DEF LEPPARD’s JOE ELLIOTT On Taking Care Of His Voice: ‘A Lot Of It Is Just Common Sense’

In a new interview with James Wilson-Taylor of Rock Sound, DEF LEPPARD singer Joe Elliott was asked how he has managed to keep his voice going “just as strong” over the course of the band’s 40-plus-year career. He responded (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “The truth is that the older you get, the more difficult it does get. I’m in the singers’ union, so I’m on board with every singer that goes, ‘Yeah, I’ve been there, done that.’ It doesn’t matter how brilliant you are, you’re gonna have a bad day because singing is not carpentry. You can’t just pick up a tool and have COVID and make a beautiful cabinet because you can still work that kind of work if you’re sick. You can’t sing or barely talk even if you’re sick. So sometimes you get sick and it affects your voice, but as long as you’re not sick, there isn’t an excuse, depending on how much you want it. And that’s what the difference is.”A lot of singers are born with an amazing voice, so they don’t believe they need to bother to try,” he continued. “And I understand that, because if I’d have been born with a great voice, I don’t think I would have tried as hard either, but the fact that I was not, and I had to develop one, just ’cause I wanted it, I was prepared to do the work. And Vivian [Campbell, DEF LEPPARD guitarist] was the guy that brought Roger Love on board. Roger Love’s this L.A.-based vocal coach who’s worked with everybody from BEACH BOYS to Iggy Pop. It doesn’t matter what kind of singer you are, he doesn’t teach you to sing; he teaches you not to lose your voice. That’s the key. So you learn to sing a certain way where you protect your voice in certain environments.”Some of the greatest singers in the world, their voices struggle because of the scheduling,” Elliott explained. “And when we used to do six shows a week and people would say, ‘You can’t sing anymore,’ they were probably right. I couldn’t sing at the time, was the correct answer, but doing six shows in seven days, when you’re playing two hours a night in those registers that I sing in, it was just getting to the point where I said, ‘I can’t do this.’ So I had one of my few hissy fits and said, ‘Next tour, this is not happening. I’m not doing any more than two in a row.’ And then eventually we, just through scheduling, I think we accidentally did this little run of one on, one off, one on, one off. And by the end of it, I said, ‘I’ll never sing this well again,’ unless we keep this schedule. And we just decided that’s how we’re gonna do it. So we don’t do as many gigs — we don’t have 200 shows a year; there’s no need. We just did 25 over three months, and it suited me down to the ground, I’ve gotta be honest, as a singer, because I could rest up.”You have to remember as well, it’s not just me in DEF LEPPARD. We sing — everybody [in the band] except Rick [Allen, DEF LEPPARD drummer] sings. He’s got enough to be dealing with, with his kit. So, everybody’s voices, especially the backing vocals. Most of the time they do the high harmony stuff, but some of the times I do the high harmony, ’cause I can hit the highest notes. So I actually have to take the harmony in certain parts of the song. And like they say, the bridge in ‘Animal’, the high harmony, which is Phil [Collen, DEF LEPPARD guitarist] on record is me. Because on record, you can just keep [doing] it until you get it right. Live, it just made more sense to swap. So I took the high one, he took the low one. and we do that quite a bit. We do it on ‘Bringin’ On The Heartbreak’. I take the high harmony. But most of the time the guys are doing it, so they need rest as well, because we sing a lot. Listen to a DEF LEPPARD record, if you’ve never heard one, and listen to how much vocalization there is. There’s actually more singing than guitars, because that’s the way that we structure stuff.”So looking after my voice, a lot of it is just common sense. At 65 years old, since we came back after COVID, we just made a point of going, ‘We can sustain this for 10 years if we don’t kill ourselves.’ As we saw earlier on this tour, a couple of people, saying, like, ‘Oh, DEF LEPPARD, they obviously use all these samples’ — I think it was Chris Holmes from W.A.S.P. and some dude [Chuck Billy] from TESTAMENT. It’s, like, actually, mates, no, we don’t. We actually practice. And maybe the three guys that you think are miming all the backing vocals, maybe they’re actually quite good at their jobs… We take it as a compliment. I’m not bitter about it. I mean, they can think what they want, because that’s what they’re used to. 99 percent of bands, maybe that’s what they do. I don’t know. I don’t judge bands on whether they use samples or not. I just judge them on whether I like them. If I go see a band live, I could be the first to go, ‘Yep. That’s definitely not live.’ There’s a keyboard player going, whatever, and he’s got the backing vocals there. But not us. It’ll be real until it’s terrible, and then we’ll stop. [Laughs]”DEF LEPPARD’s 23-city trek with JOURNEY kicked off on July 6 in St. Louis, Missouri and continued through September 8 in Denver, Colorado. Along the way, the two Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame inductees brought their show to stadiums in major cities like Chicago, Nashville, Boston, Toronto, New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco and more. CHEAP TRICK played two shows at the beginning of the tour and two concerts at the end of the trek, while STEVE MILLER BAND joined the bill for the majority of shows.The DEF LEPPARD/JOURNEY tour was promoted by AEG Entertainment.DEF LEPPARD’s 12th studio album, “Diamond Star Halos”, came out in 2022. A year later, the band followed it up with “Drastic Symphonies”, a collection of reimagining of some of DEF LEPPARD’s greatest hits with London’s Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at Abbey Road. The album spent 15 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Current Classical chart.DEF LEPPARD’s latest single, “Just Like 73″, arrived on seven-inch vinyl on August 2, 2024 and is available in a special color variant only through the band’s D2C store and in black at all retailers.”Just Like 73” notably marks the first collaboration between the iconic rock titans and the legendary guitarist, sonic innovator and co-founder of RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE and AUDIOSLAVE. The single revolves around a classic DEF LEPPARD stomp fueled by a robust stadium-size beat, thick riffing, and a signature chant, “Rock with me, just like 73!” Meanwhile, a knockout gang vocal gives way to a signature fret-scorching solo from Morello. The instantly recognizable whammy bar wheezes as he shreds at lightspeed into one last head-nodding hook.[embedded content]