One defining characteristic of Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford — aside from his voice which, at just past 60 years old, sounds a little gruff but otherwise as powerful as ever — is his completely congenial openness. Perhaps it’s an aftereffect of finally coming out of the closet on MTV in 1998. Or maybe he's just being cheeky. Regardless, the Metal God called from the road in advance of Judas Priest's November 30th stop in Tampa to discuss their “farewell tour,” alcoholism, and the likelihood a local radio host will help him realize a sexual fantasy.
I had a bunch of run-of-the-mill, hopefully insightful questions, and then I heard your interview on The Cowhead Show on 102.5 The Bone last week. So I think I'd be crazy to start the interview any other way… I wanna ask about the little person thing!
(Laughs) Well first of all, it's just so refreshing to work with a guy like Cowhead. And a lot of these "shock jocks" as they're called — are they still called that now?
Yeah, some of them are.
I think a lot of them are given a bad rap, because… Cowhead is a very smart man, very funny, and he's very respectful to all people from all walks of life. When we get on, we always kinda have fun with the sexual innuendo sides of things just because it's funny, his sense of timing, and god knows we all need a smile on our face. We just had a little bit of fun about fetishes (laughs). And one of my many fetishes is — besides jerking your chain, which I'm doing right now (laughs) is little people. And you know, I don't think I'm the only one who is fascinated by that type of scenario. Of course, the big question is will it or won’t it happen! (laughs) I guess I'll just have to wait and see.
Well I know he's very excited to try to set that up for you so I’m crossing my fingers (A) that it works out for you personally and (B) that I get to hear about it on the radio the following Monday.
Yeah, it's the first time I've ever had a date set up from a Cowhead.
One other question was inspired by that interview. You mentioned you’d been sober for about 25 years, but you’d seen the back of a police car more than once. What is the craziest thing you’ve done to get arrested?
It’s unfortunately some horrible DUI thing where you think you’re capable of driving home and you realize there are some red lights flashing in your rearview mirror and you get pulled over. And that’s very much a life lesson for a lot of people. So unfortunately, I can’t really lay claim to being arrested for doing something a little bit more rock and roll. I look back at those days and now it’s like “by the grace of god,” because driving drunk is an absolutely stupid thing to do. I remember one incident at a club I used to go to called Rockers in Phoenix, and there was a guy that used to hang out there that had this big ball python snake that he used to wrap around his shoulders like Alice Cooper. I had like three pitchers of beer and I said “Hey! Gimme that snake! Gimme that snake!” and he said, “No, Rob, you’re not having the snake.” So one night he actually gave me the snake. I put it around my neck, and of course being a ball python, what does it do? It goes into strangulation mode — and within seconds I’m on my knees writhing around on the floor of this club trying to get this snake from around my neck, slowly squeezing the life out of me. That’s one of the more humorous sides of getting drunk and doing stupid…
Well the humor side is important, but I'm certainly glad — and your fans are glad — that you're past that now. So… The "Epitaph" tour. The unfortunate phrase “farewell tour” was used when it was announced; and that name, of course, even implies some finality, but Priest isn’t going away. Care to clarify?
Yeah, that is absolutely true. We try as often as we can to get the message out through all of our friends in the press and media. Is there another word besides “farewell”? You can’t say “retired” because we’re not retiring, and you can’t really call it the “you are slowing down a bit tour.” You’ve gotta give it a little bit of something. We thought long and hard and “farewell” is really the way you can describe this particular world tour because we’re not going to do all these big world tours anymore. They’ve just become too difficult in many, many ways. The obvious one being that we’re not the spring chickens that we used to be. We’re the old turkey now (laughs), which I am! So there are some places in the world we can’t or won’t get back to… I don’t know where those places might be. But we’re urging all of our fans to try and see us on this tour in case that’s the case.
About K.K. Downing’s departure… K.K. and Glenn Tipton were like THE guitar duo before that style became popular during the New Wave of British heavy metal. Before Iron Maiden. Before Metallica. And from everything I’ve read, the chemistry between Glenn and the new guy Ritchie Faulkner was almost instant. Was this surprising to you?
Not really because we have a professional ethic and a professional standard musically that we’ve always tried to maintain. And we were really hoping to find somebody of the caliber of Ritchie Faulkner to stand on that part of the stage during a gig. It’s just one of those things really. It’s in the lap of the gods. You meet a new musician for the first time — you get along well with each other but you don’t know actually how it’s going to work out until you’re together on the tour bus and start going around the planet. Fate and fortune has played in our hands in that respect. Ritchie is a fantastic guitar player, and it seems like that’s an added bonus that we have somebody of such star quality with this every night on stage doing tremendous things.
As a Priest fan I wanna ask you about a particular era, one question I never really got the answer to. Back when you guys did Painkiller there was a pretty big transition in your sound from Ram It Down… and even in the years since post-Painkiller, Judas Priest has transitioned to a more aggressive sound. Was it the addition of Scott Travis and his drumming abilities?
I do recall that we had a real long talk about just re-defining some elements within the band we thought were very important. We certainly wanted to make a very strong, powerful, angry, exciting record. And we were able to do that in many, many ways. I think it’s good to take stock and think about where you are, wherever you are, just like we’re doing right now with this new record we’re about to make. You can very easily not exactly lose focus, but when you’ve been in a band for a long time, you really push yourself — you really have to work hard to maintain the level that you’ve previously achieved. You can’t make sloppy records. So definitely the addition of Scott enabled us to do the special things with the drums that we were not able to do before. That’s no disservice to what Dave Holland did for us. Dave’s an excellent drummer. But anyway, it was a very defining record, wasn’t it? Ironically enough, when it first came out there were some Priest fans that didn’t like that record. They thought it was too aggressive!
Now it’s become a classic and everybody loves it to death, and when “Painkiller” fires up the place goes nuts.
Before the tour was announced I heard, in addition to The Chosen Few and Single Cuts there would also be a remastered catalog collection that would include those first two albums (Rocka Rolla and Sad Wings of Destiny) that are kinda hard to find, but I haven’t heard any more details about that…
Everybody’s working really hard. We have a fantastic relationship with the Sony family, and even more so now because I just heard that they’re buying out parts of EMI. It’s just difficult jumping through the loops and hurdles of the label side of things. We’ve always wanted to try and get those original two recordings back, and it’s a very difficult thing to try and do. Some of the tracks are being included now like “The Ripper” for example. “Never Satisfied” is a song we’re also playing live in concert still.
I can’t wait to see you guys play that one.
Those first two or three records any band makes are very important because when you kick off you don’t really have much other than yourselves and the music. You’re not under any sort of pressure. There’s no stress. You’re just playing from the heart. Those first two records have a very magical feel about them. They’re very special to Judas Priest and our fans, definitely.
One more question for you… The Chosen Few is out, the tracks on that compilation were chosen by other well-known musicians — Ozzy Osbourne, Lemmy from Motorhead, guys from Metallica, guys from Slayer… You guys did something similar with Metal Works, where you annotated the two discs' worth of songs. If you had to pick one Priest song — no factors: not worrying about a song’s fame or influence or popularity — which one would you pick?
It’s always “Victim of Changes.” That song says everything to me about Judas Priest. You’ve got the riff, the screaming vocals, the subtle vocals, the part of the song where it pulls back — what we’ve always called the light and shade, the power and the tranquility. And that’s what we’ve always said is what Judas Priest is about, musically. That’s why we’ve got these two words — Judas Iscariot was a traitor and a priest… and we’re priests. We’ve always tried to use our name to describe ourselves with our music.
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This article appears in Nov 24-30, 2011.