Def Leppard’s Phil Collen on How India Continues To Inspire Them

Ahead of British rock Def Leppard’s debut India tour starting Mar. 25 in Shillong, guitarist Phil Collen reels off all the “really weird places” that they’ve often said yes to performing in.

He tells Rolling Stone India over a video call from his home in Orange County, California, “We played on top of a haystack in the mountains in Canada. We played in a cave in Morocco when we’d done three continents in a day.” It’s not his way to say India is among those weird places, but rather to say “you can pretty much throw us anywhere and we make it work.”

Collen joined the band in 1982, just as they were recording their album Pyromania. He went on to be a part of definitive albums like Hysteria and X, all the way up to their most recent recordings, including Diamond Star Halos (2022) and Drastic Symphonies in 2023, recreating some of their biggest hits with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra on the latter.

Along the way, he traveled the world, even visiting India four times as a tourist. Fresh from a Las Vegas residency where Def Leppard played 12 shows, the band – Collen with vocalist Joe Elliot, drummer Rick Allen, guitarist Vivian Campbell and bassist Rick Savage – will bring the hits to India for the first time as a band. The three-city run of shows, presented and promoted by BookMyShow Live, kicks off on March 25 in Shillong, followed by sets in Mumbai on March 27 and in Bengaluru on March 29.

Collen recalls his past India travels, which broadly included everything from forts to elephants to places in Kerala, as well as cities like Chennai, Mysuru, Bengaluru, Agra, New Delhi and Mumbai. “I’ve just always had such a great time there. And, you know, being a vegetarian, it’s a really great place for me to eat,” Collen says. He’s likely going to be a gastronomy guide for the band. “Obviously, everyone loves Indian food, so everyone’s gonna overeat. We’re looking forward to that,” he says with a laugh.

In our conversation about songwriting, it turns out Collen’s India travels inspired their song “Turn To Dust,” off the 1996 album Slang. “When I came to India, I traveled around, and I wrote a song about the Dalits, because I saw all this stuff going on,” he says. It was around 1992 or 1993, he recalls, that his visit to the country led to including a sample of a sarangi on the surging song, which even includes a bit of tabla and “Indian strings.” The lyrics include the chorus, “Won’t you save me? Don’t you blame me? I got the feel that I’m gone, turn to dust.” Collen adds. He uses the song as an example to say Def Leppard has a lot of “integrity that a lot of other bands don’t have.” He explains, “You just get inspired, or saddened or joyful whenever you go to different places, and I think it’s wonderful to just keep writing.”

Compared to the Nineties jaunt that inspired “Turn To Dust,” Def Leppard’s latest song, “Rejoice,” which released on Jan. 22, 2026, still retains that grand, arena-ready rock brightness that the band has been known for for half a century now. It’s been the opening track on their recent Las Vegas residency, which has set the blueprint for their upcoming shows, including India. “India’s the first place outside of us playing that residency,” Collen informs us.

Bringing a “brand new production” that’s “very high-tech,” Collen mentions (after sufficiently gushing about their in-ear monitors) that people in Vegas told them it was the best Def Leppard show they’d seen. “We noticed that we’d done this new setlist in Vegas, so we’re going to try and stick to it as close as we can, because it works so well. As a show, it almost felt like a theatrical performance,” Collen adds.

It’s been a long wait for Def Leppard fans in India, and though they did almost perform in 2008 as part of their world tour with fellow rock favorites Whitesnake, it was canceled due to “unforeseen circumstances.” Among the draws that undoubtedly remain powerful with Def Leppard are Collen’s solos, especially on tracks like “Animal,” “Photograph,” and of course late member Steve Clark’s iconic leads on “Pour Some Sugar On Me” and “Love Bites.”

Def Leppard have not veered too far away from their hard rock and glam-metal stylings, and the solos remain integral. When asked about the relevance of the guitar solo and his reasons to continue ripping into leads at shows, Collen says, “There’s still a coolness to it. It’s still very thrilling for me. It’s such an expressive instrument, especially a really loud, aggressive electric guitar, where you can make it sing. You make it sing, and I just love that.”

He can even pair it with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, as they did on Drastic Symphonies. “It was so fascinating to go into the studio and watch the orchestra play. It was like a bucket list thing,” he says. With their integrity intact, the idea is to keep writing new songs.

Collen adds, “I’m sure that when we get to India… like I said before, I’ve traveled there and wrote a song influenced by the whole thing. So I’m sure, I’m gonna see something the next time I’m there, I’m gonna go, ‘Wow.’” He doesn’t rule out being influenced by more of India’s diverse sonic offerings. “There’s different melodies… the way that [Indian] music kind of infuses Bollywood stuff or hip-hop and rock and EDM, it all joins up. Now, I think that if you’re open-minded and let it kind of drift into your senses, it creates something very beautiful and inspirational,” Collen says.