{"id":4388,"date":"2022-05-29T17:14:49","date_gmt":"2022-05-29T22:14:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/read.streamapse.com\/?p=4388"},"modified":"2024-04-12T16:31:37","modified_gmt":"2024-04-12T21:31:37","slug":"def-leppard-guitarist-phil-collen-talks-through-each-track-on-their-12th-album","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/?p=4388","title":{"rendered":"Def Leppard – Guitarist Phil Collen Talks Through Each Track On Their 12th album"},"content":{"rendered":"

If it wasn\u2019t obvious, the title of Def Leppard\u2019s 12th album\u2014which steals a lyric from T. Rex\u2019s 1971 glam-rock hit \u201cBang a Gong (Get It On)\u201d\u2014nods to the music the band grew up on. It\u2019s also a long-running reference between singer Joe Elliott and guitarist Phil Collen. \u201cWe always referred to the era that we got baptized into music as \u2018hubcap diamond star halo\u2019 because it\u2019s kind of a ludicrous line from that song,\u201d Collen tells Apple Music. \u201cWe didn\u2019t really know what it meant, but we also knew exactly what it meant.\u201d As such, Diamond Star Halos harks back to England\u2019s classic glitter-rock bands. \u201cI remember seeing David Bowie on Top of the Pops when I was 14,\u201d Collen recalls. \u201cThat was the moment that life went into technicolor. It changed everything.\u201d Below, he comments on each song.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Stream Diamond Star Halos<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cTake What You Want\u201d
\n\u201cBecause of the intro, it actually sounds like the start of an album, so it became an obvious track to open with. [Bassist] Rick Savage pretty much done all the music for this one, and I think had the title\u2014and then Joe wrote the lyrics. It represents the rock side of Def Leppard that came a bit later. I want to say that I almost hear the New York Dolls in there as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cKick\u201d
\n\u201cI wrote this one with a friend of mine, David Bassett. It was influenced by The Glitter Band and T. Rex and Slade, but we originally wrote it with a female artist in mind. Then I played it for Joe, and he said, \u2018Are you insane? This is obviously a Def Leppard song.\u2019 We\u2019d actually finished all the other songs for the record at that point, so this was the last one to come in. My demo guitars and demo backing vocals are on there, so there\u2019s this rawness.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFire It Up\u201d
\n\u201cI wrote this one with a guy called Sam Hollander, who\u2019s the most amazing songwriter. He did \u2018High Hopes\u2019 by Panic! At the Disco. Again, it wasn\u2019t originally meant to be a Def Leppard song, but we were trying to write fist-in-the-air stadium rock, somewhere between \u2018We Will Rock You\u2019 and \u2018Pour Some Sugar on Me,\u2019 but they\u2019re really hard to write. When I suggested it to the band, they felt it was obviously a Def Leppard song. Our producer, Ronan McHugh, really put his magic touch on this one.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis Guitar\u201d (feat. Alison Krauss)
\n\u201cMy friend C.J. Vanston and I wrote this song 17 years ago. Every five years or so, we\u2019d revisit it, but the general consensus\u2014well, mainly from me\u2014was that it sounds a bit country for Def Leppard. We\u2019ve delved into that before, the way the Stones could do country or the Eagles could do country, and obviously we\u2019ve worked with Tim McGraw and Taylor Swift, but this song was slightly different. This time, Joe asked me to make an acoustic demo for him to sing over, and I think his lead vocal is from the demo. Then Joe was talking to Robert Plant, and Alison come up. Robert knows she\u2019s a huge fan, so Joe asked if she\u2019d want to sing something on the album. Her duet with Joe is just beautiful. She\u2019s a goddess on vocals and just an amazing person.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSOS Emergency\u201d
\n\u201cI started writing this one a few years ago, around 2014. I had the music and the chorus, and to me it sounded like a blend between latter-day Police and the Foo Fighters. That was the vibe, melodically. Then I sent it to Joe, and he just couldn\u2019t stop writing lyrics. He took the chorus and made it something completely different. It\u2019s got an energy that\u2019s different to the rest of the album, and I just love that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLiquid Dust\u201d
\n\u201cI\u2019ve traveled to India a bunch of times, and I\u2019ve always had melodies floating through my head. So, I kind of annexed this rough idea of a melody, and I wanted to have some almost Indian percussion and mix it with trap and hip-hop drum loops\u2014which I did. It\u2019s about coming towards the end of your life and realizing that you need more time. What happens after that? So, it\u2019s about self-reflection and wondering whether there\u2019s reincarnation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cU Rok Mi\u201d
\n\u201cThe song is about being inspired\u2014it\u2019s not a reference to a person. The spelling could be from a text message, but it\u2019s also something that Prince used to do all the time as well. My daughter wanted a ukulele a few years ago, so I got her one\u2014and then we all got ukuleles on tour. So, I ended up playing one pretty much every day, and this idea came out. It starts as, like, a folky-type thing that sounds like it should be on Zeppelin III, but then I used these hip-hop drum loops, and it explodes into this big rock chorus.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGoodbye for Good This Time\u201d
\n\u201cJoe and me, our favorite Bowie album is Aladdin Sane. That\u2019s where we first heard Mike Garson, who played piano with Bowie from that album until he died. Joe had been doing some birthday tribute celebrations for Bowie with Mike, so he knew him. Joe had written two great piano ballads that reminded me of early Elton John, like Madman Across the Water era, so he asked Mike, \u2018Would you?\u2019 The next thing you know, we\u2019ve got our favorite pianist on the album! He really added another dimension to this song as well. In the middle, I play a Spanish acoustic guitar solo that\u2019s a tribute to Bowie\u2019s guitar player Mick Ronson.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAll We Need\u201d
\n\u201cThis is a real hopeful song, a kind of celebration. It was one of the first ones that me and Joe wrote during the pandemic, when we were sending ideas back and forth to each other and talking about the album as we went into lockdown. He was in Dublin, I\u2019m in California, so we\u2019d each wake up to the other\u2019s new ideas. I really enjoyed that process of writing and recording. I done all my guitars and vocals on a laptop, and Joe did some of his vocals on his laptop with a real cheap little microphone. It sounds great, and I\u2019d hate to go back to the other way of recording.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOpen Your Eyes\u201d
\n\u201cThis was the very first one that Joe and I did during lockdown, and we realized that working this way was a total energy-saver. I had ordered this Squier bass and wrote the opening riff straight out of the box. I sent it to Joe and before you knew it, we had a song. Rick Savage replaced my bass with a killer sound he had at home\u2014a bass he pulled out of his closet\u2014and boom! We sent our demo over to Ronan McHugh, our producer, engineer, and out-front live guy, and he put it all in a session and made it sound incredible.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGimme a Kiss\u201d
\n\u201cThis one\u2019s got some Johnny Thunders and some Chuck Berry inspiration. All my demo guitars are on it, so it\u2019s got a rawness that\u2019s cool. It\u2019s just a fun, smash-you-in-the-face rock song that\u2019s not to be taken too seriously. It\u2019s pretty hefty-sounding, I think, because we kept so much of the demo. We added to it, obviously, with proper drums and Sav playing bass and Vivian on guitar. We all sung on it, but we kept the original spirit of it, which was really important.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAngels (Can\u2019t Help You Now)\u201d
\n\u201cMike Garson is on this one as well, and it\u2019s just a beautiful song. Joe wrote this and felt that, perhaps, it wasn\u2019t a Def Leppard song because of the piano. But I said, \u2018Why not? Why can\u2019t we do what we want at this stage?\u2019 And of course, when Mike played it, it took on a different dimension again. Songwriting-wise, it reminds me of Elton John again. But by the time we get to the last chorus, it sounds like Pink Floyd, from Dark Side of the Moon.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLifeless\u201d (feat. Alison Krauss)
\n\u201cAgain, I started this one almost like when the Stones do country, and I was trying to find a way where Def Leppard could do it. I think if U2 were country and Def Leppard was playing the song, it would sound something like this. I had the chorus and sent it to Joe. He came back the next day with the whole thing. We always say we can finish each other\u2019s sentences, but we can also finish each other\u2019s songs. Alison added all these harmonies and countermelodies that were just like, \u2018Wow!\u2019 It\u2019s like a beautiful choir of one of our favorite singers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cUnbreakable\u201d
\n\u201cJoe had the idea for this one a while ago\u2014I remember him playing bits of it when we were on tour last. We initially tried it like a rock thing\u2014it almost sounded like AC\/DC\u2014but it wasn\u2019t working. So, we shifted tracks and almost took on an element of INXS\u2014not that we\u2019re trying to copy Australian bands, but it sounds better with this vibe. We used a whole different palette of guitar tones because the standard ones weren\u2019t working. Joe had already written the lyrics, but he then presented them in a different way, almost like an actor choosing a role.\u201d<\/p>\n

SEE DEF LEPPARD LIVE!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cFrom Here to Eternity\u201d
\n\u201cThis is a Rick Savage song. It\u2019s very different to everything else on the record, but we were working on the lyrics and the phrase \u2018film noir\u2019 came up. With that image, we were able to finish the lyrics and, all of a sudden, we knew what the song was going to be. It took on a little bit of a Queen direction. It\u2019s the longest song, so it was obviously going to be at the end of the album, and it\u2019s probably my favorite guitar solo that I\u2019ve done on the record.\u201d
\nDiamond Star Halos<\/p>\n

If it wasn\u2019t obvious, the title of Def Leppard\u2019s 12th album\u2014which steals a lyric from T. Rex\u2019s 1971 glam-rock hit \u201cBang a Gong (Get It On)\u201d\u2014nods to the music the band grew up on. It\u2019s also a long-running reference between singer Joe Elliott and guitarist Phil Collen. \u201cWe always referred to the era that we got baptized into music as \u2018hubcap diamond star halo\u2019 because it\u2019s kind of a ludicrous line from that song,\u201d Collen tells Apple Music. \u201cWe didn\u2019t really know what it meant, but we also knew exactly what it meant.\u201d As such, Diamond Star Halos harks back to England\u2019s classic glitter-rock bands. \u201cI remember seeing David Bowie on Top of the Pops when I was 14,\u201d Collen recalls. \u201cThat was the moment that life went into technicolor. It changed everything.\u201d Below, he comments on each song.<\/p>\n

\u201cTake What You Want\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause of the intro, it actually sounds like the start of an album, so it became an obvious track to open with. [Bassist] Rick Savage pretty much done all the music for this one, and I think had the title\u2014and then Joe wrote the lyrics. It represents the rock side of Def Leppard that came a bit later. I want to say that I almost hear the New York Dolls in there as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cKick\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI wrote this one with a friend of mine, David Bassett. It was influenced by The Glitter Band and T. Rex and Slade, but we originally wrote it with a female artist in mind. Then I played it for Joe, and he said, \u2018Are you insane? This is obviously a Def Leppard song.\u2019 We\u2019d actually finished all the other songs for the record at that point, so this was the last one to come in. My demo guitars and demo backing vocals are on there, so there\u2019s this rawness.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFire It Up\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI wrote this one with a guy called Sam Hollander, who\u2019s the most amazing songwriter. He did \u2018High Hopes\u2019 by Panic! At the Disco. Again, it wasn\u2019t originally meant to be a Def Leppard song, but we were trying to write fist-in-the-air stadium rock, somewhere between \u2018We Will Rock You\u2019 and \u2018Pour Some Sugar on Me,\u2019 but they\u2019re really hard to write. When I suggested it to the band, they felt it was obviously a Def Leppard song. Our producer, Ronan McHugh, really put his magic touch on this one.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis Guitar\u201d (feat. Alison Krauss)<\/p>\n

\u201cMy friend C.J. Vanston and I wrote this song 17 years ago. Every five years or so, we\u2019d revisit it, but the general consensus\u2014well, mainly from me\u2014was that it sounds a bit country for Def Leppard. We\u2019ve delved into that before, the way the Stones could do country or the Eagles could do country, and obviously we\u2019ve worked with Tim McGraw and Taylor Swift, but this song was slightly different. This time, Joe asked me to make an acoustic demo for him to sing over, and I think his lead vocal is from the demo. Then Joe was talking to Robert Plant, and Alison come up. Robert knows she\u2019s a huge fan, so Joe asked if she\u2019d want to sing something on the album. Her duet with Joe is just beautiful. She\u2019s a goddess on vocals and just an amazing person.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSOS Emergency\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI started writing this one a few years ago, around 2014. I had the music and the chorus, and to me it sounded like a blend between latter-day Police and the Foo Fighters. That was the vibe, melodically. Then I sent it to Joe, and he just couldn\u2019t stop writing lyrics. He took the chorus and made it something completely different. It\u2019s got an energy that\u2019s different to the rest of the album, and I just love that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLiquid Dust\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve traveled to India a bunch of times, and I\u2019ve always had melodies floating through my head. So, I kind of annexed this rough idea of a melody, and I wanted to have some almost Indian percussion and mix it with trap and hip-hop drum loops\u2014which I did. It\u2019s about coming towards the end of your life and realizing that you need more time. What happens after that? So, it\u2019s about self-reflection and wondering whether there\u2019s reincarnation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cU Rok Mi\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe song is about being inspired\u2014it\u2019s not a reference to a person. The spelling could be from a text message, but it\u2019s also something that Prince used to do all the time as well. My daughter wanted a ukulele a few years ago, so I got her one\u2014and then we all got ukuleles on tour. So, I ended up playing one pretty much every day, and this idea came out. It starts as, like, a folky-type thing that sounds like it should be on Zeppelin III, but then I used these hip-hop drum loops, and it explodes into this big rock chorus.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGoodbye for Good This Time\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cJoe and me, our favorite Bowie album is Aladdin Sane. That\u2019s where we first heard Mike Garson, who played piano with Bowie from that album until he died. Joe had been doing some birthday tribute celebrations for Bowie with Mike, so he knew him. Joe had written two great piano ballads that reminded me of early Elton John, like Madman Across the Water era, so he asked Mike, \u2018Would you?\u2019 The next thing you know, we\u2019ve got our favorite pianist on the album! He really added another dimension to this song as well. In the middle, I play a Spanish acoustic guitar solo that\u2019s a tribute to Bowie\u2019s guitar player Mick Ronson.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAll We Need\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a real hopeful song, a kind of celebration. It was one of the first ones that me and Joe wrote during the pandemic, when we were sending ideas back and forth to each other and talking about the album as we went into lockdown. He was in Dublin, I\u2019m in California, so we\u2019d each wake up to the other\u2019s new ideas. I really enjoyed that process of writing and recording. I done all my guitars and vocals on a laptop, and Joe did some of his vocals on his laptop with a real cheap little microphone. It sounds great, and I\u2019d hate to go back to the other way of recording.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOpen Your Eyes\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was the very first one that Joe and I did during lockdown, and we realized that working this way was a total energy-saver. I had ordered this Squier bass and wrote the opening riff straight out of the box. I sent it to Joe and before you knew it, we had a song. Rick Savage replaced my bass with a killer sound he had at home\u2014a bass he pulled out of his closet\u2014and boom! We sent our demo over to Ronan McHugh, our producer, engineer, and out-front live guy, and he put it all in a session and made it sound incredible.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGimme a Kiss\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis one\u2019s got some Johnny Thunders and some Chuck Berry inspiration. All my demo guitars are on it, so it\u2019s got a rawness that\u2019s cool. It\u2019s just a fun, smash-you-in-the-face rock song that\u2019s not to be taken too seriously. It\u2019s pretty hefty-sounding, I think, because we kept so much of the demo. We added to it, obviously, with proper drums and Sav playing bass and Vivian on guitar. We all sung on it, but we kept the original spirit of it, which was really important.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAngels (Can\u2019t Help You Now)\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMike Garson is on this one as well, and it\u2019s just a beautiful song. Joe wrote this and felt that, perhaps, it wasn\u2019t a Def Leppard song because of the piano. But I said, \u2018Why not? Why can\u2019t we do what we want at this stage?\u2019 And of course, when Mike played it, it took on a different dimension again. Songwriting-wise, it reminds me of Elton John again. But by the time we get to the last chorus, it sounds like Pink Floyd, from Dark Side of the Moon.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLifeless\u201d (feat. Alison Krauss)<\/p>\n

\u201cAgain, I started this one almost like when the Stones do country, and I was trying to find a way where Def Leppard could do it. I think if U2 were country and Def Leppard was playing the song, it would sound something like this. I had the chorus and sent it to Joe. He came back the next day with the whole thing. We always say we can finish each other\u2019s sentences, but we can also finish each other\u2019s songs. Alison added all these harmonies and countermelodies that were just like, \u2018Wow!\u2019 It\u2019s like a beautiful choir of one of our favorite singers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cUnbreakable\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cJoe had the idea for this one a while ago\u2014I remember him playing bits of it when we were on tour last. We initially tried it like a rock thing\u2014it almost sounded like AC\/DC\u2014but it wasn\u2019t working. So, we shifted tracks and almost took on an element of INXS\u2014not that we\u2019re trying to copy Australian bands, but it sounds better with this vibe. We used a whole different palette of guitar tones because the standard ones weren\u2019t working. Joe had already written the lyrics, but he then presented them in a different way, almost like an actor choosing a role.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom Here to Eternity\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a Rick Savage song. It\u2019s very different to everything else on the record, but we were working on the lyrics and the phrase \u2018film noir\u2019 came up. With that image, we were able to finish the lyrics and, all of a sudden, we knew what the song was going to be. It took on a little bit of a Queen direction. It\u2019s the longest song, so it was obviously going to be at the end of the album, and it\u2019s probably my favorite guitar solo that I\u2019ve done on the record.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If it wasn\u2019t obvious, the title of Def Leppard\u2019s 12th album\u2014which steals a lyric from T. Rex\u2019s 1971 glam-rock hit \u201cBang a Gong (Get It On)\u201d\u2014nods to the music the band grew up on. It\u2019s also a long-running reference between singer Joe Elliott and guitarist Phil Collen. \u201cWe always referred to the era that we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4389,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[921],"tags":[833,834,835,90,195,245,49],"class_list":["post-4388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-streamapse-highlights","tag-collen","tag-guitarist","tag-leppard","tag-talks","tag-their","tag-through","tag-track"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4388"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4388\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5432,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4388\/revisions\/5432"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}