Def Leppard Riffs on 'Sgt. Pepper' With Tim McGraw

While many of Def Leppard's peers seem content to rely on their tired back catalogs as they hop from shed to shed this summer, the rockers will be augmenting fan favorites like 'Photograph' and 'Pour Some Sugar On Me' with tracks from its new album, 'Songs From the Sparkle Lounge,' due April 29, which features a collaboration with country star Tim McGraw, and a cover inspired by 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band'.

"We had initially hoped to really pay tribute to [Sgt. Pepper]," guitarist/songwriter Phil Collen tells Spinner, "but it was turning out to be a real hassle. Putting Elvis Presley's image on it, for instance, would have been $1800. And the same went for a lot of the other images we wanted to use. And we thought about people like Hitler and the Stones, but we realized how much effort it would have been to get the art work finalized. Instead, we just used different pictures of us, our families and road crew. Although there's a picture of Mona Lisa, and people like Ian Hunter, Abraham Lincoln and King Tut on it, for the most part it was a compromise."

As for the collaboration, Collen says it came about through the brother of Def Leppard's drummer Rick Allen. "Robert [Allen] is Tim McGraw's tour manager and through him we learned that Tim was a big fan of our band," he explains. "So when we finally met him backstage at our Hollywood Bowl gig, we just hit it off. What we came up with -- that's mostly what you hear on the album. We kept most of the demo. A few months later, I flew to Nashville to work with Tim on his vocal. The whole thing just came together with such ease. He's a very inspiring presence; he's got a wealth of ideas and he's just a musical dynamo."

Collen is quick to admit that their collaboration is much better, and shall we say, more authentic, than most. "Most collaborations are crap because they're usually suggested by a label A&R guy or a manager, or some other industry ass," he says. "Although it's considerably different stylistically, I liken this more to what Linkin Park and Jay-Z did together."