Following a dispute with UMG over payments for downloads, the band is planning to create "brand new, exact same" versions of their past hits including Pour Some Sugar On Me and Rock of Ages.
Re-recording independently of Universal will allow the band control of where the new masters of their hit songs are sold and used and will secure them a bigger share of any proceeds.
In an interview with Billboard magazine, front man Joe Elliott said: "When you're at loggerheads with an ex-record label who... is not prepared to pay you a fair amount of money and we have the right to say, 'Well you're not doing it.'"
A similar tactic has been used in the past by bands including Simply Red.
But Elliott admitted that the process hasn't been easy for the foursome, now in their fifties: "We had to study those songs, I mean, down to the umpteenth degree of detail, and make complete forgeries of them,
"But trying to find those sounds... like where am I going to find a 22-year-old voice? I had to sing myself into a certain throat shape to be able to sing that way again."
Source: Independent
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