Def Leppard’s Joe Elliott recalls the time they opened for Ritchie Blackmore back in 1981, saying it was a disaster because they haven’t rehearsed before the show and directly hit the stage.
In a recent interview with Rockland Radio, the singer recalled:
“I’ve got plenty of them. They’re not always good; some are pretty grim, like 1981. We were opening for Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow, and we flew in the day after we finished recording the ‘High ‘n’ Dry’ album. So we didn’t have a chance to rehearse, and I believe that the first gig was in Essen.
”We literally walked on the stage with no soundcheck. We hadn’t played a gig for over a year, so you can imagine it was a disaster. I know the reviews were awful, I couldn’t read them because they were in German, but everybody was telling me, ‘What are reviews saying?’ I said, ‘You don’t want to know.’ Looking at that’s now 41 years ago, and it’s a distant memory. That’s become a bit of an anecdote within the band.”