Def Leppard's Joe Elliott looks back on the story behind their first UK and US hit single, Animal, from 1987
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00:00My recollection of animal is fading somewhat because it's a long time ago.
00:21The one thing about that song as opposed to everything else on the album or anybody that's
00:41ever been in a band and had a song that they've lived with for a while but then ended up rewriting
00:46parts of it. I sang the lead vocal to a completely different backing track. It was vastly different.
01:16I did the vocal for it in Paris. We went to work in Paris. I remember we were there when Live Aid
01:28was on. We were there for the Bastille day and we were working in this little studio and I did
01:33the vocal. We spent a couple of days just experimenting with it and then nailing it
01:37down and then when we took the tapes back to Holland where we went to finish the album off
01:41between Holland and Dublin. We kind of grew tired of the backing track but everybody was
01:48commenting on how much they liked the lead vocal so I think it would have been much just said well
01:52look what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna strip all the track off and just leave the vocal playing
01:57against the drums. I want you guys to just play underneath and see what you come up with and
02:02totally updated the song to it to the point where it's it's almost timeless now which before it was
02:07starting to age even before it was released in its original form.