Phil Collen clocks the Bowie and Depeche Mode posters over my shoulder almost immediately. We’re supposed to be talking about Def Leppard’s orchestral record, Drastic Symphonies, but of course this all starts with glam. “We were meeting Anton Corbijn about videos,” he remembers, “and someone from the label goes, ‘We’re doing this series with the Royal Philharmonic… Beach Boys, Queen… would you want to do a Def Leppard one?’”
There’s a catch. “We’re artists and we’re really precious about our stuff,” Collen says. “We don’t want it just going out, anyone kind of messing with it.” If they were going to let the Royal Philharmonic — which he calls “my favorite orchestra in the world” — anywhere near “Photograph” or “Pour Some Sugar on Me,” they wanted the keys to the whole thing: song selection, arrangements, everything.
“They said, ‘Yeah, okay then,’” he laughs. “And it was seamless, honestly.” They brought in string arranger Eric Gorfain, already part of the tribe from Diamond Star Halos and Collen’s work with Tesla and Joe Elliott’s Down ’n’ Outz. The band didn’t just slap strings on old tracks; they tore the songs apart and rebuilt them. Sometimes literally.
“Originally ‘Pour Some Sugar on Me’ sounded comical,” he admits. “Cellos playing the riff? We’re like, ‘We can’t do that one.’” The workaround was sneakier: a reimagined version built around Canadian singer-songwriter Emm Gryner’s piano interpretation, which Def Leppard had fallen for years earlier. “She redid it, piano and vocal. Joe did a duet. Eric scored it out, and before you know it the Royal Philharmonic is playing on it,” Collen says. The result is so pretty that when she sings “hot, sticky, sweet,” the smirk sort of dissolves in the reverb.
That level of control wasn’t about ego so much as consistency. Def Leppard has basically been pretending to be an orchestra since the ‘80s. He points to the guitar “orchestration” he and the late Steve Clark learned from Queen’s Brian May, then layered that with Mutt Lange’s vocal stacks on Pyromania and Hysteria. “He’d make it sound like Star Wars for the ears,” Collen says. “Where a violin, a viola, and a cello would all play different parts, we’d do that with guitars and vocals. So actually getting to do the real thing and add that without it sounding gross… that was amazing.”
Each song on Drastic Symphonies got its own treatment. “Horses for courses,” as he puts it. “Paper Sun,” from 1999’s Euphoria, was perfect for going full Beethoven-doom: “really over the top, darker, serious stuff.” “Goodbye for Good This Time” and “Angels (Can’t Help You Now),” both from Diamond Star Halos, were handled almost like chamber pieces. “That one was easy,” he says of “Goodbye.” “Let’s get rid of the drums. Once you take that out, you have to create something else. Sometimes the lead vocal is so great on its own you’re just enhancing that.”
Diamond Star Halos itself wasn’t even meant to be a proper album, at least not at first. “We didn’t realize we were doing an album,” Collen says. They were supposed to cut a couple of songs at Elliott’s house, then COVID grounded everything. “I went to see my daughter for her birthday, and the next day they’re like, ‘Everything’s grounded. No tour.’” Stuck with time and a laptop, he started sending ideas to Joe.
“We started celebrating our heroes,” he says. “Bowie, T. Rex, Mott the Hoople, Queen… all of those bands.” Without overthinking it, the songs drifted into that glam universe. The album title, lifted from T. Rex’s “Get It On (Bang a Gong),” had been private band shorthand for years. “When we describe that era, we say, ‘Yeah, it’s very diamond star halo’” Collen explains. “We knew what that meant.” Before they knew it, they had 15 songs and, thanks to a delayed tour, the rarest Def Leppard commodity: time to actually finish an album.
There’s even leftover material, which is not a phrase historically associated with this band. “That may be a little adventurous, saying another whole album,” Collen hedges, “but there’s definitely a few songs left over. Four or five, easily.” Most of his parts were cut the modern way — on the laptop he’s talking to me from, vocals tracked in a nearby closet. “I love going to studios,” he says. “Abbey Road for the orchestra was great. But there’s something to be said for getting the idea, banging it down, and going, ‘Yeah, that’s it.’”
The glam worship doesn’t stop with Def Leppard’s own records. Collen is also quietly reviving Cybernauts, the Bowie-obsessed project he and Elliott formed with Spiders from Mars drummer Woody Woodmansey. “We’re actually going to be doing a few more tracks,” he reveals. “ ‘John, I’m Only Dancing’ is one of them, and another Queen-era thing.” They’re waiting on Woody’s drums so Collen and Elliott can “fill in around it.” In the meantime, he’s nerding out with Ken Scott, who produced Hunky Dory, Ziggy Stardust, and Aladdin Sane, and raving about the half-speed Aladdin Sane vinyl he impulsively grabbed at a Barnes & Noble on yet another of his daughter’s birthdays.
The idea of a full-on concept album — a Quadrophenia-style story with strings baked in from the ground up — seems to genuinely catch him off guard. “I’ve never actually thought about that,” he says. “With the industry the way it is, that wouldn’t be promoted. The last one I really remember is The Black Parade, and even that’s like 20 years ago.” Still, you can hear the wheels turning. “That would be really cool,” he smiles. “Perhaps working in the background on a concept album… that’s a really good idea. Thank you. We may run with that.”
For now, Def Leppard is back on the road with Mötley Crüe, “bringing rock to the world,” as Collen puts it, while still pushing Diamond Star Halos with three songs in the set. The full orchestral treatment remains a fantasy, but it’s a very specific one: Royal Albert Hall with the London Symphony, Sydney Opera House with their orchestra, Hollywood Bowl with L.A.’s, Carnegie Hall, Berlin. “That would be a career highlight,” he says. “We just need the invites.”
Until some promoter decides to bankroll the Def Leppard World Philharmonic Tour, Collen is happy stacking guitars like string sections, sneaking glam Easter eggs into new songs, and plotting Bowie covers with his old Cybernauts crew. Def Leppard might not want to say they’re a symphonic band. At this point, the only thing missing is the tux.
Watch the interview above and then check out the video below.
