Saturday, May 18, 1996 By JANE STEVENSON --

The latest chapter in the headline-friendly Def Leppard story had Joe Elliot, the lead singer for the mega-selling metal band from Sheffield, England, arrested last week at a West Hollywood hotel for spousal assault.

Elliot and his girlfriend, actually, who both were later released on $50,000 bail each.

But guitarist Phil Collen says the incident hasn't affected the band's equilibrium as they rehearse for their upcoming tour, which hits Molson Amphitheatre on July 10, and promote the release of their new album, Slang, in record stores last Wednesday.

"I didn't know about it until the next day," said Collen, on the phone from L.A.

"It was on the news. I was about to go off to the gym in the morning and I heard this thing come on and it was like, 'Oh, that's interesting.' I had no idea what it was. It was like the police came over and took Joe away because he was screaming loudly at, God know what time it was."

As for any injuries that Elliot may have received: "Probably injured pride, I guess, of being carted down to the police station," Collen said with a laugh.

When you've lost a band member, guitarist Steve Clark to drugs and alcohol in 1991, and another has lost an arm, drummer Rick Allen in a 1984 car accident, it probably puts everything else in perspective.

In fact, Slang -- a musically diverse effort which incorporates everything from eastern influences on Turn To Dust and funk on the title track -- addresses Clark's death on the melancholy Blood Runs Cold.

"I basically wrote that a while ago and it wasn't just about Steve Clark, but how easy it is for people to not realize that it's such a problem, alcoholism or drug addiction," said Collen. "When Steve was dying, actually more people turned up at the funeral, and it was kind of ironic to me. It was like, 'Where were you guys when he really needed you?' It kind of annoyed me."

Slang, written and recorded during a year spent in a rented villa in the southern Spain resort of Marbella, was almost made in T.O. -- where the Lepheads were last November to do an Intimate And Interactive show on MuchMusic.

"Toronto's a cool city," Collen said in his Sheffield-style English. "It's a lovely place. When we was discussing where to record Slang, Toronto come up. We nearly went there but it was the weather thing that determined not to."

Ah, yes. The weather thing.

"It was heavenly. When we was down in Spain we would start about two or three in the afternoon, never go past 12 midnight and take Saturdays off," said Collen. "It was really ideal. We had this beautiful location, you could see North Africa, and people could have a life in the morning. It wasn't all sitting in a dark old dungeon working, like a job or a chore. Really inspiring."

Despite Def Leppard's phenomenal track record of 40 million in album sales -- in fact, their last release, 1995's Vault, was reportedly the best-selling greatest hits package of the last year with 300,000 copies sold -- Collen says the band didn't try to duplicate the sound of earlier albums, including 1987's monster-selling Hysteria, which sold 16 million worldwide.

"I don't think we had any pressure this time," he says. "We wasn't really competing. You tend to do that. You tend to compete with other bands of your ilk. We didn't have that because there were no bands like us. It allowed us to be really free and liberated, and if it had been the '80s, it would have been Bon Jovi, and God knows a lot of these other bands, I don't think we would have been as expressive as we have been on this album."