JUDAS PRIEST: THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD

JUDAS PRIEST: THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD

J. Kordosh

They are the greatest band in the world. They look scary, even weird. They’re obnoxious and loud. They’ve been at it for over a decade. They are the embodiment of Metal. They are Judas Priest.

“To me, heavy metal is the total entity of life,” Rob Halford said in 1980. Got that? The total entity. That eliminates kids, cars, metaphysics, happy marriages, politics, church, grad school, Mark Twain, military service and “Monkberry Moon Delight.” It leaves: heavy metal. Is it any wonder that people are actually afraid of this band?

I am 33 years old. mature, responsible and wear a tie to work. I therefore find it quite embarrassing to have to buy your magazine when you feature worms like Rob Halford on the cover. Please, just for once, design a cover with an adult on it so l can look the salesclerk in the eye.

—Jack Rapp, a letter to CREEM (December 1980) Mature. Responsible. Tie. Adults. Strong words, eh? No! Wimpy, boring words! Mushy, tasteless words! Toothless whining and what ho! Does Mr. Rapp know that the cover he referred to (the October, 1980 issue of CREEM, with Halford—in black leather and studded steel—staring dumbly at the viewer) was one of the best-selling issues of CREEM ever? Or that the picture was actually made into a poster?? Was this all a horrendous and inexplicable coincidence? And do people say “worm” when they really mean “cocksucker”?

People are afraid of Judas Priest. Some are afraid of the merely obvious, like the way they look. Others are afraid of the psychological anti-religious implications The Priest represent. Still others are afraid of their music, which is variously called meaningless, staid, uninspired and even stupid. Most HM bands come under this same critical m.o., but none have endured and prospered like Judas Priest. In fact, none deserve it—the attacks and the success, that is—more than Judas Priest. They are a virtual one-band distillation of the most hated (yet popular) genre of modern music.

We are not so into the basic things—for me, a heavy metal band is, like Judas Priest. Noise, noise, and more noise.

— Chris Von Rohr of Krokus to the author, April, 1981. Onstage, The Priest are one of the world’s truly loud bands, to be sure. Rarely mistaken for Gordon Lightfoot, decibels are their milieu. Unfortunately—for Priest -cryds, that it—the suckers thrive on the megawhoomp. There’s a good 13,000 guitarists par excellence alive at this very moment, but only J.P. have two of ’em in the same band. Eddie V.H., Alex Lifeson, even the venerable James Page have only two hands apiece. Glenn Tipton and K.K. Downing, on the other—uh—hand, have 20 digits between ’em. And they not only don’t upstage each other, they actually complement each other. For heavy metal, that’s pretty frightening. Naturally, drumbo Dave Holland and bassist Ian Hill play—or define—the submissive HM rhythm section, which makes Watts and Wyman look like Rowan & Martin by comparison, show-wise.

"Heavy Metal is a raw, primitive, basic human requirement. --Rob Halford"

Which leaves the enigmatic Halford. A poser?...probably, but not a poseur, in the sense of Morrison (congenitally so) or Jagger (opportunistically so). Rob-boy is a bit of a stroller—more to the point, a sort of not-quite-everything but not quite meatless potatoes type of singer. If he were Iggy Halford, he’d kill himself on that stageready Harley. Watch him in concert, though, and see how carefufly he steers the two-wheeled co-star through its dinky run. Rob Halford is smart; he ain’t gonna go splat for vicarity.

We came along at a time when people in the music industry were becoming far more cynical, choosy —playing games among themselves — and all those various attitudes that can very directly hold back bands.

— Rob Halford to the author, June, 1981 When The Priest landed that first record deal, things were passably blotto, biz-wise. The year was 1974, which you Americans will best remember for Patty Hearst, Ali over Foreman in the Schmear in Zaire, and Nixon’s premature retirement. It’s unlikely that you’ll remember that the top tunes, at year’s beginning and end, were “Time In A Bottle” and “Mandy.” You know, music that forces you to imagine Desi Amaz, Jr. in any kind of starring role.

Meanwhile, over in Merrie Olde, Decca Records (the same amalgam of geniuses who’d passed on the Beatles) had launched what can now be laughed off as a “progressive label”: Gull Records. Priest did the do on GuD with Rocka Rolla and—in ’76—Sad Wings Of Destiny. The whole deal was scarcely a money-maker for J.P., but it got ’em on the road and into the Britpublic eye. Plus it dished up tunes like “Epithet” and “Victim Of Changes,” which hold up every bit as well eight years after.

(Prior to the Gull adventure, the guys were what you wanna call blues-oriented. This is possibly because they hailed from Birmingham, an English industrial slumhole that practically begs its citizens to sing the blues. In more recent times, the burg has midwived miracles like reggae and ska.)

A better record deal came along from CBS Records, the Einsteins who’d turned down Elvis Presley. In April of 1977, The Priest released their first CBS disc, Sin After Sin. Still one of their finest moments (“Sinner,” “Starbreaker”), they established a practically unbeatable PR-maneuver by covering Joan Baez’s “Diamonds And Rust.” As will be shown in my soon-to-bepublished book, Judas: What Happened?, this single song instantly turned The Priest into the greatest HM band on terra not so firma. Imagine the absolute, quintessential lapse of good form it took to cover a Joan Baez tune! 1 mean, it didn’t even matter if it sounded like shit (it didn’t); the very idea was enough to boggle the firmest mind. Listen, if Rush had ever covered “Little Bitty Tear” (Burl Ives), I’d be in their comer right now. This kind of stuff beats the hell out of anything the Sex Pistols ever dreamed of.

The going was good, so they got another drummer (Alan Moore being the original thumper, with Simon Phillips doing the studio work on Sin) in the person of Les Binks. He’d be replaced by Dave Holland later on, but who cares? Drummers aren’t important like guitarists, cable TV, and folding money.

Anyways, ’78 was a big year for J.P., starting with their CBS LP (Stained Class... get it?), grueling tours of—in order—the U.K., U.S., and Japan, and Rob Halford’s baptismal of a couple rows of British audience. (He used fire extinguisher goo, probably to reach the maximum number of people.) Like Robby was wont to observe later: “Heavy Metal has a therapeutic quality for people.” You betcha, Rob.

The bozos really took off the next year, though, with Hell Bent For Leather. “Take On The World,” the first single off the album, went Top 10 in Limeyland, even though (or maybe because) the BBC deemed it “too heavy” to put on its playlist. Stateside, it was the first Priest opus to crack the coveted Top 100.

Now things start to get scary. The Priest went back to Japan and recorded what would later be the Unleashed In The East live LP. You always wanna watch out for bands that are mega-popular with those friendly, smiling, backstabbing Nips, especially HM bands. It’s like an early warning system, or something. By now, J.P. was right up there with raw fish in Transistorville.

Secondly, they toured North America opening for Kiss. A description of a Judas Priest/Kiss concert is something I use to scare the living hell out of my kids when they’re too noisy.

Thirdly, Halford latched on to the motorcycle gimmick and “defied a police ban” by riding the Harley onstage in Dublin. Wow.

Fourthly, “Diamonds And Rust” was released as a single. Like, take your base, guys, we all surrender.

We never lost belief in what we p/ay, which is heavy metal, which is rock ’n’ roll.

—Glenn Tipton, September, 1980 (Rolling Stone)

HM is rock ’n’ roll? Of course it is. So is Ray Davies singing “The Way Love Used To Be.” So is Adam Ant looking into a mirror. So is Jerry Lee Lewis looking into a beer. Hell, practically everything’s rock ’n’ roll.

What distinguishes HM from the rest of the goulash is that it virtually defies analysis. It laughs at analysis. It takes analysis and rubs its snotty little nose in the slime of unconsciousness.

This is not to say that every kilobel kingpin has the thing down to a T. Van Halen’s post-partum skit can be discussed, and discussed rationally. Meaningful cssays on Rush and imageless demagoguery beg to be written. Even Black Sab, an accessible analogue to The Priest, could be given a pretty good going-over in a round-robin rap-a-thon.

Only Judas Priest stands aloof from all this. They virtually kept the genre alive during the mid-’70s, and arguably saved the whole mess when Kiss fumbled on the two-inch line. There is simply no way to dissect this band without going crackers.

The punchline to the whole J.P. saga is that these guys aren’t even close to being the goons or thugs that myth would have it. Halford, the typecast clod, is actually a pretty smart cat...and is even sympathetic to a lot of New Wave-type acts, wjiich his fans sure aren’t. “We play what is comfortable for us,” he once told me. “And, fortunately for us, a lot of people like it.” Exactly right.

The fear will linger in Priest haters, however. This is probably to the good, since it’s reasonable to fear something that’s simply there, without explanation, or apology. Others can take heart in the sage words of head Priest Halford: “A metal concert is a unique event. There’s nothing like it. All that it is, is a raw, primitive, basic human requirement.”