![]() Accidents aren’t always your fault, but I’m going to make damn sure it’s not mine. Ever since Rick lost his arm, I don’t speed anymore. Did this change your perspective on life?Ī: Absolutely it did. ![]() Q: In 1984, drummer Rick Allen lost his arm in a car accident, and in 1991, guitarist Steve Clark died of an overdose. But when you come from Sheffield, and have parents like we had, that’s not going to happen. There is a lot of squandered money in the business. Q: In the music business, did you see others who squandered their wealth?Ī: I knew people whose records I bought as a kid, and I expected them to live in castles. It was seven years of poverty and borrowing off our parents. And when you spread that over seven years, it only worked out to a decent income, probably less than your average doctor. It wasn’t until “Pyromania” took off that money started coming in and we were able to pay off our debts. All the profit from the shows went into getting a tour bus, so we never saw a penny. When we went to the States and opened for acts like Judas Priest, at first we were traveling around in a station wagon and sharing rooms at the Holiday Inn. We got about 30 quid a week, which wasn’t even enough to buy stage clothes. We had signed a record deal in ‘79, but that all that money went into running the band. I wrote most of the lyrics for the first album down there.Ī: Money was tight until about 1983. Eventually I got fired for playing cricket in the basement. Everybody in the band had a day job, like Rick Savage, who worked for British Rail. That money helped, because by 1977 we had started the band, and we needed to pay for things like microphones and rehearsal time. ![]() When I left school, I had a factory job for over four years in a steelworks. It paid me enough to buy a few singles a week, or maybe three albums a month. She was my heroine.Ī: Actually I had four paper routes – two before school, and two after. Still helming Def Leppard is lead singer Joe Elliott, 58, even as the band has lost members to accidents and life changes.įor our latest edition of “Life Lessons,” Elliott retraces his journey from an industrial English town to global superstardom.Ī: I grew up in Sheffield, and at the age of 4, I had a plastic Paul McCartney guitar and a little stool, which I would stand on and sing ‘Love Me Do.’ Then my mom bought an actual acoustic guitar through a mail-order club when I was 8. That is because British heavy metal band Def Leppard has been making news with a deal to stream all of its hits on digital platforms, and an arena tour with American band Journey. Looking at the latest music headlines, it could be 1984 all over again. FILE PHOTO: Def Leppard singer Joe Elliott sits on stage during an announcement that Kiss and Def Leppard will team up this summer for a 42-city North American tour, at the House of Blues in West Hollywood, California March 17, 2014. ![]()
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