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

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Part One: The Making Of 'Def Leppard

Transcript

00:00Music

00:02Music

00:04Music

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00:10Music

00:12Music

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00:24Music

00:26The beginnings of the new record

00:28We decided to just

00:30Get together for one month

00:32And some of us have got some songs written

00:34Some of us have got just ideas

00:36And we just thought

00:38Look we're not going to finish an album in a month

00:40But let's get together in the studio

00:42See what comes out of it

00:44But don't go beyond the month

00:46Let's try and do as much as we can

00:48And it was great

00:50We all got together

00:52And listened to everybody's ideas

00:54And listened to everybody's ideas

00:58And then just picked 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 you know just laid them down as a band

01:12We just flowed and within like two days

01:14We had pretty much five or six songs

01:16And at the end of the week we had like 14 or 12 songs on the go

01:20So we thought you know what

01:22We're going to make an album

01:24For us

01:26For you know the fact that we love music

01:28And we like writing songs

01:30And making Def Leather music

01:32It was kind of done in stages

01:40Of essentially three periods of a month long

01:46Of building the album

01:48And it was kind of nice to do that

01:50There was no pressure

01:52You could learn to live with the ideas

01:54As they were progressing

01:56You weren't losing any perspective

01:58By having to day after day after day after month after month

02:02Go through the same sort of songs

02:05So it was a really nice sort of way

02:08Of letting the album grow in 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

02:29So that's been the process

02:32And we go away, listen

02:34And then the second time we got together

02:36We were able to just modify

02:39And just focus in on what was really important

02:43So that we liked the songs as much as we possibly could

02:47And actually be fans of the music that we made

02:51We're actually a really really good live band

03:02But we're not very good usually at capturing that in the studio

03:05And 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

03:13And it's very difficult to capture

03:16The subtle nuanced dynamics

03:19That a live band has when 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

03:47Well

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

03:57More diverse elements that the band's known for

04:00The production elements

04:01The

04:02Kind of

04:03Pop scene

04:04Big production thing

04:05And so that's

04:08When we started scratching our head a lot

04:10And thinking okay well what

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

04:12Now that inevitably happens with every Def Leppard record

04:15And that's when it starts getting

04:17A little bit more painstaking

04:31One thing that I think we were really conscious of

04:33Is making something that is a little more diverse

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

04:41We 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 that

04:51The 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

05:07Indicative of Def Leppard

05:09But we also wanted to just not 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 or what it represented

05:27Was put forward and was worked on to get to a point where

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

05:36Even if it was just starting off with an acoustic guitar idea

05:41It was progressed

05:43And from that point of view it was great

05:45To not really be confined to like going

05:49Well we can't really do this because it doesn't really sound like a Def Leppard song at this point in time

05:53So it kind of gets left

05:55In fact

05:57The first track on the album

05:59Let's Go

06:00Is a combination of three completely different ideas that I had

06:05From years back

06:06That every so often

06:08It just so happens that

06:10You put them together and it all kind of works

06:12In the right environment

06:14And a lot of things happen like that on the new album

06:17We'd work for a month and 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'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 that that's what we'd been saying out loud

06:41Phil said why 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 really

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

07:09Viv's illness

07:10You know

07:11It played a part in

07:12Pretty much how we approach things

07:15After

07:16We've done the Viva Hysteria thing in Vegas

07:18Because we found out there

07:19It's like

07:20Oh

07:21Right

07:22Yeah I've been dealing with lymphoma

07:23For the last

07:25Almost three years

07:26I did three rounds of chemo

07:29And 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

07:38To do a stem cell transplant

07:39Yeah

07:40Yeah

07:41Yeah

07:42Yeah

07:43Yeah

07:44Yeah

07:45Yeah

07:46Yeah

07:47Yeah

07:48Yeah

07:49Well I'd have to go with Let's Go first

07:50Because it's so classically Leppard

07:52Again it came very naturally

07:53You know

07:54A lot of people might think

07:55That we just sat down to try and rewrite Sugar

07:56But we didn't

07:57That's a song that was very close to my heart

07:59It was something that was

08:01It was

08:09You know

08:10No

08:11Tix

08:25As always

08:26One

08:27Two

08:28Two

08:29Two

08:30No

08:32Six

08:33Two

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

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