# Joe Elliott

Joseph Thomas Elliott (born 1 August 1959) is an English singer-songwriter, best known as the lead singer and one of the founder members of the hard rock band Def Leppard. He has also been the lead singer of the David Bowie tribute band the Cybernauts and the Mott the Hoople cover band Down 'n' Outz. He is one of the two original members of Def Leppard still in the band and one of the three to perform on every Def Leppard album. Elliott is known for his distinctive and wide ranging raspy singing voice.

## Early life and Def Leppard

Joseph Thomas Elliott was born in Sheffield to Joseph William Elliott (1930–2011) and Cynthia Gibson. He was educated at King Edward VII School. Elliott met Pete Willis (a member of a local band called Atomic Mass) in November 1977 after missing a bus. Upon finding out that they were both musicians, Willis invited Elliott to meet the rest of the Atomic Mass members. The band spent hours talking and listening to records in Elliott's bedroom. Elliott tried out as a guitarist and, though the band had not heard Elliott sing, they were impressed by "his attitude and his ideas about being in a band" and he became the band's vocalist instead. The other members also took Elliott's suggestion to change their name to "Deaf Leopard." Elliott had invented the name for a band in his youth. Bandmate Tony Kenning suggested they change the band name to "Def Leppard" to distinguish them from contemporary punk bands like The Flying Lizards and the Boomtown Rats. The band claims that any apparent similarity of the name Led Zeppelin to Def Leppard was unintentional.

## Personal life

Elliott's first marriage was to Karla Ramdhani in 1989; they divorced in 1996. Elliott met Kristine Wunschel in 2003 while she was working on the crew for the X album tour, and they were married on 1 September 2004. Their first child was born in 2009, and they are also parents to a daughter born in 2016. He announced on SiriusXM in March 2022 that he and his wife Kristine had another daughter who was born in 2020.

## Controversies

During a performance on 7 September 1983 in Tucson, Arizona, Elliott attempted to rile the crowd during the "Rock of Ages" crowd sing-along. He told the crowd: "Last night, we played in El Paso, that place with all the greasy Mexicans, and they made a lot more noise than that." Then, on 30 September, he apologised on an El Paso radio station for the racial slur he made while referring to the city on 7 September. The band later followed up the apology with donations to Hispanic charities.
Elliott previously co-owned a Sheffield sports bar with Tim Cranston, a Canadian ice hockey player for the local Steelers.
In 2010, Elliott criticised the British music press, which he accused of ignoring his band and narrowing popular taste:
   It's nice to walk down Oxford Street without being recognised but then again when music magazines write about us they take the piss because we're not as cool as Johnny Marr, who isn't as successful as us by a million miles [...] Rock's ploughed its own furrow for 30 years but still music magazines don't give rock its due [...] How many more front covers do Paul McCartney and Morrissey need? Our album will sell more than Morrissey's so why don't we get the same kind of respect?"

## Discography
### With Def Leppard

* The Def Leppard E.P. (1979)
* On Through the Night (1980)
* High 'n' Dry (1981)
* Pyromania (1983)
* Hysteria (1987)
* Adrenalize (1992)
* Retro Active (1993)
* Slang (1996)
* Euphoria (1999)
* X (2002)
* Yeah! (2006)
* Songs from the Sparkle Lounge (2008)
* Mirrorball: Live And More (2011)
* Viva! Hysteria (2013)
* Def Leppard (2015)
* The Story So Far – The Best Of (2018)
* Diamond Star Halos (2022)
* Drastic Symphonies (2023)

### With Down 'n' Outz

* My ReGeneration (2010)
* The Further Adventures Of... (2014)
* The Further Live Adventures Of... (2017)
* This Is How We Roll (2019)

### With Kings of Chaos

* Re-Machined: A Tribute to Deep Purple's Machine Head – "Never Before" (2012)

### With Cybernauts

* Cybernauts Live

### With various artists

* Beside Bowie: The Mick Ronson Story – Vocals on "All The Young Dudes" and "This Is For You"