Joe Elliott said releasing new Def Leppard music was “not that important” anymore, though they were working on fresh material anyway.

The singer argued that ticket sales proved there's a greater desire for bands like his to tour rather than record, referring to the figures relating to their upcoming road trip with Motley Crue, Poison and Joan Jett.

"There's still too many people in the industry that believe in the original blueprint of what we [used to] do,” Elliott told SiriusXM in a recent interview (via Blabbermouth). “It’s moved on, and they don't seem to wanna accept that. So we get a lot of criticism from all quarters – fans, media – saying that we're not concentrating on getting new music out there. It's not that important at this time in our career."

He noted that the "first weekend the tickets were on sale, we shifted 700,000 tickets. There's no way on earth that any of the bands on that tour would shift 700,000 albums in the same period of time. So it's not a massive priority to make new music. …We absolutely are writing; we do wanna make a record, but we’re gonna make it in our own sweet time, so it’s a good album, not a rushed album. … But the priority, as these ticket sales prove, is us playing in front of our fans. That’s what they want. Otherwise they wouldn’t be buying the tickets.”

Elliott said Def Leppard didn't start out with the intention of spending time in studios. “What we did is, we [said], 'We can't wait to be on Top of the Pops' and 'We can't wait to get onstage,'" he recalled. "And that's [how] we still are. We make records so we can go out on the road. We used to tour to promote albums. Now, you will put an album out to promote the tour, and you don't even have to put an album out anymore.”

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