by Phil Collen
In a perpetual moving-forward motion, I bumped into the phenomenal drummer Forrest Robinson at Rick Allen’s fiftieth-birthday party in Malibu. Rick and I had met Forrest when he played drums for India.Arie more than ten years ago. We were standing in the wings, watching the show, and we said, “Fuck! Who’s this guy on drums?!” After we met Forrest, he told us that all he really wanted to do was rock out and that just because he was a black man with dreads (my friend Rudi Riviere faces the same dilemma when it comes to being viewed as a credible rocker), it didn’t mean he couldn’t rock with the best of them. Forrest is of a rare pedigree. He was a heavy metal drummer (plays the fastest double-kick bass drum I’ve ever heard) with soul roots who played for Joe Sample and the Crusaders. He impressively filled the shoes of Steve Gadd. At the party that night, when I played him the demo for “Miss Me,” he was floored and wanted in on the band.
The next piece of this puzzle was laid in place once again by Chris Epting. “Hey, man, have you ever met Robert DeLeo from the Stone Temple Pilots? You’d really like him and he’d be perfect on this.” Again, don’t judge a book by its cover. Aside from him and his brother Dean being songwriting geniuses who propelled Stone Temple Pilots to star status in the ’90s, Robert is also a disciple of Motown bass legend James Jamerson and loves James Brown and holy funk. When Forrest and Robert played with me and Debbi, it all went so far in a different, amazing direction until all of a sudden the music sounded like Aretha Franklin was singing with Led Zeppelin. It was at that point that Delta Deep was truly born.
The year 2014 brought on a double headlining tour with KISS. It was one of the most fulfilling tours we’ve ever done. This was the most extremely positive case of two bands not competing for center stage but pooling all of their resources together, crew included, to put on the most spectacular live event of the summer. Egos were checked at the door. Both bands circled the wagons and it was us against the world. Many people asked, “What are the KISS guys like?” “Are they egocentric?” to which I replied, “They are all faithful disciples of their own band, KISS.” The fact that Paul Stanley, Gene Simmons, Eric Singer, and Tommy Thayer will sometimes take three hours to prepare for a show so that their fans are not disappointed speaks volumes and puts them way above any other rock band I’ve ever known, not to mention Paul and Gene are doing this into their sixty-plus years of age.
The tour was a raging success and put us into a really good state for the 2015 tour, on which we had to contend with a few issues. One of these was that Viv’s cancer had returned, so he had to receive treatment for the first few dates of the U.S. leg. An old friend of mine, Steve Brown from Trixter, filled in for Viv with his awesome guitar and vocal talents. On a great note, the dates were selling like hotcakes. Since I’m writing this section at the start of that tour, I’ll let you know how it goes, considering the Def Leppard self-titled album won’t be released until about the same time this book comes out.
About that album: we initially went in to record an EP or a single, as albums are fairly out of vogue these days. But twelve songs flowed out. From that point on, we worked each song as though it was its own separate project. It was a bit like in the old days where Zeppelin, Bowie, or the Stones would write a few songs, go in, and record the material while they were still hot on it. We were in Dublin three times recording in this fashion—January 2014, May 2014, and January 2015. We did this even with a tour in between. One of the main reasons I think we recorded like this was that we were doing this album for us. We didn’t have to appease a record executive, a label, or fans. I feel like that’s true artistic expression. You’re not doing it for financial reasons or for special kudos. It’s just solid artistic integrity, where fulfillment is the reward. Over the last few years, I’ve realized why I started playing guitar. It wasn’t because I wanted to be a great guitar player: it was because I wanted to get something out, like scratching an itch. There are lots of elements of guitar playing that I’m not even remotely interested in. The guitar was my choice as a tool of expression. It’s the same as when I write lyrics or finish recording a song where there’s not necessarily a guitar in it. It’s the relief of creative release. Yes. I know that sounds a bit rude.
In 1994, although we started recording the Slang album with a different process than that of earlier albums—Adrenalize, Hysteria—I don’t think we got the full memo. As much as I enjoyed the recording process and the way it sounded, it wasn’t quite finished off. We could have made the songs better with just a little bit more work. We only wanted to write the songs, record them, and be done. In hindsight, if we had actually reflected on the Slang songs like we did on this new album, I think they would have been superior. I feel that with this new album we finally hit on what we all think is a successful way to record Def Leppard.
With everything I’ve done and all the music I’ve made, including with Def Leppard, I have never received more immediate praise for my guitar playing and singing than I have with Delta Deep. I think the reasons for this include the fact that the whole project is such an output of raw emotions and very much in line with true blues artists. The question that keeps coming up is, “Why do you play and sing completely different on this album than you do on the Def Leppard stuff?” to which my answer is, “I play the same guitars and I play the same style. It’s just the context that’s different.” In Def Leppard, we create a structure that houses guitar themes, melodies, massive counter vocal harmonies with counter rhythm harmonies so there’s no real space for one-take improvisation. Def Leppard sets sonic rules that our songs have to abide by. In Delta Deep, there’s an organic flow that just instantly oozes out and you have to let it. My role is the same in both bands but yields different sounds, given the disparate contexts.
And then there’s the feeling. Helen, Debbi, and I write together. Some of those songs are influenced by painful realities in Helen’s and Debbi’s lives, like the fact that Helen lost two of her three brothers to gun-related murder and Debbi lost her youngest son in the same way. These elements as well as others influence the outpouring of emotions that you hear in these songs. The unexpected, overwhelmingly positive response to our self-titled debut album Delta Deep, which came out June 23, 2015, was equaled only by the response to our first show that we played together at the Hotel Cafe in Hollywood. All of the influences (James Brown, Led Zeppelin, Aretha Franklin, the Stones, Sly and the Family Stone, B. B. King, Billie Holiday), surprisingly to us, made an appearance onstage. I am loving this whole experience as I’m loving the new Def Leppard album and tour, although they are two polar opposite events. As my experiences multiply, the need to express myself also increases. I’m in awe of the avenues that continually present themselves that allow me to do so.
CODA
Iam going to end this book on a note about who I am and what I am in tune with as a person, as opposed to the perception of who I am as a rock musician. My great friend Rudi Riviere and I often confer and concur about life in general. We both came from the East End of London and have had successes in our own rights. We often remark about how neither of us has even slightly changed from when we first met. But our circumstances and many of the people around us have completely changed. This causes us both to have a very keen sense of observation and appreciation. For instance, the fantasy and excitement of meeting famous people when one is in a traveling rock band is extremely overrated. In fact, some of the most interesting people I have met and learned from are people you would never have heard of. Immaculée Ilibagiza is one of those people.
Immaculée Ilibagiza beat the odds big-time and I met her. She is a native Rwandan Tutsi, and her story happened at the peak of her country’s most violent period, where one million Rwandans—who constituted about 20 percent of the country’s population—were killed. Her entire family was slain while she hid in the bathroom of a compassionate Hutu pastor’s house with seven other women for ninety-one days as her tormentors called her name on the other side of the wall, saying they would chop her up with their mache
tes.
One day Helen and I received a text from Immaculée saying she would be speaking in the area. We drove to meet her and we all went out for dinner. It was amazing to meet such a woman, who had gone through so much and yet was so willing to talk about every detail. Both Helen and I each had copies of her book Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust, which we read in its entirety. We sat at the restaurant long after our meal was over asking questions about those painful moments. Immaculée encouraged our curiosity and answered every question with such wisdom and insight. It was truly an amazing opportunity to get to meet her. She calls us her brother and sister, and I couldn’t think of better titles. Immaculée accepted her fate so graciously and humbly. Yet there are people who deal with far less and stumble at the first hurdle. It was such a pleasure for us to be in the company of someone who had encountered the world’s evils face-to-face but had managed to emerge smiling and with open arms and forgiveness. Meeting someone like that has a way more profound effect on me than if I meet another celebrity.
Now, I’m sure many of you are wondering about or may even be appalled by my ability to be more philosophical about the perils of life than about a barre chord. In my travels, people have often asked me what the coolest thing about being a rock star is, fully expecting a totally shallow anecdote or a proud possession as an answer. But I always answer, “Having access to the study of human nature and its psychology.” It’s a bit like when Robin Williams’s character in the ’70s sitcom Mork & Mindy reports to his extraterrestrial superior about what he’d learned on Earth that particular week. It never fails to fascinate me to connect the dots between social interaction, world history, relationships, human greed, politics, and human beings being biological animals with potential—however limited—access to spiritual enlightenment. At no time has this been more apparent than right now, in the “me, me, me” culture of today’s connection to social media and obsession with every version of celebrity.
I am totally aware that the industry I am in contributes to the “dumbing-down” of the world. In fact, it’s a premier tool. But as with everything else, once you get further down the rabbit hole, the real truth becomes more apparent. The epic task of numbing and dumbing a whole generation results in some interesting outcomes, whether it be public tears of sadness from a celebrity over another’s celeb’s romantic breakup broadcast live at an awards show the same week that Steven Sotloff was publicly decapitated by ISIS on internet video (yielding not even a concerned sigh from the celebrity elite) or the public’s over-the-top publicized and advertised desire to feed the less fortunate on Thanksgiving Day, ironically just one week after a ninety-two-year-old former World War II veteran was arrested for trying to feed the homeless in Florida. However, we don’t seem to have a problem letting the less fortunate feed and fend for themselves for the remaining 364 days of the year. You can’t help but think that the reasons for this outpouring of kindness to other humans for such a short span of time is being done for reasons that will somehow benefit someone’s self-image. I think it’s called reciprocal altruism, where an organism will do something for another organism to its own detriment, expecting a reward for the deed later. In a nutshell, what I’m trying to say, based on my experience, is that no one actually cares. This is nothing new. But the fact that I strut around onstage half-naked for half the year doesn’t mean that I’m not aware of other life-changing events all around me.
We humans have always been really self-absorbed, as evidenced by the hedonistic habits of the Roman Empire elite; the gross practice of enslavement that resulted in more than a hundred million African slaves dying at the hands of their captors; and ethnic cleansing from today all the way to further back than we can record. In fact, this last practice never seems to run out of steam, having taken the shape of the slaughter of Native Americans at the hands of European invaders, eventually called “settlers”; the extermination of Jews in Nazi Germany; the Indonesian occupation of East Timor; and the Bosnian genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina (formerly part of Yugoslavia). So it’s interesting that human nature hasn’t actually changed much throughout the centuries. We’ve just found convenient ways to convince ourselves that we’re living in a civilized world where the occasional bad seed ruins it for everyone. But really, there is always evidence and confirmation of grotesque evidence of human cruelty.
I’ve found that the traveling part of being a rock star is the most valuable if you can be receptive and open-minded. I would never have found myself deep in conversation with extreme intellectuals in India or talking politics in Moscow with a Russian dissident or speaking with the Queen of England had I never left the burglar alarm factory in Walthamstow. I found myself inside the octagon training ring while UFC light heavyweight world champion Jon Jones prepared for his 2012 UFC title defense fight against Vitor Belfort at Greg Jackson’s awesome training camp in New Mexico. I also attended, at the BAM Fisher rehearsal studio in Brooklyn, the Urban Bush Women’s dance company preparation for their tribute to John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme. I’ve found that with every one of these experiences, I see a common thread or pattern emerging in human nature. If I had not had all of these experiences and had not taken something useful away for myself, I would have thought it all random. But if you look back at history, you’ll see the reasoning behind all events, be it an empire protecting its monarchy or so-called leaders or governments desperately protecting the profits of an elite class or its corporations above all else. As this pattern lays itself out, you can also look at your own personal history and see a correlation to almost everything you’ve experienced as a kind of cosmic map. Although it sucks and seems hopeless, I’d rather know than not know. There is something almost joyous about this path to self-discovery, because it all makes sense on a certain level.
A lot of people ask me who my favorite icon or idol is in history. Apart from the obvious, with Jimi Hendrix being a pioneer of hybrid musical styles or Bruce Lee regarding martial arts, I love the fact that Mahatma Gandhi stood up to the British Empire in a pair of sandals and liberated India in a peaceful fashion. This unfortunately would later get him killed, proving my point about civilization’s amorality. The world is spinning on its axis in corruption as we try our best to reverse its direction. Not going to happen. We are steeped in denial and awash in hope. Either way, the world is winning. From drugs to technology, we are inundated with the latest and greatest to keep us docile. The most ravenous out-of-control junkies are the ones who practice their addiction within the legal loopholes of prescription drugs supplied by the most powerful cartel on earth. The dice are loaded and the game is totally rigged. It’s nothing new, though—it’s how every empire gets to be an empire. Mass control is easy. Religion, alcohol, sports, entertainment (my industry), radio, the internet, and TV—reality or otherwise—totally take everybody’s eye off the ball. You only have to look out of a window anywhere to see the latest incarnation of the obedient consumer completely zombie-ing out on a smartphone to know all is lost (and although I have had my own episodes of zombification, I’m writing this chapter the old-fashioned way, with a pen and paper, in London on Mother’s Day, by the way). What’s really scary is that if you did let the public take control, it’d probably be way worse. But that’s the plan, right? It’d be the lunatics taking over the asylum and all that’d really happen is that they would have their credibility, integrity, and all their good senses taken away from them.
There are obviously some superbright, caring people out there who don’t just have business interests as their main objective. But they either have no voice or they also have a price. So the more things change, the more they stay the same. The power remains truly entrenched with the powerful. You just need look at any country in history to see that the plan and the outcome always end up the same. Growth. Peak. Control. Domination. Violent demise.
And then there’s the violence. Many people are not responsible enough to be in control of a conversation or a car, let alone a semiautomatic a
ssault rifle. The majority of the public doesn’t fall into the category of the civilized few. If they did, then everyone could walk around with a gun and there would never be problem. Two of the most violent world history events and an elephant in the room, the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, are really only the tip of the iceberg. I actually went to a Hiroshima memorial where a portion of the bombed area was left as ground zero. There were pictures of children with their flesh melted off and even a slab of ground onto which is burned the shadow of a body, disintegrated in the blast. There’s always a constant flow of violence in society. If we’re lucky enough to live in the ivory towers (which we call “hubs of civilization” around the world), we like to kid ourselves that things are actually getting better. It’s my assessment that we’re way off the mark and that atrocity and animalistic behavior are the norm. Only a few are truly civilized, and that has nothing to do with race, creed, religion, or anything. On that note, it took me fifty-one years and meeting millions of people to realize that the person who most closely resembled me in all aspects of myself on this planet was of opposite gender, from a different country than me, and of another race—my wife, Helen. My point being, you can’t generalize when you talk about countries, races, and “types.” It actually comes down to the individual.