“strangely enough, when i first found out i immediately put on my diplomatic hat ‘cos i knew i’d have to talk to radio stations, music papers, issue a press release and all that. i didn’t really start to mourn until the funeral itself. i didn’t start twitching and go weird until i saw the coffin, and then i got to the church and his mum burst out crying as soon as she saw me, saying she couldn’t believe he was gone, and this was a while after he died because they’d kept the body for an autopsy. i bit my lip all the way through the church service,“ he recalls. "but then when i looked down into the actual grave i couldn’t deal with it… it cracked me up. we were all standing there when sav turned and said 'has anybody got a plectrum?’. you know, just to throw into the grave and say 'there you go’ and not one of us had a fucking pick between us. we’ve normally got a pocket full of the bastards but right when we wanted one…nothing. that actually lightened things up a bit - i don’t mean we were laughing or anything - and it was 'ah well, typical bloody def leppard… ironic to the end’.”
