The forthcoming self-titled album from DEF LEPPARD will include a song called “Sea Of Love”, featuring a guest appearance by DEF LEPPARD guitarist Phil Collen’s DELTA DEEP bandmate Debbi Blackwell-Cook on vocals. Collen told Classic Rock magazine about how the collaboration came about: “I wrote [the track] and originally thought, ‘This’ll be a great song for DELTA DEEP.’ I had this riff for a while, and when we started doing the DEF LEPPARD stuff in February 2014, I just started demoing this song in Joe’s [Elliott, DEF LEPPARD singer] swimming pool — not in the water, but in that room. It had a Lenny Kravitz vibe to it; it was almost rock-soul, and even lyrically, it reminded me a bit of some Stevie Wonder stuff. I thought the guys were gonna hate it, but I showed it to them anyway. And they really liked it. So I thought, ‘Okay, I guess it’s not going to be a DELTA DEEP song then!’ And then it took on a different life when Rick Allen started doing his drums — it ended up being a lot jazzier, it was almost a Hendrix-type thing. Joe sang it differently to how I did it, and me, Sav [DEF LEPPARD bassist Rick Savage] and Vivian [Campbell, DEF LEPPARD guitarist] got together to our choir-style vocals… It was a joy, it was such a thrill.”
In a separate interview with The Weeklings, Collen said that “Sea Of Love” features Blackwell-Cook “doing this really amazing high vocal with Joe.”
DEF LEPPARD’s new self-titled album will arrive on October 30 via earMUSIC. The CD was written and recorded in three separate sessions over the course of the past year and a half.
“Def Leppard” track listing:
01. Let’s Go (5:01)
02. Dangerous (3:26)
03. Man Enough (3:54)
04. We Belong (5:06)
05. Invincible (3:46)
06. Sea Of Love (4:04)
07. Energized (3:23)
08. All Time High (4:19)
09. Battle Of My Own (2:42)
10. Broke ‘N’ Brokenhearted (3:17)
11. Forever Young (2:21)
12. Last Dance (3:09)
13. Wings Of An Angel (4:23)
14. Blind Faith (5:33)
Total running time: 54:24
The song “Let’s Go” can be streamed using the SoundCloud widget below.
Regarding “Let’s Go”, DEF LEPPARD singer Joe Elliott told RollingStone.com: “It’s a call to arms, you know? Rick Savage [bass] wrote 80 percent of the song. I wrote the verses, he wrote all the music and the choruses. He came in with it, and we knew it was a classic DEF LEPPARD song. It’s that three-minute pop-rock stuff with big chunky guitars and a big chorus. And it has that swaggering, mid-tempo rhythm, like ‘Sugar’, and ‘Rock Of Ages’. The idea was, we wanted something familiar. I mean, when AC/DC comes back after years away, you’re not going to get ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ from ‘em, you know? And you don’t want it, either — you want ‘Back In Black’, or something like it. For us, this is what we do. And it’s something we enjoy doing.”
The cover artwork can be seen below.
Elliott told North Dakota’s Grand Forks Herald that the band’s new album is a self-titled affair “because that’s what it sounds like. It doesn’t sound like any one specific era of DEF LEPPARD. It’s got everything. You’ll listen and you go, ‘Oh, that sounds like DEF LEPPARD,’ or you’ll go, ‘That is LEPPARD, but it sounds a bit like LED ZEPPELIN or QUEEN but you can hear the AC/DC or the CROSBY, STILLS & NASH coming through.’ We have not shied away from anything that’s influenced us in our growing up periods of our life. Just because we’ve made the kind of music we’ve made doesn’t mean to say we don’t like all of this other stuff.”
The album is the band’s first studio effort since “Songs From the Sparkle Lounge” in 2008.
Source: Blabbermouth
