JUDAS PRIEST Singer Rob Halford Talks About Playing British Steel Live
July 1, 2009, 15 years ago
JUDAS PRIEST singer Rob Halford spoke with Alan Sculley from Thesunchronicle.com recently about a number of topics including the band's upcoming tour where they will be playing their 1980 classic British Steel in its entirety. A few excerpts from the chat follow:
Halford said the idea of doing British Steel came about because the band wanted to make this part of the tour a different animal than last summer's shows.
"We were thinking about what we were going to do on this continuing world tour that in essence is still about Nostradamus to a great extent," Halford said in a recent phone interview. "We were up in Germany on the European tour earlier this year when this discussion about the upcoming American tour took place. Someone mentioned that the 'British Steel' was 30 and it took us literally seconds to say. 'Why don't we play it live?' That was, wow, what a simple, but great idea. And that's how it all began."For the rest of the set, the band, which also includes guitarists Glen Tipton and K.K. Downing, bassist Ian Hill and drummer Scott Travis, figures to work in a few songs from Nostradamus, and quite possibly some material fans won't expect.
"I think we're going to look at the vaults and pick out some of the tracks that either we may have never played live or we're going to kick the tires on and bring them back again," Halford said.That Judas Priest would want to celebrate British Steel makes sense. It's not only one of the best albums in a catalog that extends back to 1974, but a pivotal release in the group's history.
Prior to British Steel, Judas Priest was only modestly popular in the United States and had only first come to America for a tour in 1978.
"That was just a dream come true, like it is today for a lot of British bands," Halford said of the opportunity to tour the states, even if it meant ending up on some odd concert bills. "(We were) opening up in some very strange scenarios. Judas Priest opens up for REO SPEEDWAGON, opens up for FOGHAT, opens up for HEAD EAST, just wonderful memories. But that's what we were doing then. We certainly were very hungry as far as wanting to make the band grow."
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