by Phil Collen
Manraze made the album punkfunkrootsrock a real family-and-friends affair. We finished writing the songs fairly quickly, and then it was time to look for a studio on a budget. Simon and Paul cut some live bass and drum tracks at a London studio called Britannia Row, and then Paul called in a favor from Edwyn Collins, who Paul had been playing drums with for years. Ger McDonnell was back in the producer seat. One of Manraze’s biggest champions, videographer Mark Sloper, asked if we wanted to do a song for his new docu-movie, I, Superbiker. Mark always batted for us before anybody else. He is totally cool and does great work. Mark also accompanies Paul to many Chelsea games. Mark had done documentaries on us previously and had also shot the vid for “Turn It Up.” After we left Edwyn’s studio, we recorded vocals and guitars at Z-Noise studios in Acton, West London, with Robert King, who assisted Ger. While I was recording the lead vocal on “Closer to Me,” Paul and Jeni’s daughter, Hollie Cook, a vocalist and recording artist in her own right, started singing harmony in the background. It sounded lovely, so I asked if she’d do it on the record. Hollie is actually a reggae artist, so she fit right in with our vibe.
Manraze had a great experience doing this album. We recorded everything in eleven days. Helen came up with the album design and took the photos. She also made a video documenting the entire recording process. I remember we shot the pictures for the record with her in a piss-filled alley in Shepherd’s Bush, but it still came out looking like a million dollars. We called the album punkfunkrootsrock because that’s what it was. A mix of punk, funk, roots reggae, and rock music that paid tribute to genres we loved and had grown up with.
In the midst of the new Manraze album release, Def Leppard also found ourselves on tour again in 2011. This included another American tour. During one of the tour breaks, Manraze played a show at the famous Roxy in L.A. to promote punkfunkrootsrock. Then it was back on tour with Def Leppard. We headed over to Australia, Japan, and New Zealand. Going to New Zealand was great because Helen and I got a chance to spend a few days at our house on the South Island near Queenstown. We ended that year playing a few shows with Mötley Crüe in England. I also found the time to shoot a music video with Mark Sloper at the world-famous Brands Hatch raceway outside London during the only day it didn’t rain for Manraze’s single “Take on the World,” featuring Debbi Blackwell-Cook.
A few years earlier Def Leppard was asked if we wanted to participate in a theatrical rock musical about the ’80s called Rock of Ages. We passed on the offer because at the time our then management Q Prime felt the offer was in its very early stages and lacked development and finances. Eventually, the play was produced and became a huge success on Broadway, so much so that a movie was to be made based on the show. The movie was to be directed by Adam Shankman, and Tom Cruise would play the lead. The release of the film was to coincide with our 2012 summer U.S. tour with special guests Poison and Lita Ford, who were also featured in the musical and movie. With this said, it seemed appropriate that we would call our tour Rock of Ages, since it was also the title of our 1983 hit single.
When filming was under way and the band played Florida, we actually paid Tom Cruise a visit on the set, since he’d be singing “Pour Some Sugar on Me” that day. We wanted to watch him film that segment with the song. When we met him he told us, “I’m a little nervous all you guys are here. I learned to sing just for this movie and I really want to give this song the respect it deserves, so go easy on me!” Well, he nailed it. Apparently he trained with a vocal coach for several hours a day to prepare, and it showed. He did lead vocals and backing vocals. I think he did really well, considering he had never sung before.
It’s not the moments in my life that people would think are the most noteworthy, i.e., meeting other rock stars, being on tour, attending after-show gatherings. It’s the times in my life when I am blessed to share experiences with those whose lives and mental capacities have been put to the ultimate test. It’s these moments that keep my life interesting and me interested in my life.
A few years earlier I had altered my diet slightly by eliminating dairy products. As I evolved mentally and physically and got into better and better shape, it just seemed like the most logical thing to do. Among other research, I had read a book called The China Study, which was featured heavily in the documentary film Forks Over Knives, which advocates for a low-fat, plant-based diet as a way to fight disease. It’s a brilliant film. Before the movie was over I had decided I would definitely become a vegan. There was no going back for me. In a nutshell, I’d rather feel great than not. And it’s not rocket science. Keep active, eat foods that nurture rather than poison your body, and make the effort. That’s all I do. It’s interesting looking at photos as a timeline. Ross Halfin has been taking photos of me since I was drunk off my ass in the Girl days to the present day.
ROSS HALFIN: After Steve Clark died, Phil cleaned himself up completely. No drinking, no drugs, working out, staying fit, and watching what he ate. He even became something strange—a “vegan.”
Now, you have to put this in the perspective that this was a time when every band was going crazy. Drinking and drugging were the norm, with Phil thinking, Fuck it. I’m not buying into any of it. Phil didn’t go to rehab—he just stopped. His main focus was staying fit, superfit. A lot of people who make fun of him—Phil’s main thing is to be topless within two songs when playing live—are jealous. If I’m shooting Def Leppard, he’ll be ready, thinking about what he’s wearing, and he knows what looks good. Plus I have to say he’s a great poser. And I mean that in a good way.
Prior to kicking off the Rock of Ages tour I got a phone call from my friend Jake Willoughby, who had lost his mother to pancreatic cancer. He wasn’t really dealing with it all that well, but he wanted to do something special to bring notice to the disease and honor his mother at the same time. Jake had a guitar store and sold my signature guitar model, the Jackson PC1. He asked me if I’d be into auctioning off a customized PC1 for a cancer charity of my choice during the tour.
Just a side note: I’ve been using Jackson guitars for almost thirty years, and the company has been amazing to me. I often go to the Jackson factory in Corona, California, which is housed within the Fender building. I even hand-splashed more than thirty PC1s for Jackson’s thirtieth anniversary, which took months to do but was a lot of messy fun.
So to Jake I said I’d be honored, since I’d lost my dad to pancreatic cancer, too. However, considering how I feel about the misuse of charitable donations, I didn’t want to donate to just any old charity, no matter how glossy the packaging.
As Helen and I checked out a few charities, we were sorely disappointed to find out that in many cases only a fraction of donated dollars goes to the actual suffering party, while the majority of donated dollars gets gobbled up by CEO, staff salaries, and write-offs. In fact, legally, a charity only has to give 10 percent to its particular cause (and even that money still isn’t guaranteed to go to the afflicted as long as there is the cost of research to include), and the rest can be frittered away on trips, gifts, hotels, dinners, and other varied expenses. Knowing all this and finding out even more made me very wary about even the most popular of charitable foundations, as they aren’t always what they appear to be. In the course of our research, we finally came across the Gerson Institute in San Diego and chose them to be the recipient of the auction’s funds.
Dr. Max Gerson practiced medicine until he fled Nazi Germany in 1933 with his family, including his then twelve-year-old daughter, Charlotte. I first heard of Charlotte and her father from Jeni Cook, Paul’s wife, who is a raw-food chef and gives seminars on juicing and how to incorporate healthy, natural living into the fast-paced lives we lead today. Dr. Gerson was the grandfather of juicing—extracting the natural vitamins and minerals in liquid form from fruits and vegetables. Nowadays juicing has become very popular, with its obvious health benefits, but back then it was shunned and ridiculed as a medical practice. Dr. Gerson had amazing results with 446 out of 450
skin tuberculosis patients using this method. Some of these patients who had cancer also had other illnesses. Gerson managed to reduce their tumors in size with the juice therapy. My fascination with the Gersons didn’t stop at Dr. Gerson’s profound juice therapy practices. His daughter Charlotte persevered through all of the denial and negativity to continue her father’s work, which culminated in the Gerson Institute. Her story in itself was inspirational. After more research, Helen and I were absolutely sure we wanted any funds we got for the guitar to go to the Gerson Institute. So after finding all this out we both made up our minds that we would also like to meet Charlotte Gerson.
Highest bidder and guitar aficionado Murray Bolton from New Zealand won my guitar, which I played all tour, for $20,000. He came by the house in California to pick up the PC1, which had been done up with extraordinary artwork by Mike Learn. Mike included an inscription on the back of the guitar of Jake’s mum’s and my dad’s birth and passing dates. Coincidentally, Jake’s mother’s name was Connie, same as my mum’s.
Then the day arrived. Helen; Debbi (whom I had begun singing Motown tunes with around the house and with whom Delta Deep would soon come about); writer Chris Epting; Jake; his then wife, Trish; and I went to San Diego to present Charlotte Gerson and the Gerson Institute with the donation. The day was lovely. Press arrived and recorded the entire proceeding, which included a beautiful presentation and a wonderful vegan lunch prepared by the staff. We finally met Charlotte, who was spry and gracious and has more life and energy than a woman a quarter her age. She had actually healed in record time from a hip fracture and was up and about easily moving around the complex. To say she’s healthily energetic is putting it mildly.
I also brought an acoustic guitar so Debbi and I could perform a few songs for everyone. We sang some Motown and blues. I first heard Debbi sing at our wedding. She started singing in the church at the age of two and her voice is kick-ass powerful. Debbi can sing anything. She has sung for a wide range of personalities, from the former pope John Paul II to Michael Bublé, among many others.
A few interesting things came out of this day. Although my wife had suggested it very early on (I dismissed her idea, as I associate such things with an inflated sense of ego), Chris Epting said, “Hey, man, you know, you should write a book,” Once again, my immediate reaction was that I didn’t like the egotistical element of it. For example, I don’t put awards—even the platinum awards—up in our home. I feel weird celebrating my birthday because I already celebrate every day, so what could I possibly do to make one more day even more special? But Chris said, “No, man, it’s a really interesting life and different from [those of] your peers.” The other occurrence that pushed yet another chapter of my life into full throttle was everyone’s inquiries about where to purchase songs by Debbi and me. Delta Deep was on its way.
Helen, Debbi, and I soon left for New Zealand to spend time at our house there. Soon after arriving, we heard a Wilson Pickett song on the radio in a store. We started commenting on the vibe and groove of the song. The conversation continued when we got back to the house. That inspiration turned into the song “Miss Me,” which took on its own identity. When we returned to the States, the three of us continued writing songs together. Helen dubbed the band Delta Deep. For some reason, in the music business, it’s always considered taboo to write music with your wife. I think that stems from male-based sexist views, misogyny, and insecurity. Suffice to say, we flow really naturally together, one of the beautiful benefits of intellectual rhythm. It was also really cool to see Debbi just oozing out melodies and lyrics, too. It’s amazing what happens when you’re inspired and have great chemistry with people.
Next we started recording a version of the Tina Turner song “Black Coffee,” which was made famous by Stevie Marriott and Humble Pie. Ironically, during this time Paul and Jeni Cook were staying at our house in Cali for a bit of a holiday, so I asked Paul if he’d play drums on it. He loved the Humble Pie version and had just seen it on YouTube the previous week. Once Paul cut his drums, it was obvious Simon had to play bass on the song, giving it a London/USA groove (featuring Manraze), just like Marriott’s version. Then some weird shit happened.
In the spring of 2013, Def Leppard was booked to play a residency in Las Vegas.
I was never really into doing a residency in Vegas. I always associated that with the mob and casinos in the desert where the Rat Pack performed. When we first played there in 1983, we performed at the Aladdin Theatre for the Performing Arts, and Paul Anka was doing a residency. Vegas was never really associated with hard-rock bands. But how things have changed, and with eleven shows to be played at the Joint in the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino, it would be a first for Def Leppard to perform that many times in one city. So after thirty years, here we were, doing something brand-new.
As was becoming the trend, we were asked if we would play the Hysteria album in full. Fans were growing accustomed to having that full-album experience re-created for them, and we loved the idea. In fact, Joe and I had actually been talking about doing this very same thing for about twenty years. Now we finally would get to fulfill that ambition. To me, Hysteria is the definitive Def Leppard album.
The shows in Vegas were being dubbed Viva Hysteria. The whole thing turned into something bigger than we ever would have imagined, as it would be filmed and recorded for a movie, DVD, CD, and potential documentary. We agreed that if we were going to do this, we had to do it right. We wanted to make it very different from anything we had ever done before. We knew that the Hysteria set would be an hour long, but we wanted to give the audience much more than that. We decided to also be our own opening act, playing rare songs and deep cuts. And we decided to give this act another name, to set it off from the rest of the show. We named ourselves Ded Flatbird, which has a pretty amusing genesis: When my son Rory’s mum, Jacki, was in Lamaze class back in 1989, one of the other mothers-to-be asked Jacki what her husband did. Jacki replied, “He’s in a band called Def Leppard.” The woman repeated back, “Ded Flatbird?” It was a story that became a favorite within the Leppard circle, so much so that our manager, Peter Mensch, had T-shirts printed up. And so the legendary moniker was born.
The plan was to make the raw opening set forty-five minutes. But before the first show, during our production rehearsals a couple of weeks earlier in Los Angeles, there was something different. Rick Allen was practicing “Good Morning Freedom” (a B-side from the first album that would also be our first live song of the evening) when he stopped playing and said, “Wow. The last time I played this song I had two arms, so I need a minute to think about how I’m going to approach this.” That gave me pause. In the nearly thirty years since the accident, Rick remained an amazing inspiration for millions of people all around the world and especially for us, his bandmates. He’s adapted so incredibly to his injury that it’s easy for us to sometimes forget that he has a disability. When he made the remark about “Good Morning Freedom,” it reminded me that no matter how easy he may make it look, at the end of the day Rick grew up playing a lot of these songs with both of his arms. Subsequently, during the same rehearsals, Viv revealed some disturbing news. He had been diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. What we all thought was a lingering cough turned out to be cancer. Viv performed in Vegas, but immediately afterward, he began aggressive treatment.
The shows we played during our stay in Las Vegas were some of the most powerful and energetic we’d ever played. Part of it was that we knew Viv was ill and so we had to push things a little bit more. We filled in the gaps and made it work. The intimacy of the venue certainly helped fuel the excitement and intensity of the shows. But I think the biggest difference was in the fact that all of the guys were feeling that this residency might be perceived as some sort of victory lap, and so we all pushed back collectively and as ferociously as we could. We showed everyone we were still hungry, tenacious, and committed to raising the bar. For the VIPs, we did something we had never done before—a meet-and-greet plus an excl
usive acoustic performance before the main show. I couldn’t believe the scene—fans from all over the world, fans breaking down and crying as we played the acoustic set, fans who had seen us as many as forty times. The Viva Hysteria experience in Las Vegas was so powerful and so positive that any thought I had that this band was winding down was pretty much eliminated. In fact, due to the show’s success, we were asked to do a tour of European festivals during the summer of 2013, earning one of the biggest paydays we’d ever had.
But it was right before we were to set off on that European tour that I had my hand injury.
The tendon tore off the bone of one of my left knuckles. I couldn’t play guitar properly and would need surgery. Still, the tour started in two days and I got through it all. When the tour was done, I went to Paris and had my surgery done by a brilliant hand surgeon named Jean-Noël Goubier. He sews fingers back onto people’s hands for a living, so I was definitely in good hands, so to speak. After the surgery, I had to wear a cast on my wrist and arm for six weeks, which left me with a withered, atrophied non-guitar-playing wrist and hand when the cast came off. My physical therapist Scott Moncrief was amazing as well. He helped me strengthen my wrist and fingers over several months. Since my need for expression never goes away, and knowing I couldn’t play guitar as I normally do, I entered an interim period for a few months where I would still (at the very least) be able to express myself.
I had never played slide guitar before, but as I couldn’t press down on the strings, I thought this would be as good a time as any to learn. I literally pulled up a ten-minute tutorial video on YouTube by Joe Walsh, and a week later I recorded the song “Bang the Lid,” which is all slide and my official debut bottleneckin’ it. Deb, Helen, and I (as Delta Deep) wrote the song about a female slave killing her slave owner with sex. I could never write a song like that by my “white self,” but with a sultry sixty-two-year-old black woman and an aware soul sistah from Brooklyn, when it came to going in deep and dark, it was game on, no boundaries. We would also cover other “elephant in the room” taboo subjects like we did in “Down in the Delta,” about being uprooted from your home country, seeing your entire family killed, and then being forced into a burning living hell on earth as a slave in a new land with no chance of escape. All of a sudden these songs weren’t standard blues. They had fire, passion, a fuck-offness, and an unholy groove I hadn’t heard anywhere before. We’ve been calling it alternative roots, extreme blues, blues rock ’n’ soul, but actually, it’s a hybrid of all the above, as, through Debbi’s vocals, it channels the pain and suffering ever-present in the lives of real blues artists from a century ago.
