started to call the album 'X'... I'm conceding the title of the album now, it's actually 'Ten.' So what were going to do to start with is 10 show's in Britain on a slightly smaller scale and then come back next year and do something that you would probably call a bigger production, but again as long as it's top quality that's all we ever try to do.

Would you ever want to play again in the round?

Joe: No!

Sav: I would. I'd love to do it in the round, but it would have to be in the right circumstances. To be playing in the round on a regular basis, apart from having to be super fit, you have to be guaranteed that your literally gonna be selling every ticket. That's the big criteria to doing it in the round. If all that was in place, personally I'd love to do it again.

Phil: Yeah, I'd like to do it again at some point. The idea came from Frank Sinatra when he used to do it, but yeah it would be great. Joe: I'd do it again if they all made me, but not out of choice.

Sav: It's very complicated and extremely expensive to do. We actually did a little gig, well you couldn't even call it a gig really, but we performed half an hour's worth of songs in a shopping mall in Minneapolis - it's the Mall of America, it's one of the biggest in America... you know, it's like Meadowhall times sixty and its like a little concert which was all tied in with doing an in-store signing, autographs and stuff like that, but where the stage was set up with the balcony around and there was a lot of people around the back of the stage looking down, it was really cool and a great atmosphere and it just reminded me of when we were playing in the round.

Joe: Playing in the round is a fantastic thing to do, it really is. It's an event, that's the great thing about it, but the more you do it the less of an event it is. That's my point and the thing is whether it be hard work or not there's something acceptable about playing at one end because it's natural, whether it be a wedding or a guy doing a speech, they are normally in one part of the building and everybody else is in front. I mean you don't see the Vicar playing in the round and if you did you'd think that's pretty cool but if it happened all the time it wouldn't work, so one-offs or maybe one tour again or something like that would be good.

Is there any particular song that's hard to replicate live or you would prefer to avoid playing?

Joe: There's loads of them, every fucking song I've sung! 'Photograph' is a bastard! It's a really hard song to do because there's no breathing space until you get to the guitar solo - literally two verses, two bridges, two choruses before you actually take a breath and it's so high in the register there's just nowhere to go except down. It's just stamina, that song is a physical achievement to get through it.

'Lovebites' is always a challenge because it's like 'Long Long Way to Go'. It's such a meaningful lyric. When we play 'Long Long Way to Go', that's not going to be a walk in the park. That's the thing about vocals, they're real. I was always a big fan of people who always said 'Go on, get up there Son,' rather than the ones that could talk the phone book. Give me Paul Rogers over Michael Bolton anyday because Paul Rogers always sounded like he meant it when he was going high.

Sav: We never profess to be like choir voices and like trained singers or anything like that. If you do it with the right intention people get it, that's the most important thing. You have got to be in tune and what have you, but it does not have to be totally perfect. What amazes me even now, time after time people are coming to our sound guy and saying 'They use tapes don't they?' and that's something that we have never ever done.

Does that piss you off or do you take it as a compliment now?

Joe: It used to.

Sav: It's a compliment in a sense, but I mean when we used to go and see live bands it was the event of seeing somebody performing. Yeah they may have had an off night on that particular night but if it's something that's been pre-recorded then there's nothing to it, there's no point in it other than actually seeing the people in person. There are two elements that we use - when we are in the studio we have our studio head on and we craft songs and when we are performing those songs live it's a totally different thing - it's a one off thing, the two things are completely different, they're listened to in different environments. So when you do it live it's got to be good and it's got to represent the song that you recorded.

Do you still get nervous before a show?

Joe: On the first night of a tour your more apprehensive. It's not so much us, it's the production and making sure the crew are all in shape and they have got to know it inside and out like we do, and sometimes if they're new, they're coming in a bit dry, but luckily we have had the same crew for the last 15 years for most of the time, so generally it works like a well oiled machine.

Does it still feel special everytime you play Sheffield ?

Sav: It's special and it's also a pain in the arse. You can't properly concentrate on what your going to do until you get up on stage like you can when it's any other city because the guest list is mad and you're looking after other people and making sure they're alright, and your focus is drawn away from what your doing. We have got an inbuilt self-confidence that whatever we do it's right, even if we make mistakes on stage you know it doesn't matter that much because... I suppose it gets back to the point that it's real, it's a rock show. There can be mistakes provided that in whatever form the people are entertained.

Joe: You have just got to be good, Sheffield over any other gig is like 3rd round of the FA cup or playing in the final - it's still a game, it's still ninety minutes, but you have got to be as good in both. Sheffield's always going to be different to playing Manchester because it's Sheffield and it's where we were born but you probably do try to go into your dressing room twenty minutes earlier and lock the door because there's a million guests in Sheffield and only three in Manchester, and they've drunk all the beers, and they all want to introduce you to their cousins and stuff and it's like 'Look, I've really got to get ready now,' so it's a pain in that respect and everyone wants their two pence worth from you.

How much time do you spend in the UK these days and are you still able to go to places like the WAP and the local pubs in Sheffield that you used to go to before your fame?

Sav: Well I live here now. I moved back to Sheffield at Christmas. It's funny because I think with us being around for so long now we went through a phase where it was a bit uncool to be seen out and people would point and have a bit of a snigger. Now I think we have kind of gone through that phase and if anything now there's more respect. They may not like you, they may not like your music but we have never had any trouble because we have always done it the right way. We have never been ones to walk around with bouncers or any of that bullshit, we are just the same as anybody else that's going out for a beer or a meal. I think you can attract trouble sometimes if you go out on an evening, there maybe one idiot who's had too much to drink and if your giving off the vibe that you're a bit untouchable and you have to speak to him before you can speak to me, I think that pisses people off, and I think you are more likely to incite somebody to have a pop at you, where as if they know they can come up to you and have a laugh with you or even slag you off, it's like water off a duck's back.

Who's idea was it to go back to the WAP in Sheffield to play an unplugged set?

Joe: Well it certainly wasn't ours.

Sav: What it was, we were in the middle of recording our 'Slang' album and the record company really wanted to put out a Greatest Hits, so it was a bit of a distraction for us, so obviously we couldn't go out and tour to promote the Greatest Hits album, so what we decided to do was a promo tour and the record company wanted us to do something that would just raise the profile of the Greatest Hits album.

Joe: We would have been out in California making a new album and somebody says 'We're putting a Greatest Hit's out and we want to do something special in Sheffield so why don't you go and play the Wap again,' so of course the first thing we said was 'What a great idea.'

Do you still think of Sheffield as home?

Sav: I certainly do because it is my home now.

Joe: I have got nothing against Sheffield at all, I just don't live there anymore. Neither does Joe Cocker but it's still his birth place. I live in Dublin now, but I think of it as my birth place and I think of it as somewhere where I have fond memories for 21 years, and then I had my reasons for leaving, but you know I've got loads of mates in Sheffield and I still go back there and I sleep on their couch. When Ian Hunter played the Leadmill and I went to watch him he actually slagged me off on stage. He said 'Elliot's in again'. He said 'You'd think after all the records he's sold he could afford a hotel room.'

Joe and Phil had to shoot off at this point to do Top of the Pops so I continued the conversation with Sav.

When you lost Steve and Rick had his accident, did you ever think of calling it a day?

Yeah, but on both occasions it didn't last for very long. With the incident with Rick there was a week where we were worried if he was going to live or not, but once we had got over that and we new he was going to survive... very soon after that, through Rick's own determination, he said I can still do this, it still blew all the other equations away. It was like well, if he says he can still do it we are still a band and we're still going to be with him until Rick says 'You know that I was wrong I can't do it.'

We never considered replacing him, the only thing we did consider was maybe getting a drummer in with him to maybe help him out but we didn't know how far Rick could push it, but it became apparent very quickly that Rick's going to be as good a drummer, if not better than he was before. You know we had a lot of praise from people saying it was great that you stood by him and all that stuff... we had no decision to make because Rick made it for us.

What other bands are you listening to at the moment?

I'm a big radio person. I'm not one to like, get in the car and put a CD on - I never do that. I just listen to local radio. I've kind of got out of the habit of going to record stores and buying albums. It's pretty sad but I don't do that anymore.

What's the most you have spent on any one item excluding property?

Probably a car, and have I got a story for you about a car! It was during the 'Hysteria' tour... I'd had a long term relationship with a girlfriend. We'd lived together and it was coming to an end for various reasons and we decided that we were going to split up. Unfortunately about two weeks before I had decided to by her a Porsche - a brand new Porsche and I've never since bought a new car. It was a beautiful car, £72,000 it cost me back in 1988. So two weeks later we split up. I was still on tour and was going to be for another six months, so amongst other things she kept the car and the house - but that's another story - and we still kept in touch and we're still good friends and about four years ago, for no particular reason, she phoned me up and said 'How yah doing blah blah blah' and she said I just wanted to let you know I've had a baby daughter and I'm going to have to sell the Porsche. I just wanted to let you know and give you first option on it. So I said 'Well what are you looking to sell it for' and she said 'Well I'd like to get twenty grand for it.' So I thought about it and I loved the car and in fairness she would want me to have it more than just a stranger as she got attached to the car. So I've ended up buying the bloody car twice, so in total it's cost me ninety-two grand and it's not worth that much at all. So I think in answer to your question that's the most expensive thing I've ever bought.

What cars do you have at the moment?

Well the Porsche is up for sale now because I can't stand driving it around Sheffield anymore. I'm so sick of driving a manual car, especially of that calibre because the pedals are so heavy, and as you know driving around Sheffield it's all hills and it's a nightmare, so I want to get an automatic. So at the moment the only other car we have is a Ford Galaxy which is just a family car.

So you can't be accused of being extravagant then.

I can't afford to be at this point. Once I've got rid of the Porsche I'd love a Jaguar XK 8 convertible but it's got to be an automatic. I live next door to Prince Nasem Hammed, now there's a guy that buy's cars. Mind you he does have a slightly bigger income than me that's for sure but there's someone who like's buying cars. He's not the guy you see on television, boxers have got to be like that with the showmanship and that, but he's actually quite a decent guy.

What would you say was the highest point in your career?

I remember playing San Diego in '83, which was the end of the 'Pyromania' tour, at this football Stadium in front of 55,000 people, that's when you realise that you have arrived - that was cool.

It was great hearing that we had got a number one album in America, nearly a year after we had released it. That was 'Hysteria'.

The other highlight for me was playing Don Valley Stadium in '93, it was like, we were the first real band to do it and it sold out and it was just like coming home. It was a little bit egotistical but it was just great because it was Sheffield.

You seem to have a little more affection for Sheffield than Joe.

Joe still has a lot of affection for Sheffield but he's got a nice place in Dublin, his life's kind of set up there. I've lived in Dublin for the last sixteen years and for one reason or another, every time I came back to Sheffield throughout the years I've noticed a change for the better. The attitude of the people, and the more and more I came back the more I liked it and it coincided with having children and maybe subconsciously wanting my kids to have the same upbringing, if that's possible, or even in the same environment. I didn't want them to be brought up as Irish, I wanted them to be brought up in Sheffield.

Did you all leave the country originally for tax reasons?

We went for tax reasons originally yeah. We had just done 'Pyromania' and we had made a reasonable amount of money on the sales of the album but most of it had to be paid in tax because we recorded it in London. So when we started to write songs for the new album that went on to be 'Hysteria' our management said 'Look, you can write it in England but even the writing process if you do it over here it still comes under the tax thing,' so they suggested that we go to Ireland. Ireland's very similar to England but you do get that tax break, so we went there literally as an experiment and me and Joe never really left we liked it so much.

How does the tax compare for Phil in America?

He'll pay American tax now and I pay English tax now, which is about the same - you'll pay around 40% of whatever your earning. It is crazy but I have a choice I could go back and live in Dublin and save myself money but there's more to life than money. We all need it to survive and eat but you know, if I have to pay a huge tax bill it means that I've earned a lot of money, end of story.

Are you still getting much by way of Royalty cheques from your back catalogue?

Yes, our back catalogue's unbelievable. The Greatest Hits album is number one in the catalogue chart in America as we speak. It sold fifteen thousand last week alone. 'Hysteria' sells between two and three thousand a week, 'Pyromania' sells between fifteen hundred and two thousand a week. This week's a little different because the new album has been released in America and there's always a spin off from that so it's an unusual week but if we hadn't got a new album out we would sell about twenty to twenty five thousand albums a week in America, so it's a nice little pension fund.

What it equates to, roughly in America we normally sell in a year about six hundred thousand records, which is the equivalent of nearly going double platinum in England every single year which just puts it in perspective without having to even make another record, so that side of it is a nice pension fund.

Would you say that you had all been sensible with your money or have you blown a lot?

Blown a lot... er, maybe not blown but you could say 'enjoyed', that's one way of putting it, but we have all gone through divorces so that's taken a lot of money. People think that you're worth millions and millions. I remember the day when Vivian joined the band and they press said over night he was worth two million or like that's what he was going to earn from being in the band and I remember jokingly saying well if he's going to earn two million where's my fucker yeah. We've done all right, we've earned a lot of money and we've spent a lot of money.

Looking back over your career would you have done anything differently or want to change anything?

I wouldn't have done a thing different. I regret obviously Steve passing away and you'd do anything to change that, but during the course of our career we have made some big mistakes and we've been lucky in other aspects but I wouldn't change a thing. Whatever happened in one part is a reason another part happens and we are still here, we are still enjoy doing what were doing, it couldn't be any better if you know what I mean.

Do you think your success back in the 80's could have been due to the lack of talented bands around at that time?

It's possible, time means a lot. To get anywhere, especially in this business, you have got to have a certain amount of talent. You have got to have something that people can relate to and you have got to have the luck and the luck comes with timing. There's been many a fine album that's never seen the light of day because some of the elements were not in place, or the record company screwed up or radio station didn't play it or whatever.

There were good bands around. There's only a certain amount of bands that are for real, when I say for real I mean they do it honestly and those bands tend to come through - that's why I have got respect for Bon Jovi as an example. They're still together and the reason they're still together is because they still like each other and they believe, there's an honesty in their music. Whether you like their music or not there's a validity to it because it's honest, there's none of this Saxon bullshit, its the real bands, whether it's Led Zeppelin, The Who, whether it's Queen... any of those type of bands because it's real, there's a honesty about those types of bands.

And to that impressive list you can add Def Leppard. Don't miss them when they tour later in the year!!