The Beat: Def Leppard still drawing the crowds

In 2007, Def Leppard's summer shed tour with Styx and Foreigner grossed about a half-million dollars per show and played to 13,000-18,000 fans per stop.

Those are big numbers for a headlining band whose biggest success came more than 20 years ago.

This summer, Def Leppard is touring with the even-better matchup of Poison and Cheap Trick, and now, the mostly-British rockers might find a new faction of fans amid the packs of long-haired'80s holdovers and thirtysomething women who spent their prom nights singing along to "Pour Some Sugar on Me": country-music listeners.

Last fall, Def Leppard singer Joe Elliott, bassist Rick Savage, drummer Rick Allen and guitarists Phil Collen and Vivian Campbell -- recorded an episode of CMT's "Crossroads" with twang-pop ingénue Taylor Swift. The point of the show is to mix artists of different genres (the current episode features'80s hitmaker Bryan Adams and country's Jason Aldean), but Swift's tunes and Def Leppard's slick, insanely catchy pop/rock clicked particularly well. In fact, a DVD of the performance -- the first from the series -- was released a few weeks ago as a Wal-Mart exclusive.

As evidenced by many acts the past few years -- Bon Jovi and Swift the most notable the cross-pollination of country and rock isn't such a ridiculous notion.

Guitarist -- and Ireland-native -- Campbell, agrees.

"I don't know what dyed-in-the-wool country fans think of it, but so much of the production values in modern country records are very similar to rock records of the'80s, with the bombast and the production," he said last week from a tour stop in upstate New York. "It was great to work with Taylor, but it's kind of surreal when you're playing 'Pour Some Sugar on Me' on stage with a girl who is barely legal."

Although Def Leppard also recruited country superman Tim McGraw for a tune on last year's "Songs from the Sparkle Lounge," its first album of new material since 2002, Campbell is quick to dispel any idea that Def Leppard might take a cue from Bon Jovi and experiment with an all-country record.

"No. Absolutely not. We're very true to what we do," he said.

And really, why mess with a formula that has sold 65 million albums worldwide and landed 15 hits in the Top 40 since 1981?

Def Leppard's catalog is filled with so many stomp-rock sing-a-longs ("Photograph," "Foolin,'" "Animal," "Let's Get Rocked" and the eternally popular "Sugar") as well as perfectly produced power ballads ("Love Bites," "Hysteria" and "Two Steps Behind") that there is no way to fit them all into one show unless they attempt a Springsteenlike marathon.

But teaming with bands that have their own repertoire of hits and likely appeal to a common fan base could be why Def Leppard's tours are consistently profitable.

This outing, which stops in Virginia Beach on Saturday and Manassas on Sunday, launched June 23. It will carry on through Labor Day weekend.

Though Campbell had performed only about a week's worth of shows at the time of our interview, he described things as going "brilliantly" so far.

"We're big Cheap Trick fans. And we've never played with Poison before, but they do a marvelous job with the crowd," Campbell, 46, said. "Face it, going to a show is getting increasingly expensive, and it's not just the tickets, it's the parking and the concessions. Everyone in the industry is trying to give people more value for their money, so you want to put together bands that have all of these hits. It might be more interesting to some people if we took some indie rock flavor-of-the-month on tour, but they don't have the catalog."

Campbell said a more noticeable assortment of generations has been prevalent in Def Leppard's audiences the past few years, too.

But he doesn't necessarily think the interest of younger fans stems directly from their parents or older siblings.

"Having the kids out there, that's been the upside of music piracy. It used to be you'd see some younger people at shows who only knew the big hits. But now they know all of the songs, and you know they probably have 5,000 songs on an iPod and didn't pay for any of them," Campbell said with a laugh. "But I believe with all my heart that it's helped music in general. It's not a good situation for up-and-coming bands because they need the money. At least we can subsidize with live shows. But it's far more important to me for people to hear Def Leppard than to actually pay for it."

Contact Melissa Ruggieri at (804) 649-6120 or .