Def Leppard frontman Joe Elliott picks his essential Leps tracks, from Getcha Rocks Off and Animal to C'Mon C'Mon from new album Songs From The Sparkle Lounge

Def Leppard frontman Joe Elliott reveals his essential Def Leppard tracks from the band's earliest release, their self produced 1979 debut The Def Leppard E.P. to brand spanking new album Songs From The Sparkle Lounge.

New Def Leppard Album Songs From The Sparkle Lounge

C’Mon C’Mon

From: Songs From The Sparkle Lounge

“This song would absolutely have to be on there because to me that is just like everything that we grew up listening to, all crammed into three and a half minutes. It’s got every aspect of Radio 1 in 1972 to 1973 for me. It’s Slade, T-Rex, The Glitter Band, you name it…it’s all that groovy pop glam stuff and I’m immensely proud of making a record that sounds like that.”

Animal

From: Hysteria

Joe: “I think Animal, again, is another classic pop song. It’s got all the ingredients of a song that I would rush out and buy myself if it was done by somebody else and that’s how I normally judge our stuff.”

Die Hard The Hunter from Pyromania

Die Hard The Hunter

From: Pyromania

“Die Hard The Hunter from Pyromania is a great rock track. I love the beginning riff and I know it’s one of Clarkey’s (Steve Clarke, late guitarist) favourites. I know the lyrics are a little Rambo-esque but it was basically me sitting down right in the middle of the Falklands War and going: ‘This is a bit like Vietnam, isn’t it, but it’s on the other side of the world and it’s the English version.’ We just decided it was a rocky enough track for us to not just write the poppy lyrics but to try something with a bit of an edge to it, which we have done before and we will do again.”

From The Inside

From Retro Active/ Have You Ever Needed Someone So Bad B-side

“This song is absolutely not typical for us whatsoever. For me, it’s a bit of a departure in that we actually sat down with an acoustic guitar and we wrote this song. I actually wrote it for a TV show in Ireland but we ended up recording it and putting it on Retro. It was all written about a walk over O’Connell Bridge in Dublin once, where I saw, in the middle of the day, about six kids with needles hanging out of their arms. Just sitting on the floor asleep, brain-dead on heroin. So it was my attempt at writing about the drug from the drug’s point of view, as in ‘from the inside’ and what it was doing to the kid. It was the first time I’d really written an observational lyric before – this was actually poetry set to music rather than a set of words made to fit a song. And it was sad poetry as well because it was heartbreaking to see. They were all about 16 years old and half of them are probably dead by now, or they’ve wasted half their lives on this terrible drug.”

Def Leppard's Earliest Release

Getcha Rocks Off

From: The Def Leppard E.P.

“I think it’s worth noting a song like this off the Def Leppard E.P., just because of the actual energy and power. That songs was one of those things that we just banged together and it had a natural momentum. It didn’t have a great deal of thought behind it. Pete (Willis, former guitarist) came in with a riff and we went from there. Really, it’s got all the faults that you might expect it would have but I am still very fond of this song. It shows where we were going and what we were capable of.”

Click here for more of Joe's essential Def Leppard tracks.

Click here for details of Def Leppard's headlining appearance at the Sweden Rock Festival