Def Leppard will start their European tour together with Mötley Crüe in May, and just before that, they will release a symphonic bestof album. So when we got the opportunity to chat with Phil Collen, their guitar player, we knew there would be enough topics to discuss.

Rockstation: You will bring the Stadium Tour to Europe starting the end of May. How do you rehearse before that? Do you do some secret shows or rent a hall?
Phil Collen: Well, we are pretty well-rehearsed by now. We’ve got a place in LA, that’s what we use for rehearsing before the tour. I rehearse every single day, I play a lot of songs, I sing-along with the songs, and I practice singing and playing. I see a lot of bands that don’t rehearse, but we have to, otherwise we wouldn’t be able to perform these songs. They are really quite demanding. We do vocal exercises every single day on tour, and everything. I literally put on our live CD or a video and run along with it. So when we get into the rehearsal room, we don’t have to stay there for weeks, we know what the arrangements are and stuff like that. And when we change the arrangements, we do that in the rehearsal room. Sometimes we warm up, like before went out on the South American tour we’ve done a warm up in a place in Atlantic City and in New Jersey. We’ve done only 2 shows there, just to make sure that everything was OK. And then the next show after that was Mexico City.

What about the setlist? Since you have a relatively new album out (Diamond Star Halos), will it be more like an introduction of the album, or a bestof show?
It’s both. It would be great to play all the new songs, but the audience wouldn’t like it (laugh). We take the example of the Rolling Stones. They do one or two new songs, and then Satisfaction, and all those things they want. You have to do that. I would be very pissed off if I went to see my favourite band and they didn’t play the songs I wanted them. So, you have to do a mixture of both, really.

In average you will play every second day. How will you spend the days off? Can you fly home?
Oh, no, no. I’m a tourist. When we just did South America, I was in Lima, Peru, I was swimming in the sea, going out and checking out what was local. You enjoy local customs and culture, that’s the best thing to do.

How can you match your gym schedule with the touring lifestyle?
Just easy. Most of the hotels have great gyms in them. And if not, I usually carry a kickboxing thing I can practice on. Even in a hotel room you can actually work out with not a lot of stuff. I just make sure that every day I do something.

he next one might be a stupid question. Imagine that you are on the road for quite a long time, maybe you are not in the best mood, and you have to hit the stage in the evening to play Pour Some Sugar on Me for a 1000th time. What keeps you motivated?
I’m never in a bad mood. So right off the bat, it never happens. Even if you feel sick or you feel tired, as soon as you get on stage it is amazing. I think, we are surrounded with a great team. Everyone around us, the band, the crew, we are always in a really good mood, it’s always out there. We are really fortunate. I think, that’s what you have to do: you have to surround yourself with good people. And it makes travelling easy.

You also have a new album out very soon, Drastic Symphonies, which is a “greatest hits plus” album. Who came up with the idea to prepare such a record?
The record company just wanted a greatest hits album, but with strings. We said, no, we don’t wanna do that. Because some of the songs don’t work with the regular string arrangement. So we had to literally take every song, take some of the instruments away, and redo some of them. Joe resung some of the vocals on Too Late for Love, I think he has redone some stuff on Pour Some Sugar on Me. We wanted the strings to be part of the band, so that would mean pretty much redoing everything. So that they would work in context with the strings. And sometimes the strings take the lead, like on Hysteria, in the guitar solo. Steve Clark played the original solo, but for this version, the strings play what he played. It was an honour in itself.

Who did the arrangements? Was it done by the band or you got some external help?
As for the string arrangement, it was done by my friend, Eric Gorfain. He worked on Diamond Star Halos, I worked with him on the Tesla album, and Joe used him on Down ‘n’ Outz, so he’s been with us for a few years. He was the obvious choice, he knew what we were after. He has done the arrangements, and he was really down to what instruments we’re gonna leave out or where what part and all of that. So again, then it was a team effort.

I really look forward to hear Switch 625, which is maybe not an obvious choice from your catalogue. How did you select the songs for the Drastic Symphonies album?
First we tried Photograph, that didn’t work, Rock of Ages, didn’t work, Let’s Get Rocked definitely didn’t work. And songs like Paper Sun and Switch 625 did. So we said, OK, these sound like they could be OK. So Eric has done a demo. He has done a string demo next to the songs, and then he was like, OK, lose the drums on this part. Or on Animal, lose the drums and put the timpanies in and we can have that there. And when we got to Abbey Road studios with the London Royal Philharmonic, they actually recorded their part live. That part was really cool. But we made all the arrangements beforehand so by the time they have come and done their stuff, we knew what it was gonna sound like.

You recorded this album already in the first half of 2022, then Diamond Star Halos was released. Do you plan so much in advance?
We don’t usually. We never had this much preparation in advance. And I think it’s really good certainly for the record company, to have everything prepared. We had a few extra songs, when we finished Diamond Star Halos, we just run out of time and space for that thing. So now, we are better prepared than we have ever been. The band is better than it’s ever been.

How long is your calendar filled in advance?
This one goes up till like November.

This year?
Yeah (laugh).

It’s very special about Def Leppard that you not only have 5 singers in the band, but also multiple songwriters. How is the actual songwriting happening? Individually, together or mixed?
It’s mixed. Most of the stuff on Diamond Star Halos was me and Joe. Because we actually did not even know we would do an album. Before covid, we were gonna record like 2 songs. But during covid, we just started writing songs together, kind of celebrating the era when we got into music, like David Bowie and Marc Bolan and Queen and Mott the Hoople and all of that. We’ve actually done most of the writing together because we got pretty excited about the whole process and we just kept sending ideas to each other.

Before releasing that album you were quite vocal about your doubts regarding the album format. Do you think your next record will be a proper record or rather singles, EPs? How do you see now?
I don’t know. All of the above is possible. You know, we went from vinyl to cassette, to CDs to download, to stream, so that affects things. You know, I am constantly writing, I even got a drum program on my phone, and I can actually get things started like that. I was writing something yesterday, another song the day before, soon we go off tour and then I will start writing new songs again. So yeah, some odd songs may come up here and there. Whatever it allows itself, it’s all of the above, really.

You wrote the song Kick in the very last minute and it was more of a coincidence that it made it to the album. And then it became one of the hit songs. How can we imagine that, writing a song in the last minute?
It wasn’t really for Def Leppard. I was writing with a friend of mine, Dave Bassett, and we tried to write something in the vein of We Will Rock You, I Love Rock and Roll, all of those classic songs, Pour Some Sugar on Me, something like that. We were thinking, it might be good for a female artist. And I played it to Joe and he said, oh, you’re crazy, this has to be a Def Leppard song. We can’t give that away (laugh). We showed it to the rest of the guys, I played it to Sav and Vivian and Rick and everyone was like, yeah, we gotta do this song. And that one came out.

And where have you been in the recording process when it happened? Did you already visit the studio?
My studio is right here, it’s this computer. We actually recorded everything on my laptop, I recorded all the guitars, all the vocals directly onto this laptop, that I’m speaking to you on. So we actually didn’t go to a studio. My vocal booth is my closet, I can see it from here. It’s a very different process, and it’s great being able to do it that way. So yeah, it was towards the end, but it was very easy, I just got Vivian to replace some of my parts, he got to do his vocals, everyone sung their parts, Sav done the bass, Joe done the lead vocal, but we kept a lot of my demo on there as well. It kindof had that spirit still. So it was an exciting way to do it, and that was very quick the way we got it done. 

On the promo images of Diamond Star Halos the band is dressed in a very elegant way, which is not usual for a rock band.
Yeah, we wanted to look better than everyone else. So we got Maryam Malakpour who is actually the stylist forthe Rolling Stones. We said we wanted to look different, we don’t want to look like a standard rock band, in the same-old, same-old stuff. So she said, I’ve got some great ideas, and she did that. Initially we used Anton Corbijn to do the photography and I’m such a huge fan of his work, and that was great. And some of the latest photos with Ross Halfin are also amazing, with Maryam doing the styling. I think it is a really important thing to have a look that makes people aware that you care about yourself and your appearance. It just looks different as well, it’s just raising the bar a little bit I think.

The lineup of the band hasn’t changed since 30+ years, after Vivian joined. What’s the secret of having such a stable lineup?
I think what happens with a lot of bands is that the ego gets in the way and that’s what kindof tears them to pieces. And we don’t have any space for that. We make sure that everyone has the same goal, we work really really hard, and the team around us is really great, as well. We are really fortunate that we love the music we make we love us live on tour and everything. I think when you got so much going for you, you don’t wanna change that. 

You have a famous guitar, BELA, named after the actor Bela Lugosi. Did you know that he was actually Hungarian?
I did, absolutely! Yes, Bela Lugosi, I loved all the stuff he did. I actually have a story: there is a studio in LA, and it’s where he filmed some parts of his last film. And actually I was in that studio and got to play in there with Slash and Robert DeLeo and Forrest Robinson. We’ve done a thing for this Zoo-thing during covid, and we actually recorded Jimi Hendrix’s Fire in the same room. That’s where Bela Lugosi actually filmed some stuff in the past. That guitar is 30, almost 40 years old, and still sounds great. I’ve been playing it on this tour, and I’m gonna be bringing it to Hungary as well. Yes, me and BELA and the band will be in Hungary, so we will see you there!