DEF LEPPARD’S “CREATIVE ZENITH” – HYSTERIA:

INTERVIEW SEGMENT WITH PHIL COLLEN
SOURCE: Guitarist Magazine Issue 425 | October 2017

With Def Leppard‘s Hysteria album reaching it’s 30th anniversary last August it’s been a popular topic of discussion in the music media in recent times. Henry Yates interviewed Phil Collen for Guitarist magazine, which was published in the October 2017 issue and Phil discusses the making of the album and what the band were looking to achieve with this musical masterclass.

Phil also talks about Steve Clark throughout the interview and as always, has some cool words to describe Steve’s brilliant work:

“A lot of bands will have two guitar players but they don’t really utilise that. They just play exactly the same. It’s uncreative and uninspired.

“Me and Steve Clark did the opposite. We were trying to develop this harmony chord thing. We’d be muting the strings and we’d have a counter-rhythm and counter-melody going off. Lots of different things. Gods Of War had five different sections and hit every note on the fretboard. On the song Hysteria, there’s probably eight guitar parts going off at the same time on the chorus. Maybe even more. Not to be gratuitous, but to add something to it.”

People always cast you as the ice-cold virtuoso and Steve as the sloppy genius. Do you agree?

“Not even slightly. I’m about the sloppiest player you could possibly imagine, especially when I’m playing acoustic. I struggled. Mutt made me a way better rhythm player, because I was racing and dragging, not on the snare. This was both of us, me and Steve. Mutt changed that. But yeah, Steve had more swagger than anyone I’d ever seen.

His [Steve’s] whole thing was that he wasn’t a standard player. He’d come up with ideas that other guys wouldn’t do. Like the solo in the title track. We actually both played that together live, at the same time, plugged into a Rockman each. But Steve came up with the whole melody and it almost reminded you of a Japanese garden. It had these weird note choices, really beautiful…” – Phil Collen.

[PLEASE NOTE: Phil states that he himself is the sloppy player. While Steve would admit as much as anyone who has worked with Mutt Lange that he helped improve him as a player, Steve was never a “sloppy” player as has been said by others before.]