Misc. Articles not local to El Paso

Circus magazine {excerpt from main article}
February 29, 1984
 

But Joe Elliott’s perfect year was nearly tarnished by a simple slip of the tongue. Back on September 7th, he tried to fire up a Tucson, Arizona, crowd by comparing it to the previous evening’s audience in El Paso, Texas—“that place with all the greasy Mexicans”—not understanding that his unfortunate choice of words constituted a racial slur. The residents of El Paso simmered for a few weeks, and by the end of the month—by which time Elliott was in Japan with guitarist Phil Collen— the repercussions from his remarks were in full fury:
Radio station KLAQ announced a boycott of the group’s albums, and was later joined by record stores and rock clubs. And Bill Clifton, a DJ at another station, KSET, told the El Paso Herald-Post that he was breaking Def Leppard LPs on the air, “in protest of the comment they made.”
Informed of the uproar, Elliott immediately phoned KLAQ from Tokyo with an apology; the record ban was lifted. But the local League of United Latin American Citizens {LULAC} called the apology inadequate and pressed for a nationwide boycott of the band’s albums and merchandise.
Following the European tour, Elliott flew to the U.S. in mid-November to make amends, meeting with State Sen. Joseph Montoya in Los Angeles and donating money to several Hispanic charities. Then he went to Mexico for three more days of penance. {El Paso, which was to be his primary stop, bluntly told him not to bother coming.} Elliott’s efforts to prove his remorse over having made the gaffe seem sincere, and the incident clearly upset him.
“People are calling me a racialist [sic], “ he protests, “which is not true. I said what I said out of total ignorance. See, I’m a fan of Cheech and Chong, and they always say things like that; it’s like the way you call us Limeys. If I were American and had known how it’d be taken, I never would have said it because I don’t like upsetting people. That’s not Joe Elliott. After five years, I almost ruined my career with one word.
“And so, I wanted to come over to show everybody that it’s a genuine apology. I didn’t come here to buy anyone’s friendship,” he adds staunchly, referring to a charge made by LULAC. “It was a stupid thing for me to say, and I’m truly sorry. But I’m not going to let it spoil my memories of the past year."

Def Leppard vocalist Joe Elliott flew all the way from Paris to Los Angeles to make an in-person apology before a meeting of the Latino Community Representatives for his widely publicized remarks about El Paso. Of course, he augmented the apology with a $15,000 donation to local charities that work with minority youth. Say anything bad about the Creem staff lately, Joe?

TONE DEF

Sticks and stones may break your bones, but in El Paso, Texas it’s the words that have been really dangerous lately. It all began with a September concert in Tucson, Arizona, by the heavy-metal heavies Def Leppard. Not exactly famed for his elegant manners, lead singer Joe Elliott attempted to psych up his audience by deriding a previous concert in El Paso, which he called “that place with all the greasy Mexicans.” When a deejay at El Paso’s KLAQ got wind of the crack a few weeks later, he used explosive sound effects to blow up a Def Leppard record on the air and called for a boycott of their music. The news caused such an uproar that Elliott heard about it by the end of the day in faraway Tokyo. He called from Tokyo to say he was, like the title of their hit single, just f-f-f-foolin’ and didn’t mean any racial slur. That satisfied most of the 3,000 Texans who voted in a station poll to end the DL boycott. But not everyone is so forgiving: A Latin American group in Texas has called for another boycott. What’s more, when Mayor Johnathan Rogers received a letter from Def Leppard saying they would not return to El Paso till invited, he reacted swiftly: “it will be a cold day in hell before they are welcome here again.”

Other Mentions online:

1} This if from the Def Leppard FAQ Portal.