In a new interview with Jordi Pinyol, Vivian Campbell reflected on Def Leppard’s motivation for creating records due to ‘selfish’ reasons.
When discussing the band’s creative process, the guitarist first stated:
“There’s still a very, very high bar in Def Leppard. The quality control is very, very high. But at the same time, there’s no expectation that anyone’s going to buy a Def Leppard record.”
He then explained the band’s approach to continuing making records for ‘selfish’ purposes:
“We don’t make Def Leppard records for our fans. We make Def Leppard records for us. It’s a selfish exercise, but it’s something that we feel we have to do, even though we know when we go on tour, people want to hear ‘Animal,’ ‘Rock of Ages,’ ‘Photograph,’ ‘Hysteria,’ all these hit songs.”
The musician continued:
“It’s a joy to play all those hit songs, but we still need to create music because that’s what we do. We’re creative beings; that’s why we started playing in rock bands to begin with. That’s why you got to keep exercising these muscles.”
Campbell elaborated more on the reasons they create new music, saying:
“So the mindset in Def Leppard is we always try and write the best song we can possibly write. We always try and make the best record we can possibly make. We have no expectation that anyone’s going to buy it, and certainly not to the extent that people bought ‘Pyromania’ and ‘Hysteria’ or any of those other records, but it’s for us. It legitimizes what we do.”
Besides the new music, Def Leppard is also working on the arrangements of their old songs. The band’s latest release, ‘Drastic Symphonies,’ featuring the reworked and re-recorded versions of 16 tracks from their previous albums, arrived on May 19.
You can watch the guitarist’s entire chat below.
