Def Leppard have said that they plan to re-record their entire back catalogue.
The rockers want to take the move following a disagreement with their one-time record label Universal over royalties and compensation for digital downloads. The band’s frontman Joe Elliott said to Billboard that the disagreement has led to the band deciding to phase out their recordings for Universal and replace them with a whole new collection of their songs, which they’re calling ‘forgeries’. “We’ll just replace our back catalogue with brand new, exact same versions of what we did,” he said.
In order to coincide with the release of the movie Rock Of Ages, the band have already re-recorded their 1983 song “Rock Of Ages” and 1987’s “Pour Some Sugar On Me“. Elliott has said of this – via the Guardian: “We just wanted studio versions of those songs available for this summer”.
Of the difficulties in re-recording their old tracks, he added: “You just don’t go in and say: ‘Hey guys, let’s record it,’ and it’s done in three minutes… Where am I gonna find a 22-year-old voice? I had to sing myself into a certain throat shape to be able to sing that way again. It was really hard work, but we did have a good laugh over it here and there.”