arches an eyebrow. “No. I’ll leave that to Fee
Waybill. He pulls it off much better than me.”E
lliott bought most of his records as a kid at
Bradley’s record store or Sine Electrical in
Sheffield. “It sold vacuum cleaners and
flasks,” he says of the latter. “But they had record
section, and they’d sell a few of the Top Ten records.”
The first album he bought with his own money
was Rod Stewart’s Every Picture Tells A Story in 1971.
“Two pounds and eleven pence,” he says. He pulls
a second-hand copy out of the Sister Ray racks.
“Four ninety-nine. Wow, with inflation that’s
pretty good.”
Things got serious when he discovered
Revolution Records in Sheffield during the punk
era. “The first record I ever bought there was Rattus
Norvegicus by The Stranglers. It’s where I got all my
under-the-counter stuff:
[Sex Pistols bootleg] Spunk,
the Clash live somewhere or
other with Siouxsie Sioux
on the cover before she
became famous.”
For all his catholic tastes,
there have been a handful of
guiding lights that have
remained constant
throughout Elliott’s career.
Mott are one, David Bowie is
another. The new
Down‘n’Outz album features
a tribute to the late singer,
Goodbye Mr Jones. Elliott met Bowie
several times over the years. The story
behind the first time is a pearler, and
comes with some champion-level
name-dropping.
“It was 1989, and I got an invitation
to Bono’s place,” he says. “He was
throwing a big barbecue and everyone
who meant something in Ireland was
there. [Director] John Huston, [actor]
John Hurt... I get there, and Bono
says: ‘I want to introduce you toon the same body. I think it’s Ralphers [guitarist
Mick Ralphs].”
A Mott devotee since his youth, Elliott formed
his side project, the Down‘N’Outz, specifically to
support Ian Hunter’s band at their final 2009
comeback show in London. The first two
Down‘n’Outz albums featured deep cuts from the
Mott back catalogue, including the albums they
recorded with Hunter’s replacement, Nigel
Benjamin. For Down‘n’Outz’s just-released third
album, This Is How We Roll, they decided to ditch
the covers and concentrate on originals.
“We’d done Mott to death,” he says. “We talked
briefly about doing Wings songs, 10cc songs, stuff
that’s off the beaten track, but we decided to do
our own.”
The sole exception is their cover of The Tubes’
sneering glam-bomb White Punks On Dope.
“I always loved that song. It’s the
perfect bridge between Bowie
and punk. It was otherworldly,
but it was parody. And you had
Fee Waybill dressed up as
[OTT rock star character]
Quay Lewd in the wig and
platform boots.”
Are you going to rock that
look when you play it live? Hef there’s one thing you should never do, it’s
argue with Joe Elliott about music. And
certainly not about 70s rock music.
The Def Leppard singer has just been told
by the accommodating and
knowledgeable owner of long-running Soho
record store Sister Ray that cult glam-punk brats
the Heavy Metal Kids only made one album.
“No they didn’t,” he replies, with the
unshakeable authority of a champion pub quiz
team leader. “They made four. Heavy Metal Kids.
Anvil Chorus. Kitsch. And then they did one
seventeen years ago called Hit The Right Button,
with Danny Peyronel, who played keyboards on
one UFO album, singing all the lead vocals.”
If he wasn’t the singer in Britain’s biggest ever
hard rock band, Elliott would have been at home
behind the counter in a place like this. He’s that
rare thing: an A-list rock star who actually loves
listening to other people’s music. He has a room
in his house in Ireland filled with thousands of
albums on vinyl and CD, as well as an authentic
1941 Wurlitzer jukebox.
“Every so often I’ll go through my stuff, and take
a suitcase full of shit down to Spindizzy Records in
Dublin and trade it for more records,” he says.
“And no, I’ve never taken any Def Leppard records
down there.”
This looks like being a perfect
morning, then. Classic Rock has £50 for
Elliott to spend on any albums of his
choosing in Sister Ray. The fact that
he doesn’t have to dip his hand in his
own pocket should make this proud
Yorkshireman doubly happy.
The first stop, inevitably, is the
‘M’ section. “There’s more to life than
Mott The Hoople, but not much,”
Elliott says. “Let’s see if they’ve got
anything I haven’t got.” He begins
flicking. “Yep, yep, yep...” He pulls
out a copy of Mott’s self-titled debut
album and points at the band line-up
shot on the inside of the gatefold. “See
this? Different heads all superimposedSister
Ray
Soho,^ LondonI
THE
£ (^50) R
ECORD STORE CHALLE
NGE
Joe Elliott
64 CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM
Words: Dave Everley Portraits: Kevin Nixon“I listen to
a lot of jazz.
It’s brilliant
when (^) I’m
chilling (^) out.”