Phil Collen says Def Leppard have stayed together for so long because they support each other

Def Leppard has had the same lineup since 1992, when Vivian Campbell took the place of Steve Clark, who had tragically died the previous year. Since then, the band has remained together, touring and recording, and in an interview with 96.1 KLPX, Phil Collen talked about how united the band is and how much its members support each other in their personal lives.

Phil Collen says Def Leppard have stayed together for so long because they support each other

“Yeah. Well, that’s the main thing. We have one dressing room. A lot of people who come and see us, they go, ‘Uh, why are you all in one room?’ It’s, like, ‘Because we like hanging out with each other.’ It’s like being a child. You can still hang out with your buddies at school. It’s that kind of thing. No, we love that.”

“We’ve been through so much together — births, deaths, marriages, divorces, family members going, all of this stuff, pets, dogs, you name it. We’ve all been there with each other, for each other, and I think that that has a massive effect on that thing. And we all have the same goal. It’s interesting, everyone changes through the years, but you remain friends and you have a similar goal — well, an identical goal — so that really keeps it together, and then you just get excited about it,” Phil Collen said (Transcribed by Blabbermouth).

New Def Leppard album

The band is currently working on a new studio album, and Joe Elliott recently revealed that they have already written almost 20 songs that could be included on it. “We’re actually recording it. As I speak, somewhere in the world, people are adding their bits to some new songs. We’ve developed a whole new method of recording, which was brought on by COVID.”

“I’ve got a studio at home, and everybody has always gracefully come to my house to record. We’d do a month at a time, and then everybody goes home. But they couldn’t travel. So we ended up recording remotely, and we found it to be exhilarating. Everybody got to be at home with their families, yet still make a record. And we trusted each other that we were writing songs.”

He continued:

“And so everybody just played on everybody else’s bits, and it’s easy to do. We don’t all record in one room when we are in the same studio — we do it, the drums and the bass and the guitars and the vocals; it’s all layered. So we’ve been recording while we were in Vegas. On days off, we had the drums set up in the basement of the theater, and Rick played loads of drums on his days off, and they’d do guitars in their hotel rooms, stuff like that.”