Phil Collen states Def Leppard have officially started writing new album without knowing it

Phil Collen states Def Leppard have officially started writing new album without knowing it

Def Leppard and Delta Deep guitarist Phil Collen was recently interviewed by A. Lee Graham of Classic Rock Revisited and spoke about Def Leppard‘s Hysteria album as well as the group’s future plans.

In terms of what’s next for Def Leppard, Collen stated (with slight edit): “We’ve starting writing. We have three songs on the go. Rick Savage has one, a verse of that he sent me. I was messing around with some melodies for that, too, and Joe [Elliott] has this amazing idea and I have this one that’s kind of finished. I have melodies, a chorus and all the guitar parts. So we’ve started, officially, without even knowing it, the next Def Leppard album.” Collen also added: “Yeah, we’ve already started recording. That takes a lot of the pressure off it. I never get writers’s block because I always stay busy. The great thing about music now is you can do it anytime with your computer. It’s going to be awesome. I don’t know when it’s going to come out. It’s going to come out in drips and drabs. We’ve already started the new Delta Deep studio album. The live album comes out in January and the studio album later.”

With respect to what Hysteria means to him, Collen advised (with slight edit): “We put a lot into it. Listening to it now, it’s even better than I remembered. One of the guys when we were doing it — I forget who it was, another musician or someone else — but he said why are you spending so much time and putting so much money into it? He said in 20 years time, would we be sitting here and talking about it? It’s 30 years now, so he was obviously bang-on about it. It was a really special time.

We had a few hiccups: Rick [Allen]’s accident — no one saw that coming, but Mutt [Robert John “Mutt” Lange, producer] deserves the ultimate credit because he steered the ship. He convinced us to take the journey with him. It was a unique experience. I listen to the songs now and they’re still … they’re amazing. I’m so proud of all that, so yeah, it was a really cool thing to be part of.”

You can read the rest of the interview with Collen at Classic Rock Revisited.