Rock of ages | Def Leppard's India tour

Def Leppard’s three-city India tour this month, as part of BookMyShow Live’s Bandland On Tour series of concerts, is third time lucky for the British rock band and its fans. They were scheduled to perform here in 1996 and 2008, but both trips got cancelled. Though they played the Channel [V] Music Awards in New Delhi in 1998, these are their first full-fledged shows.

“Our cultural clash with India is normally in a restaurant,” vocalist Joe Elliott tells india today. His bandmates—bassist Rick Savage, drummer Rick Allen and guitarists Phil Collen and Vivian Campbell—and he try to check out a desi eatery wherever they are in the world, he says. Of the quintet, Collen and Allen have both spent time in the country as tourists. The former was inspired to write the sarangi-featuring track ‘Turn To Dust’—from their 1996 album Slang—after witnessing the social inequalities experienced by Dalits.

Elliot says their connection with Indian music and influences “is very, very limited to Western artists that we admire” such as George Harrison and the Rolling Stones’ Brian Jones, who incorporated classical instruments such as the sitar into their songs. “We were influenced by their influence.”

He’s unsure of how much of India’s sights and sounds he will be able to take in during the tour because the group is travelling on the days between their gigs in Shillong (March 25), Mumbai (March 27) and Bengaluru (March 29). “I’m there to work,” he says. “My job is to sing as best I can, so if that means avoiding sitting for two hours in exhaust fumes on the way [to some place], then I’m not going to go. I don’t want to leave behind three bad performances.”

Despite being one of the best-selling bands of all time, Def Leppard have never won a Grammy or been the critics’ favourites. Elliot says they don’t seek that kind of validation, which for them comes “when the poster says ‘sold out’”.

They’re a band that doesn’t take their listeners for granted, so fans can expect to hear almost all their biggest hits, like concert-closer ‘Pour Some Sugar On Me’. “It never gets old,” says Elliot. “If the crowd loves it, what’s not to love?” He doesn’t think much of artists who grudge singing their most famous songs. “If you can’t handle the responsibility of a hit, then don’t write one. Because you’re going to [have to play it at] every gig. It’s boring as hell in rehearsal, but never boring in front of a crowd.” And this time, India gets to experience it live.