Def Leppard have been flying the flag for Britain overseas for a good few years. Forged in 1977 in the steel city of Sheffield, Leppard rose out of the influential New Wave Of British Heavy Metal to become the nation’s biggest rock export since Led Zeppelin, selling more than 100 million albums. “We’ve always been proud to be a British band,” singer Joe Elliott told us in 2008. “Most of our influences are British – Queen, Bowie, Bolan. Culturally it’s where we’re anchored.”
Whose idea was it to wear the Union flag gear?
It started with Rick [Allen] wearing the shorts on the High ’N’ Dry tour in ’81. And later, I wore a Union flag t-shirt in the Photograph video. You didn’t have stylists back then, so I had to kit myself out with a budget of £25. Seriously, we didn’t have any cash. The band was £700,000 in the hole…
I got a belt with handcuffs on – they came in handy for other activities later on. And I got a pair of shiny, black, leather-look trousers, but my legs are so long that the trousers were four inches short. So I got some leg warmers – bright red ones cos I’m a Blades [Sheffield United] fan. Everyone was wearing legwarmers in those days. David Lee Roth had ’em, Bono, the bird in Flashdance… Leg-warmers were the headband of the ankles. And to complete the look I got the Union flag t-shirt from a commercialised punk shop on the King’s Road. It was in the window for £7.99 and I had £8 left – boom! The Photograph video was all over MTV and the shirt said we were a British band.
But let’s not forget my Union flag trousers that I wore at the Freddie Mercury tribute show! We were the only British band on the bill that day [April 20, 1992] and I wanted to make a statement. People took the piss out of those trousers. But it’s like Noddy Holder’s mirrored top hat: you laugh at it, but you’d miss it if it wasn’t there.
Why was it so important for you to make that statement about being British?
Let’s not mince words here, we’re British! Yes, three of us live in California, I live in Ireland and Sav lives in Sheffield, but the important thing is not where you’re at, it’s where you’re from. That’s why Iron Maiden are always going to be an East End band, and we’re always gonna be a Sheffield band. And that’s why we always play UK tours even if we’re operating at a loss. It’s not an obligation, it’s the honourable thing to do. Plus, I guess we do still have that underlying necessity to keep on reminding people that we didn’t just run off to America, as we were accused of doing in the 80s.
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