Def Leppard: "Cool To Do Some Kind of Special Version of `Hysteria`"

Guitarist Phil Collen from English hard-rock act Def Leppard spoke with Broward-Palm Beach New Times recently about a number of topics including their first live album, "Mirror Ball". Collen also wants to do something special for the 25th anniversary of "Hysteria". Watch a great 85 minute film of the Leppard Story below.. A few excerpts from the chat follow:

Broward-Palm Beach New Times: Why do you hate playing ballads so much?

Collen: "My problem with it is that I want to get amped up, and when we're playing kind of Def Leppard stuff or rock stuff, it's an adrenaline buzz. You kind of slow down for when you do ballads. You know, it's cool, everyone singing along and everything, but I just prefer playing harder stuff, really."

Broward-Palm Beach New Times: So the band's 35th anniversary is coming up pretty quick here. Have you guys thought about that or talked about that at all?

Collen: "No, not at all. Someone told me it's their 25th anniversary next year and you know, it's birthdays or whatever. I'm not really a big birthday person, so it's not really a big deal. Everyone in the band is the same with stuff like that, commemorating things. It may be cool to do some kind of special version of "Hysteria". I think we should do something like that. We do miss a lot of that stuff."

Broward-Palm Beach New Times: They're filming a movie adaptation of " Rock of Ages" in Florida right now. How do you guys feel about how far that property has gone?

Collen: "I think it's great because we're getting a bunch of our songs in the movie. That's really cool. It was great. It was campy, kitschy, and fun. It was a very cool production of it. We were actually groomed to be a part of it; it's based on one of our songs. Kind of cool."

Read the entire interview here.