The Making Of 'Def Leppard' Part One | Classic Rock | Louder - video Dailymotion

Louder

Part One: The Making Of 'Def Leppard

Transcript

00:00Music

00:02Music

00:04Music

00:08Music

00:10Music

00:12Music

00:14Music

00:16Music

00:18Music

00:20Music

00:22Music

00:24Music

00:26The beginnings of the new record

00:28We decided to just

00:32Get together for one month

00:34And some of us have got some songs written

00:36Some of us have got just ideas

00:38And we just thought

00:40We're not going to finish an album in a month

00:42But let's get together in the studio

00:44See what comes out of it

00:46But don't go beyond the month

00:48Let's try and do as much as we can

00:50And it was great

00:52We all got together

00:54And

00:56Listen to everybody's ideas

00:58And then just pick them off

01:00One at a time

01:01The ones that we wanted to go in and start working on

01:04We all got in one room together

01:06And

01:08You know just

01:10Just laid them down as a band

01:12We just flowed

01:14And within like two days we had

01:16Pretty much five or six songs

01:18And at the end of the week we had like 14

01:20Or 12 songs on the go

01:22So we thought you know what

01:24It was a big problem

01:26For us

01:28For you know the fact that we love music

01:30And we like writing songs

01:32And making Def Leather music

01:34It was kind of done in stages

01:38Essentially three periods of a month long

01:44Of building the album

01:46And it was kind of nice to do that

01:48There was no pressure

01:50You could learn to live with the ideas

01:52As they were progressing

01:54You weren't losing any perspective

01:56By having to

01:58Day after day after day

02:00After month after month

02:02Go through the same sort of songs

02:04So it was a really nice sort of

02:06Way of letting the album grow

02:10In a natural way

02:12We were able to go away

02:14And listen to the songs

02:16Really listen to them

02:18And then with that hindsight

02:20Be able to you know

02:22Come up with the best part

02:24That we could possibly come up with

02:26Whether that was drums, vocals, guitar, whatever

02:30So that's been the process

02:32And we'd go away, listen

02:34And then the second time

02:36We got together

02:37We were able to just modify

02:40And just focus in on

02:42What was really important

02:44So that we liked the songs

02:46As much as we possibly could

02:48And actually be fans of the music

02:50That we made

03:00We're actually a really really good live band

03:02But we're not very good usually

03:04At capturing that in the studio

03:06And the reason for that is that

03:07Normally the way the band works is very

03:09Very methodical

03:11Very piecemeal

03:12One guy at a time

03:14And it's very difficult to capture

03:17The subtle nuanced dynamics

03:20That a live band has

03:21When you're doing it one guy at a time

03:23So we set up in the studio

03:25The five of us in one room

03:27So we could all make eye contact

03:28And we started playing some rock ideas

03:33And we managed to bang about

03:35Five or six rock song ideas

03:38In the first couple of weeks

03:39Which was great

03:40And that was really easy

03:41And we kind of knew that

03:42That would be the easy part of the record

03:43But then after that

03:45We thought well

03:48We're not really just

03:50That kind of band anymore

03:52So we're not looking for a straight up rock record

03:54We need to kind of embrace

03:56Some of the more

03:58More diverse elements

03:59That the band's known for

04:00The production elements

04:01The kind of

04:03Pop scene

04:04Big production thing

04:06And so that's

04:08When we started scratching our head a lot

04:10And thinking okay well

04:11What kind of song do we need next?

04:13Now that inevitably happens

04:14With every Def Leppard record

04:15And that's when it starts getting

04:17A little bit more pin sticking

04:19One thing that I think we were really conscious of

04:32Is making something that is a little more diverse

04:37Than some of the records and albums we've done in the past

04:40We all knew that once

04:44By this stage

04:45We have a certain style anyway

04:47Our sound is very much based in the fact

04:51That the way that we orchestrate our guitar parts

04:54The way that our backing vocals blend together

04:58There's a sound

04:59So those ingredients are never going to go away

05:02So that we knew that whatever we do

05:04It's essentially going to end up sounding

05:06You know indicative of Def Leppard

05:10But we also wanted to just

05:12Not be confined to specific songwriting

05:16Things that we've done in the past

05:19Basically anything that sounded good

05:23Regardless of how it came about

05:25Or what it represented

05:27Was put forward and was worked on

05:30To get to a point where

05:32It was good enough to get on the album

05:36Even if it was just starting off

05:39With an acoustic guitar idea

05:41It was progressed

05:43And from that point of view

05:44It was great to not really be confined

05:48To like going

05:49Well we can't really do this

05:50Because it doesn't really sound like a Def Leppard song

05:52At this point in time

05:53You know so it kind of gets left

05:55In fact

05:57The first track on the album

05:59On the album Let's Go

06:01Is a combination of three completely different ideas

06:04That I had from years back

06:06That every so often

06:08It just so happens that

06:10You put them together

06:11And it all kind of works

06:12In the right environment

06:14And a lot of things happen like that

06:16On the new album

06:17We'd work for a month

06:19And we'd take the tapes home

06:20And Phil would play them to his friends in California

06:23And I'd be playing to my friends in Dublin

06:25And Sam would be playing to his friends in Sheffield

06:27And you know before you put the tape on

06:30Somebody would say

06:31So you know you've got some new songs

06:32What does it sound like?

06:34And we all ended up saying

06:35Sounds like Def Leppard

06:37And I think when we all realised

06:39That that's what we'd been saying out loud

06:41Phil said

06:42Why don't we just call the album Def Leppard

06:44Because we've never done it

06:45You know

06:46So it was pretty simple

06:47Why we did it

06:48I said let's call it Def Leppard

06:50Because we're making it for us

06:51And no one else

06:52Plus we've never had a self-titled album

06:54So that's pretty much how that came about

06:56Yeah it was an EP

06:57And it ended up an album

06:58For the right reasons

06:59You know

07:00Because we wanted to make music

07:07I think it played a part

07:08You know Viv's illness

07:10You know

07:11It played a part in

07:13That's pretty much how we approach things

07:15After we've done the Viva Hysteria thing in Vegas

07:18Because we found out there

07:20It's like oh

07:21Right

07:22Yeah I've been dealing with lymphoma

07:24For the last almost three years

07:27I did three rounds of chemo

07:30And that didn't take care of it

07:32And then

07:33Exactly a year ago

07:35I went into hospital

07:36For about three and a half weeks

07:37To do a stem cell transplant

07:43The Viva Hysteria thing

07:45The Viva Hysteria thing

07:46The Viva Hysteria thing

07:47The Viva Hysteria thing

07:48The Viva Hysteria thing

07:49The Viva Hysteria thing

07:50The Viva Hysteria thing

07:51The Viva Hysteria thing

07:52The Viva Hysteria thing

07:53Well I'd have to go with Let's Go first

07:54Because it's so classically leopard

07:56That

07:57It

07:59Again

08:00It came very naturally

08:01You know

08:02A lot of people might think

08:03That we just sat down

08:04To try and rewrite Sugar

08:05But we didn't

08:06That's a song

08:07That was very close to my heart

08:08It was something that

08:09That's a song

08:10I did

08:11What's the song

08:12It's really nice

08:13That is

08:14This song

08:15Or

08:16We have to go and look at these

08:17The Viva Hysteria thing

08:18It's really beautiful

08:19I'm going to go and see more

08:20Of the

08:26The Viva Hysteria and a lot of people

08:27The Viva Hysteria thing

08:28And I was going to go and say

08:29It's really sweet

08:30Yeah

08:31It's really nice

08:31I'm going to go and say

08:32it's really nice

08:33Today

08:34And

08:35It's really nice

08:35And

08:36It's really nice

The Making Of 'Def Leppard' Part One | Classic Rock | Louder

Category

Transcript

Recommended