10 QUESTIONS / JOE ELLIOTT : Def Leppard: Famously Faceless

“The world’s most boring, faceless band strikes again. . . .”

Def Leppard lead singer Joe Elliott is being sarcastic about the success of the British lite-metal band’s latest album, “Adrenalize,” which topped the U.S. sales charts for the first five weeks after its release last month. Elliott’s tongue-in-cheek comment was directed at critics who love Bruce Springsteen (whose two new albums came out the same day as “Adrenalize”) and U2, but trash Def Leppard.

Def Leppard has been pelted with criticisms like bland and anonymous for years--ever since the band’s 1983 breakthrough album, “Pyromania,” which sold more than 7 million copies.

“People like our music because they love escapism--and we play that kind of music as well or better than any band,” says Elliott when asked about the band’s appeal. Sometimes people don’t want to think. They want to get crazy and totally lose their minds for a few hours--to escape from the hell of their lives.”.

But critics aren’t all Def Leppard has been battling in recent years. The group has had to struggle against adversity, notably two well-publicized tragedies: drummer Rick Allen’s loss of an arm in a 1984 auto crash and the alcohol-and-drug-related death early last year of guitarist Steve Clark.

Thanks to special equipment that allows him to play with one arm, Allen is still part of the band, while veteran guitarist Vivian Campbell joined the band early this year. Bassist Rick Savage and guitarist Phil Collen complete the lineup.

As the band prepared to begin a series of European club dates before a world tour that will includes U.S. dates starting in the late summer, Elliott, 32, spoke about both the personal and critical battles.

Question: What’s your main gripe against critics?

Answer: Most of them don’t like our kind of music so they evaluate it unfairly. All we ask is for critics to take the album for what it is . . . to review it on its own terms. I’m not looking for five-star reviews, but it’s nice to know that you’re being rejected for the right reasons and not the wrong reasons.

Q: How do you react to some of the bad reviews?

A: I’m OK with some, but I get mad at others because the writers are so ignorant. Some reviews are such uninformed crap that they make my blood boil and make me want to punch the writer in the face. It’s not just that the reviews are negative, but the ignorance is so galling.

Q: Are you ever critical of your own music?

A: Hell, yes. I know when we stink. That happens and I’m the first to admit it. What we do isn’t that complicated--or that great really. We’re good at what we do, but I can’t rightfully say what we do takes genius. Intelligence isn’t a plus in rock ‘n’ roll anyway. Most people in rock aren’t very bright. If they weren’t playing rock ‘n ‘roll, they’d be working in some factory--and probably at the bottom rung.

Q: How do you feel when people accuse you of being faceless and boring?

A: I don’t like to be called boring because I don’t think we are. But faceless, I don’t mind that at all. If we were faceless and sold only 10,000 records, I’d be concerned, but I love being faceless and being successful. We’re not publicity seekers.

Other bands do all sorts of outrageous stuff and are constantly in the news for behaving like drunken, brainless idiots--bashing women and throwing up on planes. We don’t do that. And that means we can usually walk down the street, particularly when we’re not on tour, and no one knows who we are. That’s great.

When this album came out, we made a point to do nothing but the bare minimum publicity to let people know it’s out. We didn’t want to do anything intense and excessive, like Michael Jackson did with “Dangerous.” We prefer to be low-key and faceless, thank you.

Q: Your album came out the same day as Bruce Springsteen’s two albums. How did you feel about your album going up against them?

A: I don’t think we got the attention we deserved from most of the media. They were focusing on Bruce having two albums out and adding, “By the way, Def Leppard entered the chart at No. 1.”

That was a little annoying, but we knew that would happen. We could have delayed our album, but that would have made it seem like we were frightened of him, which we’re not. It’s more challenging to come out against heavy competition than come out on a week when the other major album is the greatest hits of Pat Boone. It was serious competition and we’re sure we could beat that competition. We’re still at No. 1 while those other albums have slowed down.

Q: How have the warm-up dates with Campbell gone so far?

A: As well as could be expected for warm-up dates. We did the first show with Vivian at a little club in Dublin. It was a little rough in spots because we had some equipment problems. Vivian still has to learn to play with us live. Doing rehearsals is one thing. Live shows is another.

Q: Was it hard to find a replacement for Clark?

A: We briefly talked about turning the band into a four-piece, but that was never more than a slim possibility. Our sound relies on guitar orchestration, which is impossible with one guitar. We mulled some names over and in January we started playing with a few people. One of the main things, outside of musical ability, was that we were looking for a relatively ego-free person, someone who we all liked and someone who wouldn’t behave like an obnoxious, self-absorbed jerk.

Q: There was four years between “Pyromania” and “Hysteria” in 1987 and five years between “Hysteria” and “Adrenalize.” Why do you take so long between albums?

A: On “Hysteria” we were trying to make as good an album as we could. We spent millions of dollars and did an incredible amount of recording and re-recording. On this album, a lot of time was spent trying to keep Steve (Clark) alive.

The tour, which went on for 14 months, was finally over at the end of 1988 and we took the majority of 1989 off. The majority of ’90 was dealing with Steve’s problems. Eighty-five percent of the album was done between April and December of last year.

What happened to Steve was that he had a drinking problem for years that he was trying to control but couldn’t. He was slowly dying. We were trying to work on “Adrenalize” but we couldn’t focus. Making the album wasn’t the most important thing on our mind--Steve was. Steve didn’t play on the album. All the guitars were done after he died.

Q: There’s not much sense of turmoil or darkness to the music on “Adrenalize.” Was it hard to keep those feelings off the album, considering all you went through?

A: We worked hard at that. We didn’t want to write songs about the fact that Steve was dying and that everything was a horrible, ugly mess. We’ve never been interested in making music that showed every little detail of our lives. But one song, “White Lightning,” does reflect what was happening to Steve and the way we felt.

Q: How have you survived all the tragedies without splitting up?

A: It wasn’t easy. There are times when each of us thought, fleetingly at least, about packing it in. You feel depressed and say, “What the hell’s it all for?” There was no great show of courage, no moment when we all got together and joined hands and said, “We’re going forward” like they’d do in a bad movie. We just muddle through, grumbling and stumbling. We wake up the next day and we are still together. We’ve been doing that for years.

If I had to give some reason for why we’re still together, I’d say probably because we’re such good friends who know each other so well that we couldn’t imagine not working together. Also because we’re so damned thick-skinned about everything. If we were all very vulnerable and soft and supersensitive, we probably would have split up years ago.