Joe Elliott Quotes

1. Selling out to America? That pisses me off. We're not the first English rock band that went to the States.  
 

2. I love the fact we're still on the road. I was born to be a factory worker really, so for me the chance to get on stage at Wembley 30 years after we started is amazing.

3. When we set out to replace Steve Clark, Vivian Campbell exceeded our wildest expectations.

4. (in reference to getting into the band) I was tall and I had long hair and I didn't look wimpy.

5. To be honest, I'm a bit of a snob now; give me a Four Seasons anywhere in the world and I'm happy. Also, they've just opened a Ritz-Carlton in County Wicklow, Ireland, which is stunning and has great views.






6. We've always had a plan for success. From the very start we've known what we wanted to accomplish. Everything's progressed amazingly.

7. People always ask me how we got the name Def Leppard. Actually, it came from a poster I had made which depicted a rather strange-looking jungle cat with a hearing horn at his ear. I called him the deaf leopard. The guys in the band loved the poster, and after a bit of work, we decided to call ourselves Def Leppard. The name is funny, but it has strength.




8. It's big production. It's huge. It's using studio technology to your benefit. You don't go in and play live and then just take the tapes and get them mastered. You have to create.

9. The best holiday I ever had was the first one I went on without my parents, when I was 17.

10. With Los Angeles, it's kind of a love-hate thing. Sometimes I think it's marvelous, and sometimes I think it's a dump. It's so fake and I can't deal with how fake it is.

11. Any idiot who knows five chords can bang a song together. But it's probably going to be rubbish.

12. I've always liked traveling around Europe and seeing the architecture. The buildings in capital cities have been there for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years. Some look better than the new ones.






13. A fan would get an autograph and that was that. If we didn't tour again for five years, we wouldn't remember them.

14. Some of the demos we do are better than a lot of people's albums.






15. You'd be surprised how many records we've had to sell to pay our debts.

16. Manhattan's always fascinating, too, just a big, stinky, smelly conglomeration of numbered avenues and streets, but it's just got a vibe that's hard to beat. I shouldn't like it, but I do. I can't put my finger on it.

17. There's room for everybody - it's not the Olympics. I'd like to be on top, but if the album's successful, that's good enough.

18. The band is a millionaire. We as individuals aren't.

19. The Vatican takes your breath away.

20. When the house lights go down and the crowd goes wild, and then when you hear the applause at the end, it's incredible.

21. My mum and dad were the first people to believe in us.

22. We just wanted to put a smile on people's faces. That's all we ever wanted to do.

23. When we try to write a pop song, we go for standard pop arrangements, even to the point where we will go to the key change at the end, which is really cheesy.





24. I don't really feel any different when I get up on stage.

25. We used to have our own plane with the band's name on the side. It was a dream come true. You drive to a local airport. There's none of this checking in stuff; you just get on the plane.




26. Writing a song is actually quite easy. Writing a good one is very, very difficult.

27. The most frustrating thing for musicians who want to play stuff from the new album is when everyone goes out to buy a beer.

28. I never really enjoyed sex with groupies though. It's like having a wank - you get 30 seconds of guilt when you've finished.

29. I saw the Stones three years ago at the Wiltern Theater in L.A. and that was mind blowing.

30. Even "Crazy Horses" is a good song, by the Osmonds. I've known many bands who have covered that. It's just a great song. I bought it in a brown, paper bag because I didn't want anyone to know I had it.





31. In England, rock music very rarely infiltrates the charts, but country music even less so.

32. That's why 60,000 people go ape when the Stones play "Satisfaction." The songs are part of their legacy, and you fall back in love with them over the years.

33. If you don't physically age gracefully, it's a bit sad. I think Steven Tyler can get away anything, because he still looks like he did in '73. Especially from row Z backwards in an arena. As long as the Stones keep their hair and don't get fat they'll get away with the wrinkles.

34. That's the great thing about the future - nobody knows what's going to happen. That's what makes it all exciting.








35. I wanted to write a song that's known to the world as a classic, stadium-rock anthem.

36. We are just fans of music, we are not fans of a specific kind of music. We just happen to be a rock band. Until we explain ourselves, sometimes people don't understand why we limit ourselves to just being a rock band. It's because that is what we like doing.






37. There were incredibly few rock songs making it out to the airwaves until the '80s came along.

38. The groupie situation has been dead for years. We've never really been that big in actually getting involved. I'd say with us, the groupie thing was much more voyeuristic.

39. If you can't handle the responsibility of a hit single, don't write one.

40. Every town in America had at least one, two, or maybe three radio stations that played rock 24 hours a day. In England, we had a rock specialist on for two hours a week.

41. When you go on stage, there's part of you being a sexual beast.


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