DEF LEPPARD Guitarist Discusses Band's Summer Tour

May 31, 2007

Daily Herald reports: One of last summer's most successful collaborations was the combination of DEF LEPPARD and JOURNEY — a tour which won a Pollstar Concert Industry award for the most creatively packaged event. That show hit USANA Amphitheatre in West Valley City in mid-August and sold upwards of 19,000 tickets.

"We'd never really done anything like that before," DEF LEPPARD guitarist Vivian Campbell said in a phone interview from his home in Los Angeles on Thursday. "We were used to doing our own show and choosing who was going to be our opening act. So we were a little bit skeptical, but then that tour turned out to be an enormous success."

DEF LEPPARD enjoyed the pairing with JOURNEY so much, the British rockers decided to jump right back into another multi-tiered tour this summer — hitting the road with 1970s and '80s stalwarts STYX and FOREIGNER.

"That's not just with us — I think you'll find that's the nature of every band from our genre," Campbell said. "The music industry, and not just the concert industry, but the entire landscape of the music industry, has changed so radically, and is still in such a state of flux, that you kind of have to try and find new things that work. And this definitely seems to be working in the live arena. These sort of packages are certainly working for us and another reason to go out on tour this summer. This will actually be our third consecutive summer of touring, which is something we've never, ever, ever done before. But that's also reflective of what's changing in the concert industry."

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