It is without hyperbole one of the Top 10 greatest rock albums of all time that shows a band playing at its absolute peak in both artistry and craft. Jailbreak is deceptively simple, wholly personal, and of course, full of melodies from those twin-lead guitars.

Before he would go on to front one of the largest bands of the '80s, before Jailbreak even came out, Def Leppard frontman Joe Elliott was a scrappy kid from Sheffield, England, who was excited at the possibility that lay in Lizzy's first hit, "Whiskey in the Jar." It seemed to be a sign of something big on the horizon.

Elliott, and the rest of the world, would have to wait another three years before hearing anything from Lizzy again. But after that, Elliott formed a bond with the band--specifically guitarist Scott Gorham--and since has became intrinsically tied to them.
In 2011, Elliott and Gorham set about to remix Jailbreak, and two other Lizzy albums, 1976's Johnny The Fox and 1978's double live LP, Live and Dangerous, hardening the production to give it bit more edge. They even found an unheard verse from the late Lizzy frontman Phil Lynott on "The Boys Are Back In Town" and reformatted the song.

This is all to say: Elliott and Lizzy are extremely close. In honor of the most famous rock band in Irish history, we spoke to Joe Elliott about his relationship with Thin Lizzy, his favorite song, his favorite album and how Phil Lynott blamed Def Leppard for splitting up the band.

Radio.com: What was your first memory of Thin Lizzy?

Joe Elliott: My first memory of Lizzy was "Whiskey in the Jar," which was kind of a minor hit in the UK back in '73. I remember buying the single on Decca records, and thinking, "Jimi Hendrix look-a-like, nice songs, we'll see where he goes from there" sort of thing because everybody gets excited when they're kids at new music. A band comes along whether it's Bowie or T-Rex or whatever and you're just wondering what's going to happen next. Is it going to be a sustained attack or something? Is it just going to be this one hit? And after that there wasn't anything else for three years, and you kind of forgot all about them. This was me in Sheffield, of course. You talk to somebody in Dublin and they'll be like, "Oh no no no we heard them all the time."

But the next time I heard them was when the next time everybody heard it, which was when "The Boys Are Back In Town" became a huge hit. And a huge hit for a rock band was Top 20 because you were fighting "Tie A Yellow Ribbon" and the likes of. And anything from "Radar Love" by Golden Earring, Thin Lizzy, Argent, "God Gave Rock 'N' Roll To You" infiltrated Top 40. But with Lizzy, it's almost like the singles are accidental. I don't think they ever set out to be a pop band, it was just something they just drifted into being one. By then I was 16 and I was starting to go to gigs so I saw the classic lineup, not on that particular tour, because I didn't see them until the Johnny The Fox album which would've been '77.

Radio.com: When you formed your own band, did you carry anything over from Lizzy? A sound you liked?

Joe Elliott: Other than the first song we ever learned to play was "Suffragette City," the next song we learned to play was "Rosalie." In front of an audience we regularly did 'Rosalie' and 'Jailbreak' and 'Emerald.' We played those songs with a passion and quite often. It was a big deal for us. I'll never forget the first time [former Def Leppard guitarists] Pete Willis and Steve Clark actually nailed the middle section of 'Emerald' and got it right. It was a big moment, that's when I realized we were actually a good band.

Lizzy were a big influence, listen to our first album you can hear elements of their music in what we were writing. There's a song on our first one called "It Don't Matter" which is Thin Lizzy through and through. The beginning bit of "Lady Strange." The twin-harmony guitars is certainly more Lizzy than it was Wishbone Ash or Allman Brothers. It wasn't just the twin-guitar thing, it was the simplicity of their songs. I mean, God knows what the chord sequence is for 'The Boys Are Back In Town' it's certainly not simple, but "Jailbreak" is moronically simple. I mean that as a compliment. How come nobody had ever written that before, it was staring everybody in the face.

Radio.com: The opening lyric is almost famously bad, too: "Tonight there's going to be a jailbreak/ Somewhere in this town." I would bet that the jailbreak would be at the jail.

Joe Elliott: Yeah, if you're gonna find them, they'd be at the jail. Yeah, that's been knocked out in a lot of sarcastic English magazines over the years. But that's the thing about rock 'n' roll, we don't all have to be Bob Dylan. The thing about Lynott was, he was a bit of a poet. If he was from the phonetic point of view to get the point across: "Tonight there's going to to be a jailbreak somewhere in this town," it just sounds good. If he's doing that with a kind of an Irish brogue sense of humor, I'll follow it.

Radio.com: When did you first hook up with Scott to remix Jailbreak?

Joe Elliott: I first hooked up with Scott in 1980 when we signed to Polygram, through the obvious, "Hey can you get us on the guest list" type situation. And when we got on the guest list their tour manager said, 'Oh there's this young band called Def Leppard' obviously they must've been "Oh yeh yeh yeh yeh yeh I heard about those guys bring them back let's say hi" kind of thing. We met them at the hotel and Scott was the one guy out of the four of them who was like, "Hey you wanna drink? Come on over here, baby!" one of those kind of guys.