We also share the same management company, CJM, who have Lenny Kravitz, Jeff Lynne, Chris Isaak, Tesla, Chicago and Boz Scaggs on their books too. Her dad used to be our promoter in Phoenix – he owns the shed out there – and she’s a massive fan of Hysteria. “Fuck! Stevie announced in front of 40,000 fricking people that I was there. Sadly, an administrative error meant that Hot Press’ name wasn’t on the guest-list – smacks and P45s have subsequently been issued – but we did get to see Joe dad dancing to ‘Don’t Dream It’s Over’ in June when Fleetwood Mac, complete with Finn and Tom Petty’s former right-hand guitarist, Mike Campbell, swung by the RDS. We were all there at five o’clock in the morning singing ‘Don’t Dream It’s Over’.” “Stevie Nicks was being inducted too so we had a joint party afterwards in this swashbuckling hotel room which everybody came to – we had the Duran Duraners there Roxy Music minus Bryan Ferry who ghosted in to the ceremony, sang some of the greatest hits and then fucked off and Fleetwood Mac’s newly recruited member of Crowded House, Neil Finn, who was on piano duties.
That only being the start of the Leps’ hobnobbing with musical royalty. It was a fantastic way to say, ‘Wow, we’re in, and this is the man and the song who brought us together in the first place.’” By the time we get to go on stage in the Barclays Center we’ve added Susanna Hoffs from The Bangles, Rod Argent and Colin Bluntstone, Stevie Van Zandt and Ray Manzanera from Roxy Music to the line-up.
“I think the wife had been working on him,” Joe laughs, “because this time he said, ‘For you, yeah, I’ll do it.’ Ian turns up with an acoustic after we’ve rehearsed it as a band and it sounds fucking amazing. Don’t forget that it was you and me who did the first fundraiser for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Museum and Mott have never even been nominated.’” “We didn’t care about being in a club they didn’t want us to be a member of, but in 2012 a Fan Vote was introduced and guess who this year got the biggest Fan Vote ever? Yep, those unlikely lads from Sheffield! So we thought, ‘Okay, let’s go and enjoy this.’ We avoided, brilliantly I think, the wretchedly awful all-star inductee jam – I couldn’t imagine us doing The Beatles’ ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ with The Cure and Radiohead – by saying to the organisers, ‘I’m in Manhattan and guess who happens to be recording over the Brooklyn Bridge? Mott The Hoople who had Queen opening for them in 1974 and, oh, Brian May’s in town too.’ I asked Brian, ‘If Ian Hunter’s up for it, will you do ‘All The Young Dudes’ with us?’ Straight away he was: ‘Yeah, I’m in.’ I phone Ian and he goes, ‘No, I’m not fucking doing it for them. “The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and its legendary invisible panel have always preferred the likes of Loudon Wainwright and the Velvet Underground to your Mötley Crues and Def Leppards,” Joe resumes. Joe Elliott has graced some star-studded stages in his time, but none that match the wealth of talent, which gathered in March at New York’s Barclays Center to celebrate Def Leppard’s induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. “I was standing there with a daft grin on my face thinking, ‘It doesn’t get any fucking better than this!’”
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