Def Leppard Singer Has Some Words For Ronnie Dio

Band Photo: Dio (?)

Blabbermouth.net reports: Vassil Varbanov of Bulgaria's Tangra Mega Rock recently conducted an interview with DEF LEPPARD frontman Joe Elliott. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow.

Tangra Mega Rock: Do you feel something like a clash between the younger rock generations and you guys — I mean in terms of musicians, not the crowd?

Elliott: No. I don't ever feel competitiveness — it's thrown at me by the media. The media are always trying to make you competitive. I've been asked so many times whether we're in competition with WHITESNAKE. No, we're not! Now we're going out on a co-headlining tour as allies. It's as ridiculous as saying the British army is in competition with the American army in Iraq! They're working together for a common goal. What we are trying to achieve is 1 and 1 makes 3. We are a big band, they are a big band, and if we get together, we are bigger. This makes it more of a spectacle. It should be obvious to people that with the state of music business right now, which is just dying on its ass, the only thing that's surviving is live. We've been doing co-headlining tours for four years in the States — BRYAN ADAMS, JOURNEY — in 2005-2006 it worked brilliantly both for us and for those guys. To do it with a British band in Britain and now in Europe was a logical thing to do. You'll see over the next 4-5 years loads of people doing this. We were just the first to do it here. We did it, because in 2004 our booking agency in America had this brainwave to put BOB DYLAN and WILLIE NELSON on the same bill. What happens is that when the baseball season is closed, these massive fields do nothing, so they just suggest, "How about renting them out to the rock'n'roll industry?" This way they get something, and we get to use these fields, which cost a lot less money, so everybody's happy. So BOB DYLAN and WILLIE NELSON did it, and I saw that BOB DYLAN — BOB Fuckin' DYLAN! — is going as an opening act for WILLIE NELSON! And he's ok with this! That's brilliant! That removed all ego from the situation. So then, when we got off with BRYAN ADAMS, we played at baseball stadiums in front of 23-24 thousand people. When we went out with JOURNEY, it was a similar thing. And the same thing last year, with STYX and REO SPEEDWAGON and FOREIGNER. With this one, for the British shows we were going out last. Tonight we'll also be last, but last night in Albania we were first. There's no ego, no competition. I want everybody to be successful! This is not the Olympics! I would love to see the charts full of rock bands again. Back in 1988 there was a little period in the summer in America where any given week there was either us or GUNS N' ROSES or VAN HALEN, and we were keeping people like MARIAH CAREY and WHITNEY HOUSTON out of the charts! I'd be more interested in getting together with these people. If you have to be competitive, try to get rid of rap and R&B, which I don't have anything against, but the way that the industry has tried to shove rock aside only makes it stronger. So I don't feel any competition with any of these bands. The only time that I will say something negative about a band is when I'm just being pissy, because they say something negative about me. If Ronnie James Dio — as he did — said on that YouTube piece when somebody mentioned Vivian [Campbell, DEF LEPPARD guitarist], "I hope he fuckin' dies!" I would just say, "Ronnie James Dio, go fuck yourself!" So if somebody says, "DEF LEPPARD suck!", then I'll just back the ball like in tennis and say, "No, you suck, man!", but generally speaking, I don't have these problems. When people meet me, they normally see something beyond "Let's Get Rocked". Once they get to know us, people start to think differently about us, not just seeing what's on the surface. It's just a matter of communication, and that's the biggest problem this entire planet has — the lack of it."

Read the full article at Tangra Mega Rock.

Source: Blabbermouth