Def Leppard guitarist Phil Collen has addressed his long-rumored backstage confrontation with Glenn Danzig, setting the record straight in an interview on The Jeremy White Show.
Collen explained that the incident, which reportedly took place at a European festival around 1993, was far less dramatic than the stories that circulated over the years. He clarified that the situation actually began with his bandmate Vivian Campbell’s ex-wife, not himself.
“Yeah, we were doing a festival in Europe [around 1993]. And, actually, it wasn’t really me,” Collen said. “[Def Leppard guitarist] Vivian Campbell’s ex-wife was just getting out the back of a van and she bumped into Glenn Danzig and he had some soup. And it spilled the soup and he got all pissy.”
Collen went on to describe how he tried to defuse the tension before it escalated further.
“And him and Viv were having all this thing. And I remember I said to him, ‘Dude, I’ll get you another soup. It’s fine. It’s totally fine,'” he continued. “And I didn’t in the end, because it got a little heated vocally. But that was it. And it never ended up in a punch-up or anything.”
“And then it was kind of defused. It’s, like, ‘Well, dude, I’ll get you soup if you want.’ And, yeah, didn’t happen.”
Collen also dismissed the idea that there was any lasting bad blood between himself and Danzig, chalking the whole episode up to exaggeration over time.
“Like all these things, they get blown out of proportion, I’m sure. I’m sure if I saw Glenn Danzig it’d be great. It’s like, yeah, dude, who cares? Yeah, I’ll buy you a soup juice or something. It’s, like I don’t care. It’s no big deal,” he said.
The comments were made during The Phil Collen and Simon Laffy Interview… Def Leppard and MANRAZE | Interview 2026, putting a definitive end to decades of speculation surrounding the incident.
The story has been a persistent piece of rock folklore for over three decades, with various versions of events making the rounds long before Collen’s latest clarification. Earlier retellings painted a far more dramatic picture than what Collen now describes.
As mikeladano.com reported, when the two bands crossed paths at the European festival, word spread that Glenn Danzig and Phil Collen had actually come to blows. That claim has now been firmly denied by Collen himself. Some earlier accounts even suggested that Campbell and frontman Joe Elliott had physically knocked Danzig down during the altercation. Collen’s version, however, rejects any suggestion that the dispute ever turned physical.
Danzig’s camp also weighed in on the incident over the years. Blabbermouth noted that Danzig’s side called the more dramatic version of the story a “total fabrication,” while still acknowledging that there was an altercation of some kind — though confirming that no blows were exchanged. Danzig also reportedly made a point of noting that he is trained in martial arts and was more than capable of handling himself. This suggested the disagreement had been serious enough to become a public matter even without any physical confrontation.
Collen himself had touched on the incident before this latest interview. Blabbermouth previously reported that Danzig “made a rude comment” toward Campbell’s wife after the soup was spilled, which is what caused tensions to rise between the two camps backstage. That detail adds further context to why the situation escalated beyond a simple accident.
The two bands were sharing the same festival circuit in Europe during the summer of 1993. They were not on a co-headlining tour together. The incident appears to have been an isolated backstage encounter rather than the product of any ongoing rivalry. As Collen’s latest comments make clear, the broader relationship between the two camps amounted to little more than this single, now-legendary anecdote — one that, by all accounts on both sides, never quite lived up to its reputation.
