Def Leppard ‘surprised’ to make another album

The ‘Pour Some Sugar On Me’ rockers returned with their first album in almost seven years in May, ‘Diamond Star Halos’, but frontman Joe – who is joined by Phil Collen, Vivian Campbell, Rick Savage and Rick Allen in the glam rock band – admits it was only because they had nothing else to do amid the COVID-19 crisis that they decided to make a record remotely.

In an interview with the new issue of Goldmine magazine – of which they are the cover stars – Joe said: “When we look back to how it all started out.

“We didn’t set out to make an album, but the pandemic offered us an opportunity to do one because there was literally nothing else we could do, except waste time, which is not really in our DNA.

“We were due on the road in 2020, in the middle of June.

“So, rehearsals were gonna be in May.

“Everybody was coming to my studio in Ireland, 22nd of March.

“They were due in until all the flights were cancelled and lockdown was announced.

“We had no idea how long lockdown was gonna last.

“Is it gonna be a week, two weeks or a month, two months, three months?

“Once we realised that we couldn’t actually get together, I got on the phone with Phil, who was in California.

“Within about 40 minutes of this phone call, we had tipped everything that we had onto the metaphorical table and said, ‘OK, great, we’ve got seven songs that we could be working on until the pandemic clears.

“But it never cleared, so we kept working and we worked these seven songs, and me and Phil over the spring and summer of 2020 wrote five more.”

Fortunately, due to living in different parts of the world, they were used to remote working.

‘Diamond Star Halos’ reached the top 5 in the Official UK Albums Chart.