Def Leppard’S Benefi T Than for Mine
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JUNE 2011 ISSUE MMUSICMAG.COM JUNE 2011 ISSUE MMUSICMAG.COM MUSICIAN Why make a live album now? sitting down with records and working songs TOOLSTOOLS OF THETHE TRADE CAMPBELL: Making live albums in the past out. That started with Rory Gallagher’s Live! was very laborious and expensive. You had to in Europe and Thin Lizzy’s Jailbreak. get a mobile truck and do the entire recording CollenCollen has been playing variations of hishis over one or two shows. That creates How did you fi nd Vivian? JacksonJackson Signature guitar for the past 26 something we didn’t want: performance COLLEN: We didn’t want to replace Steve. years. “I play very aggressively, and I like anxiety. Technology in recent years has We couldn’t do that. If you have a family to really dig in,” he explains. “I don’t have a become very portable and affordable. We member who dies, you don’t replace them. light touch with my left hand. SSomeome players started recording and archiving every show If we were going to bring someone else in, just skate over the fretbfretboard,oard, but I can’t do we did during the 2008 and 2009 tour—over he needed to have different attributes and that. I also use heavy gauge strings—.13 to 100 shows. After a week of that, you forget bring something different to the table. Vivian .54—and a metal pick. That really helps on you’re recording. You’re in a much more did that. He’s such a lovely guy. He was some of the lead stuff.” Collen’s stage setup natural state, and that allows you to focus sensitive and a great player. Plus he brought includes a Marshall JMP pre-amp and solid- on the show as it’s happening in real time. vocal talent. state Randall Power Amp manufactured in It allowed us not to be concerned with what CAMPBELL: It was harder for them than the ’80s, along with TC Electronic effects we call “red light fever.” for me. It wasn’t the fi rst time I had stepped processors. For acoustic guitars, he’s lately into another band, whereas they had never opted for either a Guild or a Breedlove. How do you two click so well? gone onstage without Steve. I think that Campbell’s beloved ’78 Les Paul hybrid CAMPBELL: We’re very secure emotionally. was frightening for them. As a result, we has been re-fretted with Dunlop 6000 Series A lot of guitar players tend to be competitive. rehearsed for about two months before my wire, as have all his guitars. “I like bigger fi rst gig with the band. I think that was more frets,”frets,” he says. “I also put TonePros hardware for Def Leppard’s benefi t than for mine. They on all my Les Pauls and a CTSCTS 300K pot on knew I could play. A lot of the vetting process the volume control, so that it rolls off clean. ‘I love shredding, was about the personalities, and whether In addition to the Les Paul hybrid I have a ’56 their personalities would work with mine. reissue with Lindy Fralin P-90 pickups that sounds really nice.” Campbell adds that he’s but it became Are great riffs a dying art? using Engl equipment for the fi rst time for COLLEN: Yes. The motivation for being absurd. There’s a in a band changed at some point. People Jeff Fasano want to be rich or famous, or they just want time and a place attention, whereas players in the past were more about sharing their gifts. Riffs are less Phil Collen, Vivian Campbell –Phil Collen important to players than they once were for that.’ because the stuff that goes on around the riffs isn’t as important. Some of the grunge DEF LEPPARD Phil and I have never experienced that. We bands had great riffs, but nothing much has capitulate to the greater good of the song come since then. Phil Collen and Vivian Campbell are hard rock’s double-barrel dream team and the greater good of the band. Plus we CAMPBELL: That was one of the great play very differently. Phil’s hands are a lot things about Steve Clark. He was a great By Russell Hall faster than mine, especially his right hand. riff writer. I pale in comparison. That’s a He accents all the notes with his right hand, target I’ve set for myself for the next Def CHEMISTRY IS A DELICATE THING AMONG THE MEMBERS despite roiling changes in the music business, fans’ changing tastes something I’ve never been able to do. I play a Leppard studio album. I want to focus on of any band—but in a hard-rock outfi t with a trademark two-guitar and their own personal challenges—before Clark’s death, the group much more legato style, and let my left hand writing riffs rather than on trying to write attack like Def Leppard, there is another, secondary chemistry that had already coped with the loss of drummer Rick Allen’s left arm in do a lot more work than my right. complete songs. Sure, a lot of the great riffs must also be just right. Guitarists Phil Collen and Vivian Campbell a 1984 auto accident. Def Leppard has nonetheless survived and have already been written, but I’m certain have for nearly two decades forged a perfect balance between thrived, riding out the storms to remain a seat-fi lling arena attraction. When did you fi rst learn to play? there are a few more out there. the former’s more technically minded, classical-tinged approach “We take our work seriously,” says Campbell, 48, “but not ourselves. COLLEN: A friend at school showed me and the latter’s bluesier wail. “Keith Richards calls it ‘weaving We show up on time, we show up sober and we do our job. There’s one chord. After that I learned by listening— Did all that ’80s shredding hurt? a musical tapestry,’” Collen points out, nodding toward rock’s a real commitment.” everything from Deep Purple to Led Zeppelin COLLEN: That was what killed off great riffs, prototypical two-guitar powerhouse, the Rolling Stones. “We’re The latest from Collen, Campbell, Allen, singer Joe Elliott and to Santana to Mick Ronson, on those Bowie to a large extent. It was ridiculous. Obviously very different as players,” adds Campbell. “That’s one reason we bass player Rick Savage is Mirror Ball: Live & More, a long overdue albums. I also listened to lots of American those guys didn’t have girlfriends. They just work so well together.” record of the band’s onstage prowess and a timely summation of guitarists: Rick Derringer, Ronnie Montrose sat around and played this stuff no one Campbell replaced founding guitarist Steve Clark, who Leppard’s journey to date. Culled from shows recorded on their and Johnny Winter. I preferred the American else cared about, in a real male-dominated passed away in 1991 after a painful battle with alcohol abuse. The 2008-2009 tour, the two-CD, one-DVD set (available exclusively style. The Americans had a fl air that some of arena. I love shredding but it became absurd. fact that Collen proved able to fi nd another kindred six-string spirit is through Walmart) also features three new studio tracks that prove the British players didn’t. There’s a time and a place for that. But if Jeff Fasano only one of the minor miracles that have kept the British powerhouse the band has lost none of its luster. “I think there’s still plenty more CAMPBELL: I didn’t know many people that’s all you do, then you’re missing out on pushing forward for more than three decades. They have done so to come,” says Collen, 53. “The passion is still there.” who played guitar, but whenever I ran into an integral part of music as an art form. Def Leppard’s current tour. “I’m using Engl someone who did, I’d ask them to show me speakersspeakers andand power amps,”amps,” hehe says, “and“and a chord or a lick. I had a crush on a girl when What are your main guitars? I’m currently experimenting with Engl pre- ‘We’re very different as players. That’s one reason I was 13. Her mother played guitar, and she CAMPBELL: I have several Les Paul reissues, amps. I’m also still using the Marshall JMPJMP showed me the lick for “Day Tripper.” That but my main squeeze is a bastardized guitar, pre-amps, which have been in my rack for we work so well together.’ –Vivian Campbell was the fi rst riff I learned. Mostly I learned by a hybrid. It started life as a ’78 Les Paul 17 years.” 626262 63 M mag 12.indd 62 7/7/11 9:22:03 PM M mag 12.indd 63 7/7/11 9:22:21 PM JUNE 2011 ISSUE MMUSICMAG.COM JUNE 2011 ISSUE MMUSICMAG.COM MUSICIAN Campbell and Collen onstage with Def Leppard in Las Vegas, May 2006 Inset: Andrew MacPherson Kevin Winter/Getty Images Winter/Getty Kevin ‘We’ve tried to push the boundaries BEYOND THE BAND in Def Leppard, but the fans only let Both Campbell and Collen have undertaken projects that afford them opportunities to expand us go so far.’ –Phil Collen their guitar horizons beyond their work in Leppard. Campbell recently spent time playing guitar in a re-tooled version of Thin Lizzy, while Collen serves as the six-string force in the high-octane Custom that I bought in a pawnshop in neck with a maple fi ngerboard.