What A Load Of Hits! Def Leppard Set List Talk!

Vivian Campbell tells fans to expect the hits when Leppard tour with Heart

Reported by Eric MacKinnon

Published: May 30, 2011. © Rock AAA.

Lepps ready for tour

Vivian Campbell says Def Leppard have already worked out the set-lists for their summer shows as there is little room for variation because there is a core of tracks fans simply expect to hear.
The guitarist does admit the band try to make the set-lists slightly different year on year while also mixing up the arrangement in some tracks too.
The UK rock legends are preparing to headline the Download Festival next month before embarking on a US tour with Heart but Campbell says they will have to stick to the hits for their American gigs as the crowd could be a 50/50 split between the two acts.
In an interview with Guitar International Campbell said:
“The set list kind of picks itself. There’s a bit of a double-edged sword, having a really strong catalogue. People expect the hits, particularly in America and particularly with the nature of the concert industry nowadays, insofar as when we package with other acts.
“There’s gonna be a certain percentage of the audience that is there primarily for Heart, and they’re only gonna respond to the big Leppard hits. So it’s not like we’re going and playing to 100% Def Leppard audience.
“If that was the case, we would definitely dig deeper into our catalogue and play more obscure songs. We are very fortunate that we actually could play an hour and a half of bona fide Top 20 songs.
“The hardest thing for us is what songs not to play, and make it a little different from year to year. We try different arrangements of songs. Like with ‘Rocket,’ sometimes we do a real guitar extravaganza in the middle between Phil and me. Sometimes we do the more concise single version. We’ll try and do a different album cut, like maybe ‘Gods of War,’ which we haven’t played in a few years. Last tour we played ‘Mirror, Mirror.’
“The set list for America hasn’t been formulated yet. I’m actually flying into Dublin tonight and we start rehearsal. We’ll get to it, but my point being that the majority of the set is always gonna be the same.
“There are certain songs that when people come to see Def Leppard they’re gonna want to hear ‘Photograph,’ ‘Rock of Ages,’ ‘Sugar,’ ‘Animal’ and ‘Hysteria’. All those songs are gonna be present.”
The band are also set to release their first ever live album but Campbell reveals they never planned to release it but the plummeting cost of recording equipment gave them the opportunity to record their live shows which led to the decision to release ‘Mirrorball – Live and More’.
It will also include three-brand new tracks which Campbell says were written and wrapped up in a rush.He continued:
“We never really made a conscious decision to do a live record. It’s just that in the past doing a live album was very involved. You had to get a truck and you had to record basically one or two shows. There was a lot of pressure and a lot of performance anxiety. The technology is cheap now, so we basically just started recording every show over the last two tours.
“As such, there was never any, ‘Oh, my god. We’re making a live album. We better not screw up.’ You really forgot you were recording. It took a lot of the pressure off. I don’t even think that we started to do it with the viewpoint of making a live CD. We just wanted to archive our performances. So this was recorded over multiple shows in 2008 and 2009 and we just cherry-picked the best performances.
“We decided to take some time off at the end of the last tour. Joe Elliott became a daddy for the first time and Rick Allen’s wife was expecting. So it was a whole thing and we just wanted some personal time. The idea of doing a live album freed us up a lot more and there was less pressure than doing a studio album. Other than that, Def Leppard’s basically been inactive other than Joe Elliott sitting in the studio sorting through this stuff, which basically was the biggest chore.
“The idea of doing the three songs came late in the project. Our management said it would add more value to the package if we had some new studio tracks. So it was kind of a scramble, particularly on my end.
“I actually wrote a song for it but didn’t have it ready in time. Hopefully it will make it on our next studio album. Joe wrote the song, ‘Undefeated,’ really, really quick. In my opinion, that’s the most Leppard-sounding of the three. It’s a great song. Joe just has a knack for writing Def Leppard songs.
“The other two songs I guess had been in the works. Phil Collen had written ‘It’s All About Believing’ with a producer/writer friend of his called C.J. Vanston. They had written it over a year ago. And Rick Savage had been working for quite some time on ‘The Kings of the World,’ which is very, very complex. It’s basically Sav paying homage to his favourite band ever, Queen, but that all came about at the 11th hour.”