Def Leppard [ tickets ], currently touring with Cheap Trick and Bryan Adams to support their greatest-hits package "Rock of Ages: The Definitive Collection," has sold over 60 million records worldwide in its career, and is one of five bands with two diamond (10-plus million) sellers.

Considering the band's fabled tragedies--from the 1984 car accident in which drummer Rick Allen lost an arm, to guitarist Steve Clark's death from alcohol poisoning at the age of 30--Rocky Balboa hasn't had more comebacks.

The current lineup--Allen, vocalist Joe Elliot, guitarists Phil Collen and Vivian Campbell and bassist Rick Savage--will end this leg of the U.S. tour Nov. 13 at The Joint in Las Vegas before playing a few dates in Mexico. A DVD version of "Rock of Ages" is also due in mid-November.

Collen spoke with liveDaily from a tour stop in Atlantic City, NJ.

liveDaily: How has the band been getting along with Bryan Adams and Cheap Trick?

Phil Collen: We've known Bryan for years. His band is just great. Every night is a joy; you get an hour and a half of all these hits. It's a lot of fun.

Have you gone through Rick Neilsen's guitar collection?

Not yet, but I'm definitely interested. I'd love to see all those wacky guitars, the ones with six necks. Yeah, I want to check that out.

You joined the band in 1982, after the departure of Pete Willis. Leppard was pretty big at the time, but did you have any idea how ridiculous things were about to get?

Don't forget, we were still an opening act at that point. We'd played for years to half-empty clubs in England. No. We had no idea. It was radio and MTV that kick-started "Photograph," and it was just silly. We had no clue. That was the most exciting period, I think: at first, when you get the success on that really large scale.

And the fact that it hit so big over here.

Yeah. It kind of trickled elsewhere, but we didn't have the impact that we had over here. Even in England, it wasn't until "Hysteria"--not even for "Pyromania"--that they really started coming to the shows.

Who were your early musical influences, and specifically on guitar?

Deep Purple. I saw Ritchie Blackmore when I was 14 and went, "Okay, I want to do that for a living." I pestered my mom and dad for two years to get me a guitar. And then I actually got into a lot of jazz/rock stuff, like Al Di Meola and Larry Corryell, things like that. But I always loved rock, like Mick Ronson who played with David Bowie, and then I discovered Jimi Hendrix, who I was very aware of, but it wasn't until later on that I understood what he was doing. And it was the coolest thing I'd ever heard. I liked anything with a bit of fire to it.

You logged 227 dates to support "Hysteria," 241 for "Adrenalize," how many for "Pyromania?" Do you remember?

I don't, actually. It was definitely less than that, because we were out for just under a year. That "Adrenalize" one was about a year and a half.

In 1995-96, for "Vault," you did the "Three Continents in a Day" stunt (Tangiers, Morocco to London to Vancouver, British Columbia)--what were you thinking?

We weren't. [laughs] That was someone at the record label. You know, a bright spark at the label going, "I've got this great idea for promotion. What about you play through ..." And we said, "Yeah, okay." It was actually really fun, a very surreal experience.

Was there a band meeting after that, though, to confirm: "We're never doing that again?"

No, no. We cursed it at the time, but I think we would do it again. I think we'd go for four.

What's the most rewarding aspect for you personally from the last 20-odd years?

The big thing that everyone forgets, you're famous and on TV and everything, but I think there's something very rewarding to be able to write a song, record it, and have it turn out as you heard it in your head, or even better. I think that's true with some of our albums, "Hysteria" especially, and "Slang," which we recorded live, a lot of it. There were no real rules or pressures with "Slang," although it did really badly commercially. But from an artistic point of view, we had the best time with it. We threw a few dance things in there, and this and that.

With "Hysteria," Mutt obviously had a great vision for it. That record was very rewarding. It's why you get into a band, to actually see something all the way through until the end and see it bear fruit. And although "Slang" did really crappy sales-wise, it was a great experience. But you shouldn't forget what it's about--for a musician, it is about self-expression. If you can make it work in a band format, it's incredible.

Speaking of incredible, I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you about the impact of drummer Rick Allen's unscriptable rebound from his accident.

From a drumming point of view it's incredible, but from a human point of view, even more so. We recently went to Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, DC. And there are these kids who are, like, 20, they've just come back from Iraq, and they've got limbs missing, all sorts of injuries. We went there, and Rick was there all day. Obviously, people wanted to meet him because of his experience 20 years ago, and just living with that kind of disability. These guys, their faces lit up. It was so great.

There was an older guy who had lost his foot, and he said he was cramping up all the time. Rick said, "You know what you should do, you need to take a wire brush and rub the skin." Just little things from his experience, stuff that we wouldn't have a clue about--from a human point of view it's incredible what he's done.