DEF LEPPARD Singer On ROCK HALL Induction: 'The Closer We Get To The Date, The More Exciting It Gets'

DEF LEPPARD singer Joe Elliott was recently interviewed on WFSB‘s “Better Connecticut” television show. You can now watch the chat below.

Asked about DEF LEPPARD‘s upcoming induction into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, Joe said: “Yeah, it’s quite incredible. The closer we get to the date, the more exciting it gets. But I’ll be honest — it was nothing that was ever on our radar up until midway through last year when we started getting whispers that we may be nominated. Like, ‘Really? That’s odd.’ We never expected that. Well, because the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, you talk to anybody that’s not in it, and they all moan about it because they want the cool cats in there. Your obvious ones are the ones that started this whole thing off — Elvis [Presley], Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis — and then you move on to the bands that earned their way in, which is THE BEATLES and THE [ROLLING] STONES and THE WHO and LED ZEPPELIN, and stuff like that. And then, sooner or later, they’re gonna start running out of people to nominate. But I think with us, the reason we really started getting excited about it is because just a few years ago, they introduced the fan vote. And the fan vote basically gave the fans one vote out of the thousand that you need, but it is the one vote that the other 999 can’t help but notice, because every day, they post who’s ahead and how many people have voted for whoever. So even if they don’t like you, they can’t help but keep noticing, ‘My god, that band are just flying.’ Sooner or later, people in that invisible committee are obviously probably going, ‘Okay, I get it. Yeah, we have to induct them.’ So, that’s the way that we always thought it was. But, to be quite honest, it doesn’t really matter. The fans have got us in there and they’re the only people that we have a long-standing relationship with anyway. So, for us, it was very important that we accepted that that is the best thing about this. The fan vote is really what drove everything on. And [we had the] biggest fan vote of all time, which is fantastic.”

Elliott also talked about DEF LEPPARD‘s upcoming second Las Vegas residency, which will take place between August 14 and September 7 at Zappos Theater at Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino.

“Well, Vegas is a trip, because it’s literally a trip for the fans in, but for us, for once in our lives, or for us actually the second time, you get to sleep in the same bed for 30 days and still put on a rock show,” he said. “Kind of like doing a residency in your home town, if you like. Vegas becomes our home town for a month or three and a half weeks. So, yeah, it’s a lot of fun there. We did it five years ago when we did ‘Viva! Hysteria’. This time around, it’s gonna be different, ’cause we’ll not be concentrating on just the one record; it’ll be a complete career oversee. And we get to experience this fantastic city that’s been reborn, really, over the last 10-15 years. It’s become a very young place. All the residencies these days are QUEEN, ourselves, AEROSMITH. You have Prince, you have THE WHO, MÖTLEY CRÜE and all that kind of stuff. It’s not just Wayne Newton and Dean Martin; that’s the memory of the old days. It’s really sexed up a lot, and it’s a cool place for people to go visit, spend the day going around all the incredibly insane things you can do in Vegas, and then, at the end of the night, come along and see DEF LEPPARD, which, I think, sounds like a good idea.”

One of the top-selling rock acts of all time, DEF LEPPARD has been eligible for the Rock Hall since 2004.

The 34th annual Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame induction ceremony will be held March 29 at Brooklyn, New York’s Barclays Center. HBO will broadcast a truncated version of the ceremony later in the year.

Fonte: Blabbermouth.net