By Chris Steffen · Sep. 29, 2020
In another timeline, Rob Halford and Judas Priest would be wrapping up the Midwestern leg of their 50th anniversary tour, but thanks to the pandemic, Halford is at home in Phoenix, learning how to conduct a remote book tour for his memoir, Confess. So much of Halford's story has been told over the years, particularly his (barely) closeted, leather-clad heyday with Priest, his exit from the band in the early '90s, his public revelation of his sexuality in 1998, and his reclamation of his place in Judas Priest in the mid-2000s. Confess digs deeper into all of these turning points, and provides useful context including his early work in the world of theater, the experiences that helped him discover his sexual identity, and his perspective on the arc of Priest's career.
Halford spoke with AllMusic in the midst of a scorching Arizona heat wave ("it's my vampire month...very heavy metal") to elaborate on many of the tales from his book, including working backwards from a classic song title, the book that helped him get a glimpse of the gay underground before he was ready to enter it himself, and how deliberately he worked to rejoin Judas Priest in the 2000s. Confess is out now on Hachette Books.
AllMusic: One of your first jobs was working at a local theater, how do you think that influenced your idea of what live performance could or should be?
Rob Halford: When you're a kid at that age, you're soaking life up like a sponge and just taking everything in. It was an incredible opportunity, to work in entertainment and be involved night after night with so much variety and texture and all the incredible displays, the production and the variety from opera to ballet, and I'm sure it was on the brain.
So when I became a professional musician, especially with Priest, and we were looking for opportunities to do something more than just stand there with instruments, that's what I tapped into. In those formative years, especially as a teenager, you're just trying to make sense of life and what's going on around you, but some things stay with you forever, and that would be the case with my time at the theater.
AllMusic: You write about being a white album guy, what about that record got under your skin?
Halford: I just sensed a kind of maturity in that music, for me as a Beatles fan. The big record for me was Sgt. Pepper, but the white album was very serious, the Beatles were becoming very serious musicians and were dealing with a lot of issues with their lives, and that was being reflected in their music. So the white album is one that really took hold of me, and showed me how musicians grow, like you look at Priest with Rocka Rolla and then Firepower, there's a vast expanse between the two.
AllMusic: And later you say that 'Painkiller' was Priest's 'Sgt. Pepper.'
Halford: I've always felt that the Painkiller record was a really sheer, determined effort on our part to make something that was very cohesive from beginning to end, and relentless, to a great degree, the momentum was full on. Even on "A Touch of Evil" [the album's midtempo outlier], it's still a strong message.
