Def Leppard- Yeah! (covers album)- Joe Elliott, Phil Collen

There was an interesting trend in rock music approximately twenty years ago whereby superstar legacy bands, including Rush, Styx, and Def Leppard all released albums containing nothing but classic rock cover songs. Rush raised eyebrows with Feedback in 2004; a year later Styx released Big Bang Theory; and Def Leppard followed suit in 2006 with Yeah!

Honestly, I don’t know if all three major bands recording and releasing albums of cover versions was due to some negotiating tactic with their respective music labels, song publishers, or the music downloading/streaming services upstarts which had emerged then. Or maybe it was simply pure coincidence. But I do know this: all three covers-only projects were done exceedingly well and, without exception, seemed to reinvigorate the bands, who all sounded like they were having a blast reconnecting to their roots.
In the case of Def Leppard, now celebrating forty-five years since the Sheffield, England band’s introductory On Through the Night was released in March 1980, anyone wishing to understand where they come from musically would do well to listen here to my guests lead singer Joe Elliott and lead guitarist Phil Collen. The tunestack on Yeah! is a virtual look at the playlists of BBC Radio One and Radio Luxembourg circa 1973, with Def Leppard sinking their collective teeth into “20th Century Boy” by Marc Bolan’s T. Rex, “Rock On” by David Essex, the Kinks‘ sublime time capsule “Waterloo Sunset”, Roxy Music’s “Street Life”, “Little Bit of Love” by Free, the Glam anthem “Golden Age of Rock’n’Roll” from Joe Elliott’s hero Ian Hunter and Mott the Hoople, and two white-hot closers, “Don’t Believe a Word” by Thin Lizzy and Rod Stewart and the Faces‘ “Stay With Me”. Find out from Def Leppard’s Joe Elliott and Phil Collen why their ninth studio album, Yeah!, reached an impressive #16 sales on Billboard‘s Album Sales chart. -Redbeard