a radio interview shortly, then he heads to
Heathrow to fly home to Ireland for 24 hours, then
he’s off again to play a festival in Nashville with
Leppard. And he hasn’t even thought about buying
anything yet.
Right Joe, you’ve got fifty quid to get through in
five minutes. “Okay,” comes the reply. “Let’s do it.”
And then he’s off like a Supermarket Sweep
contestant. First stop: Killing Joke. “Love Like Blood
is one of the greatest eighties singles of all time,”
he says, magnificently.
Next: the Stones, where he pulls out the 1969
compilation Through The Past, Darkly (“This was my
introduction to them”) and Their Satanic Majesties
Request (“A bit too out-there for me”).In short order, he then hits The Stranglers
(“What? They don’t have Rattus Norvegicus?
Disgraceful”), T.Rex (“My People Were Fair... Hang
on. Forty quid? I can’t afford that”) and Sparks
(“Genius band”).
We meet at the top of the stairs five minutes
later. He’s made his choice: Mott’s Wild Life
(unsurprising), Propaganda by Sparks (ditto) and
Miles Davis’s 1959 jazz landmark Kind Of Blue
(absolutely no one would have put money on that).
Of course, he doesn’t actually need any of them.
“I’ve got loads of versions of all of ’em,” he says,
thrusting the three LPs into my hands. “Here, you
have them.” Then this glam rock spirit guide is off,
striding down the streets of Soho to his next
appointment. And after that? Well, there are still
plenty more records to discover, plenty more
reggae fans to terrify.Down‘N’Outz’s This Is How We Roll is out now
via UMC.commitally) but he loves The Struts and is
a massive fan of Italian terrace-glam hooligans
Giuda. “They crack me up,” he says. “Nobody does
that any more. They’re doing what the Stray Cats
were doing in the eighties – making this totally
unfashionable music fashionable again.”
While we’ve been talking, his random browsing
strategy has brought us to the ‘T’ section. He pulls
out a surprising choice: Marquee Moon, the genius
1977 album by New York punk visionaries
Television. “I love the angularness of it,” he says.
“They were supposed to be new wave, but there’s
a song on here that’s eleven minutes long. They
were kind of prog-punk.”
Television aren’t the kind of thing you expect the
singer from Def Leppard to be listening to.
“What do you mean?” he booms, making the
customers flicking through the reggae racks
behind us twitch nervously. “It’s because people
don’t fucking take any notice; they lob us into this
category or that category. People go: ‘What do you
actually listen to?’ I go: ‘I listen to The Stranglers,
Kate Bush, Peter Gabriel and this [waving Marquee
Moon], and they go: ‘[confused voice] What, you
don’t listen to Saxon?’”
Just how far off-piste does he go, then? Is he into
psych-pop?
“A bit of it. I’ve got the Nuggets box
set, but I wouldn’t remember any of
the names on it. [Todd Rundgren’s
original band] The Nazz are awesome,
though. A bloke who came to fix my
telly once told me about them. I was
a fan of Todd Rundgren, but I’d
never heard of them. Open My Eyes
is a brilliant song.”
Hip-hop?
He pulls a face. “If there’s one thing
I cannot stand, it’s rap. Not a fan.
I don’t mind stuff like Run-DMC or
Beastie Boys, but all this new stuff:
‘Bitch, ho, blah blah blah...’ Dude, just
sing me a fucking melody.”
Then Elliott drops his bombshell. “I listen to a lot
of jazz. John Coltrane, Stan Getz. A ton of Miles
Davis. It’s brilliant when I’m chilling out. It’s because
there’s no lyrics. You can listen to it without having
to judge. But it’s still a learning curve for me.
I wouldn’t ever admit to being an expert.”
Can we expect the next Leppard album to head
off in a jazz direction?
“Nooooooo,” he says empathically. “I like it, but
I don’t want to actually have to do it.”A
ll this is very interesting, but it’s seriously
biting into our record-buying time. Elliott
is on a tight schedule: he’s got to be atMott The Hoople Wildlife
“The 180-gram vinyl reissues of Mott albums
were the last one I actually bought – well, got
sent by someone at Universal. I’ve got them all
multiple times already. Wildlife is my desert
island disc. Brilliant record, really underrated.”Sparks Propaganda
“If you’re going to go with Sparks, go with
Kimono My House, Indiscreet and this. Proper arty,
glammy genius.”Miles Davis Kind Of Blue
“It’s my birth year album – it came out in 1959.
That guy did with the trumpet what Eddie Van
Halen did with the guitar in the late seventies –
he revolutionised it. There’s a great Miles Davis
album that’s just come out called Rubber Band,
which was originally recorded in 1985. And
there’s an album of his called Young Man With
The Horn, which is the best title ever.”CHECKOUT
WHAT JOE SPENT CLASSIC ROCK’S £50 ON
Joe pulls out a copy of the
Stones’ Through The Past,
Darkly. “This was my
introduction to them.”
“Hmm... nothing much of
interest in this section.”CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM 67