In case you wanted to stream “Pour Some Sugar on Me“ or “Rock of Ages” in the past, you would be unpleasantly surprised by the fact that these or any other Def Leppard hits have been unavailable. The band members refused to get into the streaming business.
This all changed on Friday, when all of Def Leppard’s major releases, became available on the majority of music streaming platforms.
“We needed the right deal for the band,” said frontman Joe Elliott to Rolling Stone. “We weren’t going to be victims of the industry. We signed our deal with Mercury many, many decades ago when there was no digital part of the record deal. So when [our contract ended] in 2009, we were free to do whatever we wanted to do. We were so busy touring and not worrying about the back catalog – because people were still buying CDs – that we weren’t sure about [embracing] streaming.”
Elliott added that the idea was discussed for a long time now, but they just waited for the “right time” and the “right deal” to come across. They also wanted to make sure all of their major albums were available simultaneously on all major services.
Another big news is that Def Leppard is embarking on a tour with another hard rock legends, Journey. Two bands will tour the United States from May to October, playing more than 60 dates.
“The fact that we’re touring with Journey, and it’s putting us into huge arenas like Madison Square Garden and stadiums, that is very special for us,” Elliott told Rolling Stone about the tour. “It’s two iconic bands touring together. It makes it more of an event when the bill is all bands that people have heard of. We went out with a really good band called Tripping Daisy in 1996, but nobody cared. But when you have people like Cheap Trick, Poison, Heart or Journey, it makes for a better night for the people in the crowd. They come in and they know what they’re going to get.”
