Joe Elliott names “one of the most beautiful songs ever”
There has never been a band prouder to represent rock and roll than Def Leppard. Even though the group have gone through their fair share of switch-ups in genre, there’s no getting around their credentials as a rock outfit, down to them having the word proudly sported in some of their most famous songs. None of the band members claimed to be snobs about music, though, and Joe Elliott felt that he had a religious experience when hearing Prince’s ‘Purple Rain’ for the first time.
Before Elliott had started getting involved with hard rock, he gravitated towards any kind of British pop coming out during the 1970s. For all of the great albums by Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, Elliott wasn’t afraid to represent his love for artists like David Essex or The Osmonds whenever he could, saying that he loved the sound of ‘Crazy Horses’ as well as the biggest names in rock and roll.
By the time the glam rock boom started sweeping England, Elliott finally got the itch of what rock and roll was all about. Loving the sounds of Mott the Hoople, David Bowie, and T Rex, Elliott wanted to create the kind of band that could go toe-to-toe with the best of the best, forming Def Leppard with Rick Savage, named after an imaginary band Elliott had come up with.
As the band slaved away in the clubs when still in their teens, a young Prince Rogers Nelson had already started putting together his first album. Playing all the instruments on his debut while barely being old enough to drink, For You was the world’s introduction to ‘The Purple One’, having all the hallmarks of the Minneapolis sound right out of the gate.
While Prince could do most of his finest work by himself, his movie deal with Warner Bros Records led to him enlisting The Revolution for the album 1999. Doubling down on the extravagant side of his sound, Purple Rain changed the way that most fans looked at popular music, with Prince toying with everything from R&B to soul to rock and roll to funk across its runtime.
As the album draws to a close, the title track knocked Elliott out when he heard it for the first time, saying, “It’s one of the most brilliant and beautiful songs that I have ever heard. I stand up every time I hear this song on the radio. I saw it live dozen times, and it was so incredibly moving”.
Although Leppard was firmly entrenched in hard rock at the time of Purple Rain’s release, there’s a good chance that Prince’s eclectic style influenced their next move. On Hysteria, the band would no longer be tied down to just hard rock or hair metal, making glorious ballads that verged on country territory like ‘Love Bites’ and making progressive epics like ‘Gods of War’.
Ever since their creative breakthrough, Leppard has kept their inventive streak going, making massive returns to their roots on albums like Euphoria while also flirting with genres that left fans a bit wary on albums like Slang. Regardless of where Leppard was going to go next, Prince helped remind Elliott that anything was possible as long as there was a good idea behind it.
