Def Leppard’s Joe Elliott says making new music is not a "massive priority".
As the ‘Pour Some Sugar On Me’ rockers prepare for their massive ‘The Stadium Tour’ with Motley Crue, Poison and Joan Jett & The Blackhearts next year, the band’s frontman has admitted they’ve always deemed their lives shows more "important" because they can sell more tickets than records.
Elliott admitted that he feels like critics and fans alike just won’t "accept" that they’ve moved on and no longer feel "getting new music out" is a necessity.
He said: "See, there’s still too many people in the industry that believe in the original blueprint of what we do, and it’s moved on, and they don’t seem to wanna accept that.
"So we get a lot of criticism from all quarters — fans, media — saying that we’re not concentrating on getting new music out there.
"It’s not that important at this time in our career. What’s important right now — you look at The Eagles, you look at Fleetwood Mac, you look at, say, KISS or Aerosmith, people want to see them live.
"Ticket sales prove that.
"They can all put new records out and they don’t sell anything like their original albums did. It just is the way that it is."
However, the 60-year-old singer admitted that they "absolutely" would like to hit the studio in the future.
He said: "We still wanna make new music — don’t get me wrong; we absolutely do.
"We were one of the first bands to not put an album out every year.
"Back in the day, you think about Thin Lizzy, Rush, UFO, you can date their albums to a year, literally, if you’re a fan.
"And then towards the ’80s, it started to break out into maybe an album every two years.
"We were the band that went from 1980 to ’81 to ’83 to ’87 to ’92 to ’96 to ’99 to 2002.
"We went into a three-year cycle, because the touring thing was so much more important.
"And right now, looking at the ticket sales [for Def Leppard’s ‘The Stadium Tour’ with Motley Crue, Poison and Joan Jett & The Blackhearts] … That first weekend the tickets were on sale, we shifted seven hundred thousand tickets.
"There’s no way on earth that any of the bands on that tour would shift seven hundred thousand albums in the same period of time.
"So it’s not a massive priority to make new music.
"But what you’ve got is whether it be The Rolling Stones or whether it be The Who, who just released only their second album since 1982. The Who have been touring all this time, because it’s what people want, and it’s what they want."
The ‘Love Bites’ rocker added that they have been writing – but they will release their new material in "their own sweet time".
He added to SiriusXM’s ‘Trunk Nation’: "Now, don’t get me wrong — we absolutely are writing; we do wanna make a record; but we’re gonna make it in our own sweet time, so it’s a good album, not a rushed album with some A&R man going, ‘I don’t hear any singles’ or record companies tapping their watchface, going, ‘We need it by the third quarter.’ "We are gonna make a record when we have the time to do it, but the priority, as these ticket sales prove, is us playing in front of our fans. That’s what they want; otherwise, they wouldn’t be buying the tickets."
Def Leppard’s last studio effort was their 2015 self-titled LP.
Def Leppard: Making new music isn’t a massive priority
