DEF LEPPARD’s JOE ELLIOTT Says He Doesn’t Care About Being Accused Of Using Backing Tracks During Live Shows.

DEF LEPPARD’s Joe Elliott has once again dismissed accusations that his band is using backing tracks during live performances, saying “we don’t cheat.”

The 64-year-old singer and founding member of the iconic British band made the comment while discussing DEF LEPPARD’s reputation as a formidable live act in an interview with the “Life In The Stocks” podcast. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “Yeah, the beginning bit of ‘Love Bites’, Sav [DEF LEPPARD bassist Rick Savage] just plays it on a keyboard, the way [RUSH’s] Geddy Lee plays bass pedals. Rick [Allen, DEF LEPPARD drummer] uses a drum loop on ‘Rocket’. I mean, Christ, a two-armed drummer couldn’t play that. But every word is sung. Every guitar chord is played. We don’t cheat. There’s not one word on tape. There’s nothing. We’ve got some keyboard sounds, but they’re just keyboards that Sav plays with his foot. If we’re doing ‘Excitable’, we use the ‘Are you excitable?’ thing, ’cause it’s an intro tape. If we’re doing  well, the beginning of the show, ‘Take What You Want’. We play the beginning bit off the record and come in, because it’s an intro tape intro, so, of course, we’re gonna do that. But we’ve worked really to be able to sing live as well as we can. It’s not perfect. It’s not supposed to be. If we’re running at 90 percent, we’re doing good.”

Joe continued: “Long may they keep accusing us [of using backing tracks]. I really don’t care. Maybe everybody else’s standards are less than ours. I don’t know. Listen, when I’ve got a sore throat, I sound like shit. If somebody cuts their finger open slicing an orange, they’re gonna play a bit bad if it’s that hand that they’ve cut. It happens. Sometimes Phil [Collen, DEF LEPPARD guitarist] will come off stage, he goes, ‘Bloody hell. I sound like I had boxing gloves on.’ But it’s like nobody else except him would notice that. Everybody has a bad day, but if the other four are on fire, one of us can be a bit under par, and it still works. [The criticism is] normally focused on the singer  ‘He was terrible. The band were great.’ But I’ve been good this last couple of years. I might’ve had the odd gig where just scheduling just wipes you out or you catch a cold. You can play the drums with COVID. You can’t sing with it. So you have to do something to get yourself into that position you have to be in by nine o’clock, even if it means warming up for 10 hours to get on stage to do it. That’s what I’m prepared to do. Maybe other people aren’t prepared to do that.”

Joe previously addressed the backing-tracks accusation that has been leveled against DEF LEPPARD while responding to a question about the band’s “polished”-but-“loose” concerts in an interview with Stereogum. He said in part: “I don’t normally comment on this kind of stuff, but a friend of mine just sent me some link to something on YouTube, a recent posting by, forgive me, I don’t know his name, Chuck something from TESTAMENT, I think it is, and [ex-W.A.S.P. guitarist] Chris Holmes accusing us of using backing tracks. I don’t get angry at this. I’m flattered because their standards must be very different to ours. For anybody that thinks we use backing tracks, it must mean that when they hear us, they can’t believe how good it is for real.

 

“The fact is that if you rehearse the way we do and you’re as talented as the band are as musicians, then maybe you would believe it. I’d be happy to invite any of those guys to come stand side stage with a pair of headphones on so they could actually hear what’s coming out of the stage.

 

“We don’t use backing tracks,” he reiterated. “We use effects. God, who wouldn’t? When there’s four people singing, we use effects. There’s no tapes of backing vocals. We use keyboards. We use a few drum loops because, in fairness, two-armed drummers use drum loops, but Rick Allen, to play a song like ‘Rocket’, it’s a cacophony of toms that one arm couldn’t play. So, yeah, we use a triggered loop, which is part of his drum kit, but [U2 drummer] Larry Mullen’s been doing that for years. So have thousands of other drummers to enhance a sound. But backing tracks or playing along to a backing track  we’ve never done that, never. We’ve never mimed to the vocals, or we’ve never had multiples of stuff on tape. It’s literally live.