How Def Leppard made Def Leppard

In part one of our exclusive video, we speak to all five members of Def Leppard about the making of last year’s self-titled album, perhaps the band’s best work since their best album since their 1980’s heyday, and an album Classic Rock voted the fifth best of 2015.

“We’re actually a really good live band,” says guitarist Vivian Campbell, “but we’re not very good at capturing that in the studio. The reason for that is that normally the band is very methodical and very piecemeal, one guy at a time. But it’s very difficult to capture the subtle, nuanced dynamics that a live band has when you’re doing it like that. So we set up in the studio, the five of us in one room, so we could all make eye contact. We started playing some rock ideas, and we managed to bang five or six rock songs in the first couple of weeks, and that was great!”

“Then we started scratching our heads and going, ‘OK… what kind of song do we need next?’“

Part two of this video, when the story continues and the band talk about how they cope with Campbell’s ongoing battles with illness, will be published tomorrow.

Def Leppard's favourite songs from Def Leppard

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