In a recent interview with BBC Breakfast, Joe Elliott talked about how he lost his voice, why the medical community thought he was a hopeless case, and how he overcame obstacles.
In 2015, the rock star suffered from a severe attack of pneumonia that badly damaged his voice chords, forcing him to miss numerous gigs and a tour. Doctors began to advise the singer to maybe stop performing with Def Leppard, but Joe refused to listen since he remembered how his vocal coach had helped him restore his voice.
The lead singer remembered:
“I lost my voice quite badly about eight years ago. A doctor that I saw said, ‘If it wasn’t you, I’d tell you to change your profession.’ But a vocal coach that we’ve been working with for about 30 years, he just said to me, ‘Poppycock,’ and he built me back up again without any surgery.”
Elliott then went into depth about the “rebuilding” process, explaining how he was able to mend his vocal chords despite many medical specialists had told him he would never be able to sing again.
He disclosed:
“I just couldn’t control anything, I had a frozen vocal cord, and apparently, they don’t normally come back, but with exercise [it did]. I guess it is like a dry rubber band, if you massage enough oil back into it, it will become springy again, and that’s what happened. My vocal cords wouldn’t meet in the middle, and now I’m better than I’ve ever been.”
The leader of Def Leppard seems to have recovered his voice and was now, as he put it, singing better than ever with patience and hard effort; if you want to hear more anecdotes from the guy, you can watch the interview below.