by Phil Collen
During the Journey tour, we played the Hollywood Bowl. It being L.A. meant that backstage was filled with celebrities. We got word that Tim McGraw was going to be there. Rick Allen knew Tim because his brother Robert had worked with Tim and his wife, Faith Hill. Tim had always mentioned to Rick that he loved Def Leppard and that it would be great one day to do a song together. Since I knew that, I started noodling around with an idea of what a song would sound like if Def Leppard fused with Tim McGraw. Within ten seconds of meeting him, I started humming this idea, and he said, “Yeah! And we could have a stop section there! And this is where Joe comes in . . . !” And before you know it we had most of the song done right there and then in a crowded hallway in the Hollywood Bowl. This song would end up being called “Nine Lives.” I love it when that happens. It wouldn’t be completed for another year, but it ended up on Songs from the Sparkle Lounge and on one of Tim’s greatest-hits albums, too.
Speaking of country music, we did this show called Crossroads with Taylor Swift. At the time, Taylor was just blowing up. We’d read in Rolling Stone that this young superstar wanted to do Crossroads with us because we were her favorite band. In 2008 we went out to Nashville and added Taylor and her band to about five of our songs and vice versa, making for a cacophony of country and rock. The really interesting thing to me was that a lot of Taylor’s songs were constructed in the vein of another one of her favorite artists—Shania Twain. Ironically, we recognized Mutt Lange’s influence, as he’d written a lot of the songs with Shania, his then wife, thus completing the circle that a lot of our songs fit together seamlessly. Although nothing really came of the experience for us, with the exception of a hard-to-find DVD, we all had a great time making great music together.
At the end of the 2006 Sparkle Lounge tour with Journey, I splashed out and finally bought my favorite car—a metallic meteorite-gray Aston Martin DB9. I’ve always had a sincere fascination with cars. I love the look of them. That image was probably my earliest appreciation of art without even realizing it. The lines, the curves and colors all wrapped around harnessed horsepower waiting to be unleashed. I think my earliest memory of wanting a specific car was in the ’60s after seeing Goldfinger with Sean Connery as James Bond zooming around in a totally pimped-out Aston Martin DB5 equipped with machine guns, the capacity to produce an oil slick, and an ejector seat.
This James Bond fascination finally got to me. My Aston didn’t have an ejector seat, but it was a convertible, which was even better, as I wouldn’t really take anyone in the car that I wanted to chuck out. The DB9 was my favorite dream car, but with it there was a huge letdown. The car was beautiful, sexy-ass, and fast, but the romantic idea of freedom, independence, and escapism wasn’t there anymore. It was back in the old Ford Escort van I’d owned in the seventies, which I’d slept in, shagged in, and done pretty much everything else in. That was living the dream. Phil Lewis once said, “Freedom is a full tank of gas!” and he was bang on.
When I was growing up, cars had names that seemed to reflect a working-class image. But for me, cars such as the Viva, the Cortina, and the Morris Minor eventually got replaced by those with flashier names like Diablo, Vanquish, and Gallardo, and numbers such as M3, GT3, and 918. Cars have always been part of rock star/famous-person folklore and are seen in some cases as proof of having made it. A flash motor has always had the association with hot, tasty-looking chicks and impressing anyone who happens to glance your way, letting them know immediately that they’re looking at someone special. They are also the dream of boys and men of all ages.
But with all that said, it’s not about the car—it’s about the experience in the car. Cars can represent escapism, speed, or a personal rocket ship. But the idea of a car for me symbolized real independence, and the happiest I have ever been was in my simpler, pedal-to-the-metal mediocrities. I can honestly say that the best times I’ve ever had in cars were the early years of driving those very humble and modest working-class motors, or when I drove a rented car. I’ve had every kind of luxury car you could imagine. I’ve driven them all. But when you remove all the spit and shine, I’ve come to realize that it isn’t about the package. It’s about the ride, and I’ve had some of my best rides in a car you wouldn’t look twice at. Case in point, recently I had the most spectacular experience when I drove with my wife, Helen, and her godmother, Debbi Blackwell-Cook, and I drove to a place called Paradise on the south island of New Zealand in a rented Toyota. I wish I’d figured this out sooner before spending a fortune on Porsches, Mercedes, Beemers, and Jags over the years. I’ve ultimately come to the conclusion that it’s more about the freedom part, especially when coupled with youthful discovery that has ended up being important to me. Don’t get me wrong: I still really dig and appreciate those fine cars, but I’d never let a car define me. As I’m writing this, I just got back from driving my twelve-year-old BMW X5 (in perfect condition, with 131,000-plus miles) to the beach. My dog Shaq was in the back, with sand everywhere. We basically had a two-hour vacation. This car is older than my oldest daughter, Samantha. Even though I feel deliciously wooed every time I see a new X6 M, I happen to just really like my X5 and I’m loath to get rid of it or replace it with a newer model. That’s saying a lot for a guy who used to buy a new car every three years, like I did. I am glad that I finally sussed this out, because it’s been bothering me for years. I have been looking for the dots to connect ever since I had that afternoon flash point I had in my black Porsche on Blackfriars Bridge in London years ago.
Near the end of 2007 (by which time I was fully separated from Anita), I met Shawyana one day at the beach. We had a good time together and enjoyed working out along with exploring health and fitness regimens. We became close pretty quickly, and soon she and her seven-year-old son, Nico, were living with me at my house in Laguna Hills. Plus she could cook her ass off. In 2008, Def Leppard embarked upon a fairly extensive tour outside of the U.S., visiting all of the places that we had neglected for a while and some places that we had never been before. This was to promote the Sparkle Lounge album that we’d started promoting in 2006 on the U.S. tour with Journey.
While we were on tour, the Sparkle Lounge was a room where Dave Wolff, Vivian’s guitar tech, would faithfully place guitar amps and sparkly Christmas lights in the hope that we’d get our rock on in there. Of course we never did, but he’d set it up every day anyway. We decided that we could start recording a new album while on tour. That’s what Greg Ladanyi had done with Jackson Browne many years previously, and it had turned out to be Jackson’s biggest album. We really needed the time, so every effort was made to at least start some of these songs for a new album. We’d set up an electronic drum kit and practice combo amps. We actually did get some stuff done. “Nine Lives” was one of the songs started on tour. In fact, I did my backing vocals on the chorus in a bathroom while Journey were blasting away onstage. Ronan McHugh, our house sound engineer who’d become the band’s producer on the Yeah! album, recorded everything. We thought that we’d actually redo it properly at some point, but when I got to do it at a real studio, it sounded like crap compared to the bathroom session. Ironic, that. So we used the bathroom vocals. This is why we called the album Songs from the Sparkle Lounge.
The tour took us to Eastern Europe, including Lithuania and Turkey; Russia; and Greece. A lot of these places we toured with David Coverdale and his band Whitesnake, who were always a hoot. I always got on great with David. He made a special guest appearance on the Delta Deep debut album—a band I formed years later—where he performed on “Private Number.” The tour wound through the States and Canada and concluded with some Japanese and Australian dates, finally wrapping up in New Zealand in November 2008. I always liked playing Australia, since I could reconnect with my cousin Georgie and his wife, Mary, and daughter, Claire. I also fell in love with New Zealand. I ended up buying a house there.
I had a very serious 2009. In the midst of my relationship with Shawyana, my on-again, off-again relationship with Kamilah g
ave me my second daughter, Savannah, who was born in Alexandria, Virginia (we would later also have another daughter, Charlotte). In 2008 in Reading, Pennsylvania, during our tour with Styx, I briefly met Helen Simmons, who would eventually become my wife. Helen was from Brooklyn, New York.
In 2009 she was our official VIP hostess for Live Nation. This basically meant in each city she organized the backstage fan experience along with great seats and a party that included food, drinks, and a meet and greet. That year we also started rehearsing for part two of the Sparkle Lounge tour in Dublin. The big thing for Def Leppard was that we were to headline the Download Festival in Donington, the same place where Rick Allen had made his triumphant return to the stage twenty-three years previous. Manraze was also to play Download the day before Def Leppard. While in Dublin, I would do double duty. I’d rehearse in the afternoon with Def Leppard, drive across town, and then rehearse with Manraze at night.
The day of Def Leppard’s Download performance, the weather was beautiful and picture perfect. We’ve played it since, and it pissed down rain as is usually the case with British festivals. It was a career highlight. There were 80,000 people there, we played great, and the audience was fantastic. Everything just seemed to line up—the weather, the audience, the vibe, and the fact that we were so on. It was like a new chapter. After Download, we went to Nashville to rehearse for the U.S. tour and play at the CMT Awards with Taylor Swift. We were there for a week and some days. We started the American leg of the tour in Camden, New Jersey, on June 23, 2009. The next day, we were off in Cleveland. A small group of us decided to go to the movies. I’m very sure I received a few knowing glances from some of the crew when they realized I would be hanging out with them, since I pretty much always did my own thing. But in all fairness, I wanted to hang out with Helen. I wasn’t uncomfortable in the least, because my son Rory was also a part of that group. He was working on the tour that summer in the lighting crew. Transformers 2 was playing. Helen and I sat away from the rest of the group and pretty much spent the whole movie talking, laughing, telling jokes, and getting to know each other, and the weirdest thing happened to me. It was surreal, but when she laughed, I recognized her. I can’t really describe it except to say that I felt like I knew her, maybe even from another lifetime, but I knew her and we shared an intellectual rhythm. I was going to have to tell her.
The next day, I had figured out ahead of time exactly what I was going to say to her and had calculated that I’d need about seven minutes to get it all out. Without hesitation, I broke down my entire personal life. I told her about my live-in girlfriend, my new daughter, my two other children, my ex-wife, and the wife I was still technically married to. I told her I had no clue what her situation was—whether she was married, had kids, was living with someone, or what, but I just wanted her to know that I thought we should be together at some point. It could be a year or five years, whatever. I’d wait.
The weirdest thing was that I could tell she was really listening to me, actually taking it all in. There was almost a sense of urgency to get it out. It’s funny telling this story now, because I remember sharing it with someone else later on who didn’t know me very well, and that person asked me, “Well, have you ever been married before or in a serious relationship?” to which I replied, “I’ve had more serious relationships in one afternoon than you’ve probably had in your entire life.” I guess my honesty came off as a sort of naïvety. I was speaking to Helen that way because of the exact opposite. Helen was in her own relationship, which seemed to be as complicated as my confession to her, and which explains why she didn’t flinch at my situation. She was boldly up-front about her personal life and in turn told me everything without blinking. Ultimately, we decided then and there to respect each other’s space and current relationships.
In reality, my relationship with Shawyana was already coming to an end due to a previous indiscretion on my part. At the same time, Helen’s relationship, which had been heavily strained for that past year, completely unraveled for unrelated reasons. During the Sparkle Lounge tour we simultaneously became single and inseparable. So our transition into a full-blown relationship was an easy and natural one. I asked her to marry me on her grandmother’s birthday, August 12, 2009, in Palm Beach, Florida.
The Def Leppard tour continued on until September 12 in Auburn, Washington. Right afterward, Manraze was offered a support slot on the British leg of the Alice Cooper tour in November and December. This was a huge deal for us—Manraze had never done a tour before. Helen had never been to England, so she joined our small “motley crew” of tech guys to help us. Ronan would do the house sound, Cuz was on drum duty for Paul, and Scotty would do guitars for me and Simon. We would be kind of slumming it, as we weren’t being paid much, so we didn’t feel like splurging on hotels. Simon managed to sort out an amazing deal with a tour bus that had seen better days. But it was totally comfortable, like taking your auntie’s front room (complete with the old electric heater) out on tour in wintery Britain. The bus did actually have a portable electric heater, but if you wanted to put the kettle on, you had to unplug the heat; otherwise you’d lose all the power. The tour would hit a lot of the old British theaters that Simon and I had played together thirty years ago in Girl and a few places where Paul and the Sex Pistols had been banned or thrown out. It was magical, playing old stomping grounds. The high point was our show at London’s Hammersmith Odeon on December 7. The next day was my birthday, and we played an intimate show at the Met Bar, a very cool little club in Central London.
After the tour ended, I began traveling to the East Coast to see Helen even while she was working on a production at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. I had rented an apartment in a hip part of DC, so there was much to do. I borrowed a guitar from Brian Meader, who worked in a local guitar shop and had lots of time to write new songs for the next Manraze album, punkfunkrootsrock, including “I C U in Everything,” which I ended up writing about Helen. While we were there, Helen met my daughter Samantha and Michele. But the most amazing thing came out of Samantha’s mouth. She was five at the time. She said to Helen, “You know, I love my dad very much.” I think it was a protection mechanism. Helen replied, “Yes. Me too.” And that seemed to be the right answer for Samantha.
In 2010, Def Leppard took a much-needed break. This was the first year we’d taken off since I’d joined the band. Helen and I got married on July 16 at the Ritz-Carlton in West Palm Beach, Florida. The reason for Florida was because that was where I asked her to marry me a year before. However, we recently found out we fucked up on the venue (“You mean West Palm Beach is different from Palm Beach?”). I mentioned that I proposed to her on her grandmother’s birthday, August 12. This was because Hattie Simmons, apart from being Helen’s grandmother, was also the only mother and father Helen knew. When I began writing this book, Hattie was ninety-five years old, still very sharp, and able to share stories about working in the cotton fields of rural North Carolina at the age of five (was that even legal?). Hattie took on the responsibility of raising my wife from birth just as she neared fifty. She worked hard and without breaking just so she could deal with the pressures of raising a child in the ’60s and ’70s in Brooklyn as a single black woman. Unfortunately, Hattie has since passed away. But we are happy to have had the time we had with her.
I don’t like weddings, but this one was great! We had no alcohol, multiple vegetarian food stations (Indian, Mexican, Thai, soul food, etc.). We then had a second wedding on August 12, Hattie’s ninety-first birthday, at her and Helen’s church in Brooklyn. We celebrated Hattie’s birthday and had our reception at the same time. We even “jumped the broom,” a time-honored African-American tradition.
At some point in late 2010, Manraze reconvened in London and talked about what to do next. Our debut album, Surreal, had failed to get attention. In 2009, we’d done the Download Festival and the Alice Cooper tour, plus a club tour in 2008 to very empty, cold UK clubs. Paul, Simon, and I were brimm
ing with new ideas for a new record, since we really get creative when we’re together. I think it’s way easier to come up with ideas for Manraze, as there are no restrictions. Someone had said to me that Manraze must satisfy the “itch that you can’t scratch.” That statement is very true when you’ve been part of a huge band like Def Leppard or the Sex Pistols. Success can sometimes halt your freedom to express yourself creatively because you must continue to fulfill a role.
Many great bands have been crucified because they had the audacity to do something different. Bless those that can pull it off. Radiohead said, “Fuck you,” and happily went off into artistic bliss. However, in their case, Coldplay were waiting in the wings and carried the commercial style baton Radiohead left behind to new stratospheric heights.
