Def duel Def Leppard, Journey double up for concert tour

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By Dan Craft, The Pantagraph | Thursday, October 26, 2006 1:17 AM CDT | () comments

PHOTO CONTRIBUTED Def Leppard, who last performed at The Mark in June 2003, returns Friday night.

Def Leppard guitarist Phil Collen thinks the band’s fans might be getting a better bargain catching them on their current twin bill with old Yank mates Journey — a sweet ’80s deal that turns up Friday at The Mark of the Quad-Cities.

Chalk it up, he says, to some good old-fashioned friendly rivalry.

That, and the pressure that comes from following fast on the heels of a band that can bat out nothing but home-run hits during its preceding 90-minute set (for the record, the show’s opening slot is filled by Kentucky rocker Stoll Vaughan, with Journey coming on second and Def Leppard last).

Collen, who joined the Leppard ranks in 1982, just as the boys from Sheffield, England, were getting ready to light the “Pyromania” fuse, calls the pairing “a bit more intense than some of our other tours.”

The reason, he says, is this: If he and his bandmates (Joe Elliott, Rick Savage, Rick Allen, Vivian Campbell) are playing one of their own shows as the main attraction, things can go on for two to two-and-a-half hours.

And the set list can be configured any which way they can, with no problem.

But on the current tour, with the two headliners going half-sies — Journey gets 90 minutes, Leppard gets 90 minutes — “we end up spending more energy” doing less.

Because, as we all know, less is many times more.

“Sticking to that 90-minute length raises the bar,” Collen says. “Journey’s amazing by virtue of the fact that they’ve got way too many good songs. But they’ve really been good for us.”

For Collen, it’s something of a new world order, with a “big production and screens and pyro (pyrotechnics) on stage … and costume changes, too … we even wear jackets!”

Def Leppard in jackets?

“You can still play rock ‘n’ roll while you’re dressing up. Bowie’s being doing it for years,” reasons Collen, who gives every indication of being able to take it or leave it all.

“These days, there are so many great shows out there — a lot of competition. So that particular bar has been raised as well,” he says. “You have to be able to entertain people who are very impatient these days. Our whole nation has ADD, and we need constant stimulation.”

When Collen joined the band in 1982, he was entering some slightly shaken ranks: Original guitarist Pete Willis had been freshly booted out of the band for his conspicuous on-the-job alcohol consumption.

The shift occurred during the recording sessions for Def Leppard’s third, and most pivotal, album, “Pyromania,” which hit the charts on Jan. 20, 1983, and spun off the first of the band’s arena anthems, “Photograph.”

The song’s video was embraced by heretofore metal-shy MTV, and was credited with paving the way for the countless metal-pop imitators that stampeded through American’s concert hall’s in the British invaders’ wake.

“Back then, when that first big record came out, it was a lot different because people actually bought records,” sighs Collen.

if you go

What: Def Leppard and Journey, with Stoll Vaughan

When: 7:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 27

Where: The Mark of the Quad-Cities, Moline

How much: $75 and $55

Information: (309) 764-2000

The Pantagraph in Bloomington-Normal, Ill., is a Lee Enterprises newspaper.