Def Leppard main man Joe Elliott loves Mott the Hoople. In fact, he loves Mott the Hoople so much that he formed a band with The Quireboys – calling themselves the Down ‘N Outz – in order to first perform and then record a set of Mott-related curios for an album, ‘My Re Generation’, which will see the light of day next week (details at the bottom of the page). Among the songs covered was an Ian Hunter solo effort by the name of ‘England Rocks’ and we’re sure we don’t need to tell you why that song has taken on an extra, unplanned significance this summer.
Sport.co.uk caught up with Joe to discuss the World Cup thus far, his beloved Sheffield United, the wonderful labour of love that is his Down ‘N Outz project and, of course, the legendary, decades-spanning British rock group of which he just so happens to be the front man…
How are you, Joe?
I’m good thank you. It’s a wonderful day in London. I’m in the Gibson room with a plethora of Gibson guitars and Portugal vs Ivory Coast on in the background. This is what’s known as double-tasking and, in this day and age, you must be able to at least do that or you won’t get anything done!
Have you been enjoying the World Cup so far?
No I’ve not, actually. I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s no point turning on until half-time because it will be 0-0 anyway. Nobody wants to win, they just don’t want to lose, so it’s all a bit cagey for me right now. It’s not going to get exciting until one of the flair teams is 3-0 up and they just start playing football. Although if Argentina go 3-0 up then Maradona would just pull Messi off so he won’t get injured. It’s annoying - you wait four years for this and it becomes a bore. The most fun I’ve had so far is watching the highlights, where you get the twenty minutes that you need to see. It’s morish. The only two games I’ve missed so far have been Japan vs Cameroon, because I was at the Metal Hammer Awards last night, and this morning’s [New Zealand vs South Africa] because I was at a radio station somewhere.
Would you continue with Rob Green in goal for England?
If I was his mentor/father, I think it would be cruel to take him out as it would destroy him. But, as an England fan, I didn’t want him starting in the first place – I want David James there because if he makes a mistake then he’ll get over it a lot quicker as he’s done it so many times. It wouldn’t bother him as much as it’s going to bother Rob Green. Look what’s happened to Scott Carson since Steve McClaren’s last game – he fumbled it and he’s been off the radar for quite a while. I think the same thing will happen to Rob Green if he gets dropped. So it’s a case of how sympathetic are we to the next two years of his life. It’s a sport, yes, but it should be done in good taste. Then again, if you want to win then you can’t feel sorry for people. If I was the England manager then I’d feel absolute sympathy for Rob Green because maybe this ball is sh*t. Every tournament we seem to complain about the ball. “It’s more round than it’s ever been” – I don’t understand what that means. How much more round can round be? It’s mad. Long story short - no, I’d put David James in!
Who would you like to see partner John Terry at centre-back?
I’m a little bit out of the loop but I think I heard this morning that Ledley King is out for three weeks but they’re keeping him there. I like that because Capello wants the world to think that we think we’re going to be there in three weeks and that, in the mean time, we can beat whoever with Matthew Upson, Michael Dawson or Jamie ‘Slowhand’ Carragher, the Eric Clapton of footballers! I like Carragher but he doesn’t have any pace. Although you don’t always need that with centre-backs – if England set themselves up so that the pace comes down the wings, Aaron Lennon on one side and Ashley Cole on the other, then you can get away with it. Paul McGrath got away with it for years and he was outstanding, even when he was drunk! I’m no expert but I’m not as freaked out about the centre-half positions as everybody else seems to be. I think John Terry will raise his game and I don’t think Upson or Dawson would let us down. I tell you what, if he hadn’t been injured then I think Phil Jagielka would have been perfect for this role. We had him for seven or eight seasons [at Sheffield United] and he was just phenomenal. Yeah, he scored the odd own goal – who doesn’t? – but he does his job, passes the ball onto someone else and gets on with it. He’s like a sweeping broom and he would have been absolutely amazing if he’d been fit all year. Overall, though, I’m more worried about us getting skinned on the flanks because Terry’s very good at clearing up if it’s in the air.
Who are your favourites to win the tournament?
Spain or Brazil. One of the flair teams. I really don’t think Italy will keep it. Because I live in Dublin, I would love it to be England beating France in the final – that would right a lot of wrongs and solve a lot of political upheavals. It would cement a certain respect in the relationship between England and Ireland – not that it’s that bad at the moment but they’re still always joking about not liking each other. My heart says England [will win it] and, if we turn up every game and every team we play makes one mistake for Rooney to pounce on, then I think we can. But I’ve got a feeling that it’s Spain’s time to stop being perpetual under-achievers.
Did you follow Sheffield United’s progress closely this season?
As close as you can when you’re away from home. It was very disappointing at the end but they did have an unbelievable amount of injuries this year. From pretty much the start of the season, we were missing seven first-teamers and we weren’t prepared to part with the cash to buy replacements, so we brought in loanees, we brought in kids who weren’t ready to play yet. That’s when a win turns into a draw, or a draw into a probable loss, because there’s no experience there. It could have been a lot worse, though – look what happened to Sheffield Wednesday. I remember one interview that Kevin Blackwell did after a game in which we were losing 1-0 at half-time, and he was asked if he gave the team a rollicking at half-time. He said, “No – the back three had never met before!” They brought this guy in at about 2 o’clock from wherever so you can’t shout at people for not being able to play a system which they’ve not been able to practise. This kind of thing happens to a lot of teams but I’m just hoping for a clean slate come August so we can have a real go at it this year.
Which players have stood out for you this season?
Stephen Quinn. And Jamie Ward looks really good. Darius Henderson was great whenever he was fit but he only played about nine games. Billy Sharp did great at first but then completely fell away. Being a Sheffield United fan, he can’t play his normal game – it somehow adds something negative to his, whereas he was scoring thousands of goals at Doncaster. Apart from one hattrick, he’s been no good in a United shirt. We brought Henri Camara in and he looks pretty good, but no-one really stands out for me other than Captain Rock, Chris Morgan. He’s a bit of a thug, which is kind of what you need up to a point, and he’s not very fast but he can read the game and he’s great at rallying the troops. Championship football is as much to do with that as it is to do with skill. On the wages United pay, they’re all loveable rogues rather than fantastically skilful footballers but that’s why we made a £5m profit this year. Technically, we’re £700m better off than Man U!
"Er...when you said 'pass the jack'..."
Who would you name as the top five Blades you’ve ever seen?
Alan Woodward and Tony Currie, without a shadow of a doubt, from the 1971-74 period, which is when I first started watching them. Brian Deane and Tony Agana from the Dave Bassett years. And Alex Sabella, who we got around the time that Ossie Ardiles and Ricky Villa came to England. Sabella was a socks-down, full of Latin flair kind of player and it was exciting to see someone like that running around Bramall Lane. Did you know that, when we signed Alex Sabella, the deal was brokered by Harry Haslam, our manager at the time, and we were offered a 16 year-old kid for £400,000. It was Diego Maradona! We can laugh at that with hindsight now but, you know, whoever the Sheffield United directors were in 1978 would have been something like a scrap metal dealer – they weren’t moneyed people like Abramovich and they probably thought, “£400,000 for a 16 year-old? You must be joking!” And I can’t say I blame them. I’d have done exactly the same thing. But, with hindsight, what a piece of history that would have been!
Is ‘England Rocks’ in any way a World Cup song?
It is now but only by accident. This whole thing started about a year ago when Mott the Hoople announced that they were going to reform and do some shows at Hammersmith. Having been their cultural ambassador for twenty-five years, they asked me to be involved one way or another and, when it transpired that I’d be opening for them on the last night, I made a decision that what I wanted to do was to really entertain the hardcore Mott fans by playing a bunch of songs that were Mott-related but not actual Mott songs – because any Mott songs we’d have played would have been a nod to the fact that they weren’t going to play it themselves later. So I chose a bunch of songs that they did after they split in ‘74, so [they were culled from] Ian Hunter, Mott – because they carried on with Nigel Benjamin singing and dropped ‘the Hoople’ from their name, and then when they got rid of Benjamin and got John Fiddler again they became British Lions. So I chose a setlist of songs from those three artists and of course ‘England Rocks’ was one of them.
I remember back in the summer of ’77, it was one of those good summers where it was sunny a lot, the Sex Pistols were kicking arse and there was a lot of rock and roll positivity going on and that was really exciting when you were 17. I was never going to be one of those people that abandons the old guard so, when Ian Hunter released ‘England Rocks’ off the back of touring his Overnight Angels album, I thought it was the best thing in the world and I thought the entire rock world was mental for ignoring. I was writing angry letters to music press and DJs saying, “What’s wrong with you people?” This is a bona fide classic. It’s up there with anything that’s ever charted. Why won’t you play it on the radio? Anyway, after we played the gig, we thought, “Four months work for 45 minutes? That’s insane.” So we decided to record all the songs while they were still in our DNA. By the time we’d finished the album, in February or March, World Cup fever was starting to kick in and it just struck me that ‘England Rocks’ would be the perfect song for the World Cup because it doesn’t have all the usual clichés . It’s actually not a football song but I thought I’d throw it in the hat with all the other unofficial World Cup songs for a giggle. I know the BBC have used it a couple of times already so it’s getting some airplay. I think it’s a good rallying cry song rather than a football song.
Have you had much feedback from Mott the Hoople themselves?
I don’t think any of them have heard it except Ian Hunter. He thinks ‘England Rocks’ is “very spiffy”. Secretly I’m sure he loves the fact that we’ve done this. I sent John Fiddler ‘One More Chance to Run’ and he said something like, “Wow, it sounds like you had more fun recording it than when we did it!” I haven’t heard anything from Overend Watts but when I saw him after we played our set at Hammersmith he came up and said, “I almost cried. I can’t believe those songs mean that much to you. I didn’t think they meant that much to anybody.” Ian’s comment was, “Get ‘em off, they’re going down too well!” (Laughs)
The worst that’s going to happen is that somebody who’s a big Mott fan will say, “I prefer the originals.” The opposite of that is that a lot of people – maybe Def Leppard fans or Quireboys fans or whatever – might say, “Wow, I’ve never heard these songs before.” You only have to look at the comments under the ‘England Rocks’ video on YouTube to see the vastly different interpretations of what we’re doing, from “they should just go back to being Def Leppard” to “this is brilliant and Leppard fans will love this because it shows where their roots were” and all that kind of stuff. From the actual Mott camp, I’ve had nothing but good wishes and good advice, really.
Finally, where does Def Leppard stand now?
We’re having a year off the road. After 32 years’ unbroken service to this band and five years of non-stop touring, I was the first of us to say, “I’m not doing it next year.” I can’t be wheeled out to sing those songs every night for no reason. Unless we’ve got a new album out, what’s the point? I don’t need the money that badly so if I don’t get any artistic satisfaction from it then there’s no point. So we’re taking a year off to recharge our batteries individually so that, when we come back together, there’s a new, refreshed energy for us to exploit, if you like. We’re all relaxed, doing what we want to do, and we don’t have to report in every day. If somebody wants to go and climb Mount Everest and I don’t find out about it until they get back down then good for them! I don’t need a daily update or a Twitter, thank you very much. But we are doing stuff to prepare for next year. Literally this week we’re going to be ploughing through live recordings because we’re going to release a live album, so we’ve basically got to listen to all of them, decide which nights we were on fire and use those versions. There’s talk of a box set and we’re writing some new stuff. We can be at home writing and emailing bits and bobs to each other – “here, I’ve got this song, it needs lyrics” – so we don’t have to be in the same room to do that. So we’re doing bits and bobs under the radar that, by the end of this year, will become a nice, big lumpy mess that needs sorting out, if you like! But we are going to be back out next year, for sure.
‘England Rocks’ by the Down ‘N Outz will be available on the album My Re Generation, which in turn will be available exclusively with Classic Rock magazine on the 23rd June 2010. General release with bonus tracks will follow on the 13th July 2010, while the band is confirmed to play at High Voltage Festival, 25th July 2010.