Def Leppard guitarist Vivian Campbell won’t watch the band’s new live DVD Viva! Hysteria because he doesn’t want to see how ill he looked during his cancer battle.
The band recorded two nights of this year’s Las Vegas residency – during which they performed their classic album Hysteria in full – and released the results on October 21 following a series of cinema screenings.
But Campbell, who was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma just before the Vegas shows, would rather not see the movie.
He tells Rolling Stone: “I don’t like watching myself. I took that in consideration when I stood in front of the bedroom mirror pretending to be Marc Bolan.
“I was really, really sick when we filmed this. When I look at pictures I look very pale because I was anaemic and everything. So I’m not in a hurry to see myself on the big screen.”
Campbell recently reported that he’s set to make a full recovery – and his health struggle may even have added an extra dynamic to the veteran band’s shows. “Having this whole fucking chemo and cancer bollocks, the fact I’ve been able to work through it has really helped me mentally,” he says.
Drummer Rick Allen says he took inspiration from his bandmate’s predicament, and it reminded him of his own health struggles when, in 1986, he lost an arm in a car crash.
“It reminded me of my own vulnerabilities, and the whole idea of just being courageous in the face of something so daunting,” Allen says. “I was feeling for him and it made me do the best I could. He rose to the occasion, and it was like, ‘Fuck me, I better pull out all the stops.’ Collectively, it just felt as if the whole band rose to the occasion.”
Meanwhile, fellow Leppard guitarist Phil Collen says the band are gearing up to record an EP ahead of a full-length follow-up to 2008′s Songs From The Sparkle Lounge.
“We’ve got a shitload of new songs,” he reports. “It’s just, ‘What direction are we going to take? Who are we going to get to produce it?’
“An album would obviously take too long, so we’re going to do about four or five songs, get those out and then have an album come out, so it’ll be an EP and an album.”
-Classic Rock
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