DEF LEPPARD frontman Joe Elliott has defended his band's decision to tour with POISON - a group that, just last year, he trashed in the media. Speaking to Noisecreep, Elliott explained, "I didn't say that [POISON's] music had no substance, I said that ours had more. That's a totally different thing. Yes, it was taken out of proportion. Truth be known, it was a dumb question from a foreign journalist in a press conference [see video footage below] where I could barely hear what was going on and I was getting really agitated with being in the room in the first place, so I couldn't hear the questions. It was a dumb question from a dumb journalist, to a dumb singer about a dumb subject."

He added, "My belief is that we're better than them ... but I would say that if they just said it about any band whether it be THE WHO or [THE ROLLING STONES] or THE BEATLES - not because I'm an arrogant idiot, but because when you're in a band, you are absolutely 100 percent allowed to believe that you're the best band in the world.

"So if that question had been asked of Bret Michaels, I would have expected him to have answered it in a very similar way. He's entitled to think that they're a better band than us, because he's in the band, you know what I mean? So that certainly wasn't ... it's not that I thought they had no substance, I just thought that we had more."