Def Leppard re-recording entire catalog while originals freeze

Band members of the legendary metal band Def Leppard have announced that they've reached an impasse with their record label and will be freezing sales of all original recordings of their music. What they've done instead of accepting an unfair amount of royalties, so they say, they've decided to record what are effectively covers of all their original songs that'll then be pushed to iTunes et all in a much more direct way that'll have them cashing in as much as possible. One would hope that they'll do a bit better than KISS did with their latest double-album (one of which was all covers of old songs too) Sonic Boom.

Thus far Def Leppard have only revealed a couple of tracks: "Pour Some Sugar on Me" and "Rock of Ages", but they've let it be known that a whole lot more is on the way. Universal Music Group is reportedly stopped from releasing any Def Leppard tracks from the original albums due to the contract between the label and the band. Def Leppard frontman Joe Elliott spoke to Billboard.com this week on the matter.

"When you're at loggerheads with an ex-record label who...is not prepared to pay you a fair amount of money and we have the right to say, 'Well, you're not doing it,' that's the way it's going to be. Our contract is such that they can't do anything with our music without our permission, not a thing. So we just sent them a letter saying, 'No matter what you want, you are going to get "no" as an answer, so don't ask.' That's the way we've left it. We'll just replace our back catalog with brand new, exact same versions of what we did." – Elliott

You'll be able to see many more tracks popping up in the near future if the first two singles continue to sell well. At the moment, Billboard has "Sugar" ringing in at 21,000 downloads in the USA while "Ages" has 5,000. Hopefully soon we'll also be seeing Animal, Hysteria, and Love Bites – soon!

[via TechDirt]