With the big news this morning that the mighty Def Leppard are heading Down Under for a very special tour alongside Scorpians. HEAVY Mag sat down to have a chat with Phil Collen who told us that the band are over the moon about coming to Australia and during the tour plan on playing the legendary Hysteria album from start to finish, plus doing all their greatest hits as well.
“The first thing about a tour is that you have to invited,” says Collen when we start talking about why it has been so long since Def Leppard toured in Australia.
“We hear people saying well why haven’t you been to this city? And why haven’t you been to this country? But the truth is you can’t just turn up you have to invited. Then are the time restraints – maybe you are recording at the time or out on tour. We’re kind of promoting our who back catalogue because it has just become available digitally and we wanted to promote that. So we are doing a world tour that starts in London next month. Then we do down there – New Zealand, Australian and Japan then England, then next year South America, Canada and more American dates and Europe so we are going to have our work cut out for us – in fact, it is probably going to be one of the biggest years that we have ever had. We’re really looking forward to that because we can’t wait to get this stuff out there, meet our new fans – people who can actually download or stream our music which they couldn’t do before, plus we have this great big new production. We always love to push the boundaries and we’ve just done a show here in London at The Royal Albert Hall and it’s probably one of the best shows that we have ever done.”
Collen is also quick to point out that the fact that band is performing Hysteria in its entirety is actually a rarity in itself. “We did it back in 2013,” he says recalling.
“We did that in Vegas, we had a residency there for a month and we got to do that then. But what is really is interesting is that I have been listening to the stuff that we don’t normally play and I had completely forgotten some of the guitars parts and some of the vocals, there is some really complex stuff going on and all is not what it seems. That was the funny thing, the tricky thing was that it actually threw us a bit of a curve… but it is always great to a have a challenge and after about an hour or so we got it. This is actually the first time we’ve toured doing a whole album… and we’re not even going to do it in the States, we’ve only ever done it at a festival in France and in Vegas we have never toured this way. That’s exciting, we haven’t done that and it is always great to do new things.”
Def Leppard’s catalogue is now available digitally here: https://ume.lnk.to/deflepparddigital
DEF LEPPARD & SCORPIONS TOUR DATES
PERTH ARENA – FRIDAY NOVEMBER 2
ADELAIDE ENTERTAINMENT CENTRE – SUNDAY NOVEMBER 4
BRISBANE ENTERTAINMENT CENTRE – TUESDAY NOVEMBER 6
ROD LAVER ARENA, MELBOURNE – THURSDAY NOVEMBER 8
ICC SYDNEY THEATRE, SYDNEY – SATURDAY NOVEMBER 10
For complete tour, ticket and VIP Experience information, visit: livenation.com.au
Tickets for all shows go on sale at 1pm (local time) on Friday, May 4
Telstra customers from 10 am Tuesday, May 1 until 10 am Thursday, May 3.
For more information on how to purchase, visit:telstra.com/music
