Victor Synn wrote:
Joe's also said that he felt the production of the first album was sub-par, which is another reason why they don't do the stuff anymore. On that Storytellers episode after the lady's question, Phil launched into the "Wasted" guitar riff and I actually thought they were going to play it. I did hear that on select dates for the summer tour with Bryan Adams that Leppard did play "Wasted" in the set.
You're right.
After the band started working with Mutt Lange, who had already launched ACDC and Foreigner's biggest albums -- they became somewhat embarrassed by the production job on On Through The Night.
It had a lot to do with them being young, and inexperienced too. They look at the album, and see a lot of flaws. Luckily, "WASTED" and "ROCK BRIGADE" are still played today.
I'd kind of like to hear "HELLO AMERICA" updated. It's a really cool song, although the album version shows a puberty stricken Joe Elliott wailing out vocals rather un-Elliottly.
I saw them in Lancaster with my girlfriend and they didn't play it there, so I'm assuming it was only when they played bigger towns on the itinerary. Interesting story from the Lancaster show...seems Rick was having drum problems through the first few songs of their set (Keep in mind, the road crew had very little time to set Leppard's gear up to specs from the Live 8 performance hours earlier) and Rick had to leave the kit while his drum tech worked on the problem. Here comes Joe doing a cover of "Rock On" to a pre-recorded music track. Not sure if this song was meant to be in the set or not, but once the problem was fixed, the entire band came in on it and they did a great cover of it all around.
Yeah, that was a nightmare. There was a mini-tornado that had totally ruined a lot of personal items too. There's an article written by Gordon, a friend of the band on
www.defleppard.com.
By the way Captain...did you happen to get your login name from the lyric line to "Make Love Like a Man?" Just curious.
Ahhhh...nice to see you noticed.
I downloaded the LIVE 8 performances, and they played 3 songs. Rock Of Ages, No Matter What (the new one), and Pour Some Sugar On Me. Excellent stuff.
And by the way "ROCK ON", the David Essex cover IS a regular part of the current setlist. They played it in Pittsburgh (with a functioning drumkit however) and I have THAT on MP3 as well.
EXCELLENT cover, superb crowd reaction. I had goosebumps.
Again, this song along with "No Matter What" is going to be on the upcoming 14 track covers album, so they wanted to give folks a preview of what kind of stuff is on it.
It's mostly more obscure stuff, which I think is a great idea. They wanted to avoid overly-covered popular songs, and do more stuff from groups like The Kinks, Badfinger, David Essex, The Police, and believe it or not, there's probably even going to be a Blondie song on the album.
Exciting stuff. Ross Halfin [rock photographer] was talking about how great of a job they did on his official site as well.
Unfortunately the cover's disc has been delayed for release until LATE 2005, early 2006 due to the change in management companies. (I'm getting a rough, early, unmixed version from one of my connections however.)
Then right after that, a new studio album, and tour.
