Def Leppard Sheffield: Joe Elliott on his love for Tony Currie, why Sheffield United and that huge Bramall Lane gig

That’s because those surroundings made an indelible mark on him as a child and this weekend he has been back at his spiritual home, preparing for a night he admits he never even dreamed could happen.

Sheffield United’s Bramall Lane stadium will tonight host homecoming heroes Def Leppard and fellow legendary rockers Mötley Crüe in a spectacular double bill, the like of which the city has seldom seen.

Fans from across the globe will descend on S2 for the event, which kicks off a tour that will head all around Europe before finishing up in Glasgow in July.

This one, though, is extra special. The opportunity for Elliott to perform in a venue where his boyhood heroes gave him so many memories.

“I grew up in Broomhill, just below the waterline of having to be a Wednesdayite,” Elliott said, sat in the Bramall Lane boardroom as 100 yards behind him, dozens of workers busily prepared the stage for the monumental gig.

"It's a family thing; my dad would go and see Wednesday and United, whoever was at home that weekend, if he could afford to do it. My father's loyalties were pretty much cemented, maybe about 1967/68. I don't know what happened but he just fell on the red side rather than the blue. As a kid, you take notice of your parents.

"Not that we were going to games, because I didn't go to my first game until the 71/72 season, but the thing was with me - and I think this is why I am in a band - that everybody in Hunter's Bar Junior School, everybody was a Wednesdayite. I just didn't want to follow the herd.

"There were about two kids who supported United and everyone else was a Wednesdayite. I don't know what it was, maybe the school bully was a Wednesdayite and because of that I would be United fan. I don't remember the specifics, but I just became a Unitedite overnight in about 1967/68. I'd follow them through the paper or in Shoot magazine where there might be a little article because we'd won because we weren't particularly special in the sense of George Best or Bobby Charlton or whatever. Until TC (Tony Currie) raised the profile of the team and you'd see him on the front cover sometimes.”

Elliott can rhyme off the team that he grew up watching but like many Blades of a certain age, Tony Currie is the one and his face lights up when talking about him and the 70s mavericks who sauntered around English football grounds in that era.

“TC became my idol, because he was ours but I was a huge fan of just football in general. I didn’t hate every other team, I didn’t hate Wednesday, I just didn’t care, but I loved watching people like Rodney Marsh and George Best, of course. Mavericks… they were rock stars. There was Stan Bowles and Alan Hudson, Frank Worthington and Tony Currie was ours… shirt out, socks down, long hair. They were rockers. They were actually. I’ve met Frank Worthington and the man is like Elvis.”

"Sometimes, and I’ve seen TC do it, they’re anonymous until 4.30 and losing 1-0 and by twenty-to-five you’ve won 2-1 because of some little bit of magic that can’t be taught and that was what TC had. It didn’t happen every game, I’ll be the first to admit, we’d have won the league if we did but that magic that we see in Ronaldos and Messis and De Bruyne, TC was United’s superstar.”

So what of today’s bunch in red and white? Elliott hasn’t managed to see his team in the flesh at Bramall Lane since 2005 but keeps up with the news via The Star and watches most games on TV.

Needless to say he’s incredibly proud of recent achievements, with the Premier League returning to Sheffield next season.

"Watching from afar what we did under Chris Wilder was amazing as a fan,” he said. “It doesn't really matter where your body is, in fact it's better in many respects (being away) because there's no seats left for me to buy a ticket, they're all sold out. The media the way it is now, I can follow the Sheffield Star website and get 100 articles a day on United ... too many actually, I don’t need that many.

"And watching them this season under Hecks (Paul Heckingbottom) has been amazing. Next season is going to be tough but I would rather us playing those teams and win a few less. Do what Nottingham Forest have done. If we finish 17th, result, then we can build on that."

Soon work will begin again to prepare Bramall Lane for top flight football but for now, the noise and spectacular glitz and glamour of a lavish Rock ‘n’ Roll show will fill the air around Sheffield. And the whole thing has come as something of a surprise to the 63-year-old.

"It's totally special. This wasn't even on a bucket list for me. I know Springsteen had played here but it never even entered my head that maybe we could one day. We have a Sheffield Wednesday supporting bass player and we played Don Valley - it was the perfect neutral venue and then it was gone. There's no infrastructure to do this at Hillsborough - if there was and it was suggested then I wouldn't have had a problem with it because this is nothing to do with football, but this is Bramall Lane and we've just got promoted, we've not gone through the play-offs so there are no issues.

"It's incredibly special because it's our birth town, 21 years I lived here and came to see United from the age of 12 right through to 2005 which was the last time I actually saw them at the Lane but this is a special place for me. It's a pilgrimage to come here and think 'I can't believe I'm actually going to be playing a gig at this ground that I first walked into in 1971 to watch United beat Southampton, 3-1' And we're doing a sold-out gig here, it's unbelievable."

The event will cap a busy few days back home. On Saturday, queues snaked around Meadowhall as fans took the opportunity to meet the band as they promoted their new album, Drastic Symphonies, which came out on Friday. The record features a reimagining of some of their most well-known songs, working with The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

"We basically deconstructed 16 of our most symphonic tunes, that were orchestrated on guitars originally and that's something that we've always done. We stripped them down to the basics, fitted the orchestra parts on to see which bits of the original rep[cording needed to survive because this is a very ego-free band. We want the strings to be the star of this particular record. Certain bits didn't work so I resang certain songs, completely reworked one of our most famous songs, Pour Some Sugar on Me, it's now a piano ballad like a blues song and a duet with a friend of ours, Emm Gryner, an unbelievable talent.

"We wanted it to sound symphonic. The simplest way to explain what we were trying to achieve was we wanted every song to sound like James Bond. We wanted it to have that grandular of a James Bond car chase and I think we pretty much achieved that."