Def Leppard Rocks France And Belgium In Latest ‘Beyond The World Tour’ Video
This week, the legendary rockers play more triumphant European festivals and meet some fellow superstars backstage.
Def Leppard has shared episode eight of the on-going video blog series ‘Behind The World Tour’, charting the European leg of its “The World Tour” with Motley Crue. The newly-released episode, featuring footage from Denmark, France and Belgium, is now available on the band’s official YouTube channel, but if you scroll down, you can firstly enjoy a few extracts from it in advance.
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In the previous episode of ‘Beyond The World Tour,’ Joe Elliott and the troops played a series of rapturously-received shows in Sweden, Finland and Norway respectively. This week’s episode begins with Leppard still in Scandinavia, playing a festival show in the Danish capital, Copenhagen, which drummer Rick Allen declares is “f_ing awesome” while his bandmates discuss the significance of the day itself.
“It’s a massive day for us today, huge anniversary day,” Joe Elliott reveals. “It’s 4 years to the day since we played Download and 14 years to the day since we played Download previously. They were exactly 10 years apart. It’s also 24 years since Euphoria was released in the UK.”
“Euphoria was a return to form after the Slang record,” guitarist Vivian Campbell adds. “Even the title was more like Hysteria and Pyromania…we were finally getting to a point where it was OK to be Def Leppard again after the alt-rock years of the 90s. With Euphoria, we could go back to what we do best, which is songs with hooks, harmonies and melodies.”
Following their suitably euphoric performance at the Copenhell Festival, Leppard are leaving Scandinavia and moving on to France and then Belgium. At Hellfest in France, the band play a storming show to around 60,000 people, while Iron Maiden’s Steve Harris visits them in the dressing room. Then, after a quick flight to Brussels, they do it all again, this time in front of a crowd of around 55,000 people on a bill shared with The Hollywood Vampires and Generation Sex, featuring former Sex Pistols Steve Jones and Paul Cook and vocalist Billy Idol.
The band are suitably stoked by both performances, but they were so late offstage, Joe Elliott waited until the next morning for his summation at the airport.
“That’s us then,” he smiles. “We’re off to Milan now, for a day off, then a gig, then two more days off. I love this job, it’s great!”
