There’ve been ups, there’ve been downs, and after 50-plus years they’re still very much around. We spoke to all current members about life in, and out of, one of the greatest metal bands of them all: Judas Priest.

Words: Dave Everley

Priest at the shoot for 1979’s Unleashed In The East album cover.

FIN COSTELLO / GETTY

There’s a cactus in the yard of Rob Halford’s home in Phoenix, Arizona that looks like it’s throwing the horns. It makes frequent appearances in the Judas Priest frontman’s Instagram feed, itself one of the most joyous and life-affirming things on the internet.

The 69-year-old does social media like few other rock stars of his vintage. Recent pictures of him posing in spiked, diamante-encrusted high-heeled boots appear alongside classic photos of a young Halford wearing a period-piece late-70s tracksuit and leaning against an old 12-speed racer outside his old house in Walsall. Inevitably there are shots of cats too. Lots of shots of cats.

Anyway, back to the cactus. It’s been in Halford’s yard since he moved to Phoenix from the West Midlands in 1986. Back then it was a common-orgarden desert shrub, proud and erect if not yet fully metalised. But over the decades it has gradually sprouted a pair of distinct digits a foot or two apart pointing directly heavenwards.

“They’re my Percy Thrower heavy metal fingers,” Halfords says, undoubtedly the only heavy metal singer who would dream of referencing a long-time deceased British TV gardener. “That cactus has grown incrementally into that shape. I guess that’s the effect I have –I turn everything into metal.”

Halford and his bandmates have been turning everything they touch to metal for 50 years now. Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath laid the foundations for the genre, but it was Priest who reshaped it in their own image – everyone from Metallica to Mötley Crüe bears their musical DNA, while anyone who has stood in front of a camera or walked on stage encased in leather, studs or a combination of both has got it straight from the Judas Priest playbook.

The band are marking their Golden Jubilee with a series of dates in the second half of this year, including a headlining appearance at the UK’s Bloodstock Festival. There’s also the small matter of recording a follow-up to 2018’s stellar Firepower album although Halford is under strict orders not to give anything away.

“Heavy metaaal!” Halford on stage and with his wheels of steel in 1980, and today at home in Phoenix, Arizona.

ROSS HALFIN x2; GETTY x1

But there’s plenty to talk about even without that, chiefly Priest’s none-more-epic 50-year journey. “We were just so full of adventure,” says Halford, speaking over Zoom from the house he shares with his partner of 30 years, Thomas Pence. “But you never really grow up in a band, you’re just having a laugh. And you’ve got to be able to laugh, because you’re about to go through some life-changing experiences, for good and bad.”

Before Judas Priest, there was Judas Priest. That Priest were kicking around Birmingham in the late 60s, an entirely different entity to the one that followed. When bassist Ian Hill and guitarist KK Downing brought in singer Al Atkins from the original Judas Priest to join their new band, uninspiringly christened Freight, he brought the name with him. But it was only when Hill began dating Halford’s sister and heard him singing that the pieces fell into place. “Ian says it was Ella Fitzgerald, Ken [KK] said it was Doris Day,” says Halford. “I can’t remember what it was, but it definitely fucking wasn’t Doris Day.”

Your dad worked at the local steelworks. Was there ever any chance of you following him and going to work there too?

I think there was a very good chance. That’s what lads did in the West Midlands – they went to work where their dad worked. I went to my dad’s place a few times as a younger lad. I saw enough of it to think: “This is I where I’d end up until I retire and they give me a gold watch.” That’s a motivation for a lot of musicians – you don’t want to end up where your dad’s working.

Were you a show-off as a kid?

Yeah, I think we all are, us singers. Anything for attention. I remember once on a Sunday afternoon when I was five or six, I went into my grandmother’s handbag and found her make-up and did myself up as a drag queen. I remember coming in and my grandma going: “Oh, it’s a nancy-boy!” I was grinning, with the rouge and the eyeliner, looking like Dusty Springfield on crack. It was hysterical.

Judas Priest in ’78: (l to r) KK Downing, Ian Hill, Glenn Tipton, Rob Halford, Les Binks.

“I was grinning, with the rouge and the eyeliner, looking like Dusty Springfield on crack. It was hysterical.”

Rob Halford on childhood days

You spent a few years acting in your late teens. What was the attraction?

I was just enthralled by everything to do with escapism, breaking away from the reality of life. I grew up in a household where the telly or the radio was always on, there was always something going on in the background, whether it was films or music. I was just naturally inquisitive for that kind of life. I still am. I wanted to be a part of it.

You also managed a friend’s adult bookstore for a couple of weeks. What are the upsides of working in a porn shop?

[Laughing] You can have a surreptitious wank when there’s no customers around. No, you learn to read people – you can tell what they’re going to go for as soon as they walk through the door: “He’s going to go for the bondage”; “He’s going to go for the big tits.”

Funnily enough, history repeated itself decades later. I was doing this movie, Spun [in which Halford plays the manager of an adult shop]. I’m in this porn shop in Santa Monica with [co-star] Mickey Rourke, and he goes: “It hasn’t changed much in here.” I go: “What do you mean?” He says: “I used to work here while I was trying to get work in Hollywood.” I said: “Have I got a story to tell you.”