Ahead of the 35th anniversary of their 12x Platinum album Hysteria, Joe Elliott and Phil Collen of Def Leppard joined Apple Music Hits to share some of their favorite songs, stories, and influences from their career.
During the interview, the legendary rockers told Apple Music why “Hysteria” is the song that best represents the band and discuss the parallels between Def Leppard, U2, INXS, and Billy Idol. Phil Collen also shared how Frankie Go To Hollywood’s “Relax” inspired their hit single “Animal”. You can hear the whole interview in full here, but if you scroll down you can also check out a few tasters from the chat.
Def Leppard’s Phil Collen on The Album’s Title Track “Hysteria” and Why It Represents The Band…
“Hysteria” was just Rick Savage come up with this guitar riff, and I literally sung the first thing that come into my head, and I think it was the, “Out of touch.” And I had this other section, which went, “I got to know tonight.” And I thought, “Oh, that’d be a great chorus.”
“But Mutt Lang, in typical Mutt Lang fashion, said, “Yeah, that’d be a great pre-chorus, now we need a stronger section for the chorus.” So that’s where Joe, Steve and Mutt came in. So they come up with this beautiful chorus, and then all of a sudden we just pieced it all together and it just happened to groove. And a lot of people have just loved this particular song. So “Hysteria” is still one of my favorite songs from the album. It represents us. It’s a song we always do at sound check. We all get to sing. There’s lots of guitars and everything. And just feels really comfortable for us. So here is Def Leppard and “Hysteria.”
Phil Collen on How Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s “Relax” Inspired Their Song “Animal”…
“Relax” by Frankie Goes To Hollywood. One of my favorite songs of the era. When I first heard this, in fact, when our whole band first heard this, it just blew us away. Like the production, just everything about it. Their vibe, they was unashamed, trailblazers. Again, they were such brilliant infectious dance, music, pop music. Trevor Horn was the producer.
And when we first heard “Relax” with Mutt, we were like, we have to use some of this on our new songs. And that song “Relax”, actually influenced the song “Animal.” We started it and it took a two year period to get that song right. But towards the end of it, this song came out and we were like, well, we have to kind of introduce some of these elements. So it was totally influential in us. And I actually played that album recently, Welcome To The Pleasuredome, just blew me away. It sounds as good, if not better than it ever did.
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