The story of Judas Priest

Forged in the Black Country

The story starts in Birmingham in 1969. A singer named Al Atkins and a bass player called Brian Stapenhill, known as Bruno, put a band together and needed a name. Bruno took it from a Bob Dylan song, The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest, on the album John Wesley Harding. That first line up had a sad beginning. Their guitarist, John Perry, took his own life at just eighteen. Among the players who auditioned to replace him was a young Kenneth Downing, but the band turned him down in favour of Ernie Chataway, who had played with Black Sabbath back when they were still called Earth. The group earned a deal with the Immediate label after a gig in Walsall, but the label went bust before any album was made, and by 1970 that first Judas Priest had fallen apart.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Kenneth Downing, soon known to everyone as K. K., grew up in West Bromwich and had a hard start. He was thrown out of the family home at fifteen and left school soon after, teaching himself guitar with Jimi Hendrix as his north star. He even trained as a chef at a pub in Hagley. His childhood friend Ian Hill played bass. Ian had learned double bass from his father, who played in local jazz groups and died when Ian was fifteen. Together with a drummer they had a heavy rock trio called Freight. Late in 1970 Al Atkins found them rehearsing without a singer, joined up, and brought the name Judas Priest with him. The new band played its first gig on the sixth of March 1971, mixing originals with covers of Hendrix and Pink Floyd.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Judas Priest have always said their sound came from where they grew up. The Black Country, just west of Birmingham, was a landscape of foundries, steam hammers and blast furnaces. Rob Halford's father worked at a metalworking firm in Walsall, and Rob remembered walking past foundries to school and feeling the classroom shake from the machinery. Glenn Tipton, the guitarist who would join a few years later, had served an apprenticeship at British Steel. In the early seventies the band played clubs across the Midlands and joined the management agency run by Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi. But money was tight. Al Atkins had a wife and young daughter to support, and after his last gigs in December 1972 he left the band in 1973 to find a steady job.[1] [2] [3]

Atkins' replacement came through a family connection. Ian Hill was dating a girl called Sue Halford, and her brother Rob could sing. Rob Halford was born on the twenty fifth of August 1951 in Sutton Coldfield and grew up on the Beechdale estate in Walsall, the same estate that produced Noddy Holder of Slade. Before music paid, he managed a men's clothing shop and also worked at an adult cinema. He was singing with a band called Hiroshima, and he brought their drummer, John Hinch, with him. Halford and Hinch played their first Judas Priest show in May 1973 at the Townhouse in Wellington in Shropshire. Part of that show was recorded, and it finally came out in 2019. Halford later said he felt he was getting to grips with his voice only once he heard it coming back through the speakers.[1] [2] [3] [4]

In early 1974 the band toured continental Europe for the first time, and that April they signed with a small label called Gull. Gull thought the band needed something extra to stand out, and asked about adding a sax player or a keyboard player. K. K. Downing later said the band refused, but agreed that a second lead guitarist could be something unique. They chose Glenn Tipton, born in 1947 in Blackheath, whose Flying Hat Band was also managed by Iommi's agency. Tipton had only picked up a guitar at nineteen, after his mother taught him piano. He joined in May 1974, just as work on the first album was starting. The twin guitar partnership of Downing and Tipton would become the band's trademark for the next thirty seven years.[1] [2] [3]

Hungry years at Gull

The first album, Rocka Rolla, was recorded in the summer of 1974 with Rodger Bain, the producer of Black Sabbath's first three records. It did not go well. Bain dominated the sessions and left off live favourites like Tyrant, Genocide and The Ripper, and a long song called Caviar and Meths was cut down to a short instrumental. Technical problems left a hiss across the record. It came out on the sixth of September 1974 and sold only a few thousand copies. Even the cover had a strange history. The bottle cap design was originally drawn by John Pasche for a Rolling Stones album. By 1976 Halford was joking that fans should burn their copies. Decades later the band finally got the recording back and released a remixed version in 2024.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The flop left Priest close to broke. They asked Gull for a wage of fifty pounds a week and were refused, because the label was struggling too. The band talked later of nights with no idea where the next meal would come from. They limited themselves to one meal a day, and several took part time work. Tipton worked as a gardener, Downing in a factory and Hill drove a delivery van. In 1975 they played the BBC's Old Grey Whistle Test, still dressed like a hippie band, with Halford in a pink satin top he had borrowed from his sister. They were frustrated by the BBC's volume limits. That year drummer John Hinch was let go, and Alan Moore, who had drummed with an earlier version of the band, came back in October 1975.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The second album, Sad Wings of Destiny, was made in two weeks at Rockfield Studios in Wales in November and December 1975, on a budget of just two thousand pounds. Oddly, the producers were the duo behind the pop group Typically Tropical, who had just topped the British charts with Barbados, Gull's first hit. The band stayed sober through sessions that ran from three in the afternoon until three in the morning. The centrepiece, Victim of Changes, was stitched together from two older songs, Whiskey Woman by Atkins and Downing, and Red Light Lady, which Halford had brought from Hiroshima. The Ripper was sung from the point of view of Jack the Ripper. The cover painting by Patrick Woodroffe showed a fallen angel wearing a three pronged cross, a symbol that became the band's emblem.[1] [2] [3]

Sad Wings of Destiny came out on the twenty sixth of March 1976. Punk was taking over the British press and the album sold poorly, although Rolling Stone gave it a warm review. Over time it came to be seen as the record where Priest found their sound, and Halford has called it his favourite of the band's albums. Its reach was wide. Van Halen played Victim of Changes in their club days, and Dave Mustaine of Megadeth said his brother in law punched him for listening to it. The record also caught the ear of CBS. With new manager David Hemmings, Priest signed a major label deal with a budget of sixty thousand pounds. The price was steep. Breaking the Gull contract meant losing the rights to both early albums, which Gull kept repackaging for decades.[1] [2] [3]

Major label, new drummers and a new look

Priest's first CBS album, Sin After Sin, was recorded in January 1977 at the Who's Ramport Studios in London, with Deep Purple bassist Roger Glover producing. The band wanted to produce themselves and actually sacked Glover after one session, then struggled for weeks and called him back with only six days left. Alan Moore was let go during the sessions, and a young session drummer named Simon Phillips stepped in. His double kick drumming on Dissident Aggressor pointed straight at the thrash metal of the next decade. Glover also pushed for a cover of Joan Baez's Diamonds and Rust, which became the first Priest song to get radio play, and Baez reportedly liked it. The album reached number twenty three in Britain, and the band made their first American tour, opening for REO Speedwagon and Foreigner.[1] [2] [3]

Sin After Sin hid something personal. A song called Raw Deal referred to Fire Island in New York, famous as a gay community. Halford later called it almost a coming out song, though almost nobody noticed at the time. He remembered Roger Glover seeing him with a thick book and asking if he was reading the Bible. It was his thesaurus. Simon Phillips had commitments with Jack Bruce and turned down a permanent job, so Glover recommended another drummer he knew, Les Binks from Portadown in Northern Ireland. Binks had played with Eric Burdon and on Glover's own Butterfly Ball project, and he was one of the few drummers who could reproduce Phillips' parts on stage. He joined for the 1977 tour and stayed for two and a half years.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Stained Class followed in February 1978, introducing the band's famous logo. It was harder and leaner than anything before it. The opening track, Exciter, with Binks hammering the double bass drums, is often called one of the first speed metal songs. Binks also earned a writing credit on the ballad Beyond the Realms of Death, which he had demoed at home, making it the only Priest album with writing from all five members. Late in the process, CBS asked for something more commercial, so the band recorded a cover of Better by You, Better than Me by Spooky Tooth, with producer James Guthrie. Nobody could have guessed that this throwaway cover would put them in an American courtroom twelve years later. Stained Class became the band's first album to enter the American charts.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Before 1978 was out came Killing Machine. In America the label feared the title sounded murderous, so it was renamed Hell Bent for Leather and a cover of Fleetwood Mac's The Green Manalishi was added. The music was shorter and punchier, partly to compete with punk and partly to win over America. This is also when the leather arrived. Halford took the look from gay leather culture, though he later said he had no interest in its sexual side and that straight fans never seemed to notice. The single Take On the World became Priest's first British top forty hit, reaching number fourteen. As they became regulars on Top of the Pops, Halford took a bullwhip along, and he recalled going to see a disapproving Marie Osmond in her dressing room before using it on the show anyway.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

In February 1979 Priest recorded two nights in Tokyo for their first live album, Unleashed in the East, the start of a long partnership with producer Tom Allom. It became their best selling record so far and went platinum in America. But it cost them their drummer. Les Binks said the band's manager, Mike Dolan, wanted him to waive his fee for playing on the live album, and he refused to keep working under those terms. Binks always insisted he had no musical or personal quarrel with the band, and later called Dolan a con man. In August 1979 Dave Holland, formerly of the band Trapeze, took over the drum stool. That same year Priest toured Europe supporting AC/DC, and Halford later said AC/DC may have inspired some of the songs on the next album.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

British Steel and the conquest of America

In February 1980 Priest took their gear to Tittenhurst Park, a big estate near Ascot that had belonged to John Lennon and was now owned by Ringo Starr. They had only about sixty percent of the songs written when they arrived. Producer Tom Allom spread them around the house to find the best sound for each instrument. The drums went in the hallway, K. K. recorded guitar in the library, and they rehearsed in the room where Lennon had filmed a video. Ringo was away, but he had left rules. No riding motorbikes on the grounds and no fishing in the lake. Downing admitted they did both. He also remembered two giant papier mache dinosaurs hidden in the grounds that could give you a fright coming home from the pub.[1] [2] [3]

With no digital samples to hand, the band made their own effects. For Metal Gods they filled a drawer with cutlery and shook it, and Halford reckoned he lifted and dropped that tray a hundred times, which means Ringo's knives and forks are on the record. For Breaking the Law they smashed milk bottles behind the house. For Rapid Fire, Allom swung a billiard cue past the microphones and slowed the tape down, and a badly dented kettle stood in for a cowbell. Living After Midnight got its name when Glenn Tipton woke Halford in the early hours, playing a riff directly below his bedroom. Halford came down and told him he was really living after midnight, and Tipton said that was the title. The whole album was finished by the end of February.[1] [2] [3] [4]

British Steel came out on the eleventh of April 1980 at a cut price of three pounds ninety nine, with adverts that punned on the title as British Steal. It went to number four in Britain, their highest album chart position for more than four decades, and Breaking the Law and Living After Midnight both reached number twelve as singles. Julien Temple directed the videos. In Breaking the Law the band rob a bank, not for money but to steal a gold disc for the album. Halford said the song came out of the strikes, unemployment and riots of Britain at the time. The band toured the country with a young Iron Maiden as their support act, then played second on the bill at the very first Monsters of Rock festival at Donington that August.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

The follow up, Point of Entry, was recorded in 1981 in Ibiza, largely written on the spot among cheap drink and sunshine. It was more radio friendly and got a mixed response. Downing later called it the worst album he made with the band, while Tipton blamed management for covers he called awful. The band answered with Screaming for Vengeance in July 1982, again made in Ibiza. Its biggest song was a late addition. You've Got Another Thing Comin' was finished during the mixing sessions in Florida, and Halford was surprised when the label chose it. It became their only entry on the Billboard Hot One Hundred, at number sixty seven, but it was all over American rock radio. The album went double platinum in the United States and remains their top selling record.[1] [2] [3] [4]

On the twenty ninth of May 1983 Priest played Heavy Metal Day at the US Festival in California, a giant event sponsored by Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak, on a bill with Van Halen, Ozzy Osbourne and the Scorpions. The film director Rob Reiner had gone to see Priest in concert while preparing This Is Spinal Tap, which came out in 1984, and Halford later said he loved it, because you can only make satire out of greatness. January 1984 brought Defenders of the Faith, with a cover creature called the Metallian, and another platinum album. It also brought trouble. The Washington pressure group the PMRC, cofounded by Tipper Gore, placed the song Eat Me Alive at number three on its Filthy Fifteen list of objectionable songs. The band answered with a song called Parental Guidance.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Excess, synthesizers and a courtroom

On the thirteenth of July 1985 Priest played Live Aid at JFK Stadium in Philadelphia. Behind the scenes their singer was in serious trouble. Halford was hiding his sexuality from the public, and he later tied that secrecy to the depression and isolation that fed his drinking and drug use. He described waking at six in the evening and reaching straight for big bottles of alcohol, ripping phones off walls and trying to drive drunk. He had violent fights with his partner, overdosed on painkillers, and has spoken of a suicide attempt. Then his partner died by suicide. Halford entered rehab around the turn of 1986, and his bandmates flew out to visit him there. He has been sober since the sixth of January 1986, and has said that without sobriety he would be dead.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Turbo arrived in April 1986. Priest had first planned a double album called Twin Turbos, half commercial and half heavy, but the idea was dropped. The songs they released used guitar synthesizers for the first time, and the band swapped black leather for a more colourful stage look. Some fans hated it, but Turbo went platinum and Turbo Lover became a live favourite. Halford later called it the love hate Priest album and admitted his lyrics suffered because he was drinking so heavily while writing. On the thirty first of May 1986, two filmmakers pointed a video camera at fans tailgating before a Priest show in Landover, Maryland. The result, Heavy Metal Parking Lot, became an underground classic passed around on bootleg tapes, and was reportedly a favourite on Nirvana's tour bus.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Ram It Down followed in May 1988, built partly on leftovers from the Twin Turbos sessions, and critics were unkind. Before it, the band had tried something truly unexpected. Halford, a fan of Rick Astley and Bananarama, suggested recording with the pop producers Stock, Aitken and Waterman. They cut three songs, including a cover of the Stylistics' You Are Everything, but management shelved them. Halford still says the results were stellar. In 1989 Dave Holland left, citing health and family problems. His replacement was Scott Travis from Norfolk, Virginia, a six foot six drummer from the band Racer X. As a teenager Travis had waited behind an arena in Hampton to hand Priest a tape of his playing. Now he became the first American in Judas Priest.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

The darkest chapter in the band's story started far from any stage. On the twenty third of December 1985 in Sparks, Nevada, two young men, twenty year old James Vance and his teenage friend Raymond Belknap, spent hours drinking, smoking marijuana and listening to Stained Class. They took a shotgun to a church playground. Belknap shot himself and died instantly. Vance survived with terrible injuries to his face. He died three years later, in November 1988, after falling into a coma, and his own lawyer suspected a drug overdose. Before his death, Vance and the families sued the band and CBS, asking for six point two million dollars. They claimed Priest had hidden messages urging suicide in that late addition to Stained Class, the Spooky Tooth cover Better by You, Better than Me.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The trial ran in Reno from the sixteenth of July to the twenty fourth of August 1990. The plaintiffs played the song forwards, backwards and sped up. Local metal fans gathered outside every day, holding signs for the band. Halford testified that the supposed message was simply the sound of him breathing out between lines, and he pointed out that if you played another song backwards, it seemed to ask for a peppermint. The judge dismissed the case, finding the sound was a coincidence of a guitar chord and an exhalation. Halford joked that a band hiding messages should at least tell fans to buy more records, but he has always said the heartbreak at the centre of it was the loss of two young lives. The finished album Painkiller had waited until the trial was over.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

Painkiller, a crash and a parting

Painkiller finally came out on the seventeenth of September 1990, and it hit like a train. Recorded in France with producer Chris Tsangarides, it was the fastest, heaviest thing Priest had made. The famous drum intro to the title track started as Scott Travis warming up while engineers checked the microphones. Keyboard player Don Airey played on one track, and years later he said he had also doubled much of the bass on a Moog synthesizer. The album was nominated for a Grammy, losing to Metallica. On tour, Priest took out Megadeth, Pantera, Testament, Sepultura and Annihilator as openers, and played to a crowd of more than a hundred thousand at Rock in Rio. Three weeks after the trial ended, they opened the tour by playing Better by You, Better than Me.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

For years Halford had ridden a Harley Davidson onto the stage. At a show in Toronto in August 1991, the last date of the Painkiller tour, he rode into a drum riser hidden in dry ice fog. He was knocked out briefly and broke his nose, yet he came back and finished the show before going to hospital. Soon after, he wanted to make a heavier, more American sounding solo record. By his account, a record executive told him he would technically have to resign from Priest to do it, he wrote a statement about a solo project, and it was taken as quitting. In his memoir he called it a miscommunication. He left officially in May 1992, and formed Fight with Scott Travis on drums. Their debut, War of Words, arrived in 1993.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

The early nineties were also a hidden time of risk for Halford. In his 2020 memoir he revealed that in early 1992 he was arrested for public indecency at a men's washroom in Venice Beach, California. An officer who recognised him as a Priest fan helped keep it out of the papers, and Halford called it his George Michael moment. In 1992 he also stood in for Ronnie James Dio as Black Sabbath's singer for two nights. Then he went industrial, forming a band called 2wo with guitarist John Lowery, later known as John Five, and releasing Voyeurs on Trent Reznor's label. While promoting it on MTV in February 1998, he said on camera that he was a gay man. He had not planned it. He later said the producer dropped his clipboard.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

Priest spent four years looking for a new singer. Among those who auditioned or were approached were Ralf Scheepers and a then unknown Devin Townsend. The answer came from Akron, Ohio. Tim Owens worked at a law firm and had sung in a Priest tribute band called British Steel. Fans who had filmed one of those shows passed a tape to Scott Travis, and early in 1996 Owens got a call asking if he had a passport. Two days later he was at a studio in Wales. They put on a live Victim of Changes with Halford's voice removed. By Owens' account, after one high note Tipton pressed the talkback button and told him he had the gig. When he told his mother he was now the singer, she did not believe him, then burst into tears.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Owens, now Ripper Owens, sang on Jugulator in 1997, a heavy, downtuned record whose song Bullet Train earned a Grammy nomination, and on Demolition in 2001. But metal was out of fashion, and the band played clubs instead of arenas. A 1997 New York Times profile of Owens caught Hollywood's eye, and Warner Brothers made the film Rock Star, first with Brad Pitt attached and finally starring Mark Wahlberg. Priest objected to the script and stepped away, and the story was changed into a fictional band. Ian Hill called it a true work of fiction. It opened the weekend before September the eleventh, 2001. As a reunion with Halford loomed, Owens accepted an offer from Iced Earth, and he says he was later told by fax that he was out of the band.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

The Metal God returns

In July 2003, after eleven years apart, Priest announced that Halford was back, timed with a box set called Metalogy. He had once insisted he would never do it. The reunited band co headlined Ozzfest in 2004, and that August, the day after his fifty third birthday, Halford even stepped in to front Black Sabbath at an Ozzfest show in New Jersey when Ozzy Osbourne had bronchitis. Angel of Retribution followed in March 2005, bringing back the fallen angel from the Sad Wings cover. It reached number thirteen in America and won a Metal Hammer award for album of the year. In May 2006 Priest were among the first inductees of VH1 Rock Honors, alongside Queen, Kiss and Def Leppard, and Halford rode his Harley on stage once more.[1] [2] [3]

The reunion period also brought grim news about a former member. In 2004 Dave Holland, Priest's drummer through the whole of the eighties, was convicted at Northampton Crown Court of attempted rape and five counts of indecent assault against a seventeen year old with learning difficulties, who had come to his home for drum lessons in 2002. The judge said Holland had deliberately planned to abuse a boy he knew to be exceptionally vulnerable. Holland denied everything and claimed he had been wrongly convicted. He was jailed for eight years. Tony Iommi, who had recorded sessions with Holland, had his drum parts replayed by another drummer. Holland served his full sentence, was released in 2012 and moved to Spain, where he died in January 2018 at sixty nine.[1] [2] [3]

Manager Bill Curbishley pitched the next idea during a 2005 tour stop in Estonia. It became Nostradamus, released in June 2008, Priest's first double album and first full concept record, telling the life of the sixteenth century French seer with orchestra, choirs and keyboards. It entered the American chart at number eleven, their highest yet, but fans and critics were split. To promote it, Priest toured with Motorhead, Heaven and Hell and Testament. In 2009 they marked thirty years of British Steel by playing the whole album live every night. Then came overdue recognition. A live version of Dissident Aggressor, from the album A Touch of Evil, won the Grammy for Best Metal Performance in 2010, decades after critics had first dismissed the band.[1] [2] [3]

In December 2010 Priest announced that the Epitaph tour would be their last world tour. Then, on the twentieth of April 2011, came a shock. K. K. Downing, a member since 1970, was leaving. He cited a long breakdown in working relationships with elements of the band and management, and later said there were at least twenty one reasons. He also admitted he regretted the letter he had sent, and that he had sent a second, angrier one. His replacement was Richie Faulkner, a thirty one year old Londoner who had played in Lauren Harris' band. Faulkner at first deleted the band's emails as junk mail, and thought the phone call was a joke. His first show was on American Idol on the twenty fifth of May 2011, backing contestant James Durbin.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

New blood and a hard diagnosis

The farewell tour turned out not to be farewell. Halford explained that the band were simply winding down the long tours, because heavy metal is immortal, but they are not. Redeemer of Souls, their first album with Faulkner, arrived in July 2014 and entered the American chart at number six, their first ever top ten album there. Halford has said that Faulkner saved Judas Priest, because without finding him at that moment, things might have turned out very differently. That January the band had also appeared on The Simpsons, playing a reworked Breaking the Law about copyright. The show called them death metal, fans complained loudly, and the next episode opened with Bart writing on the school blackboard, again and again, that Judas Priest is not death metal.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

On the twelfth of February 2018, Glenn Tipton revealed that he had Parkinson's disease. He had lived with its early stages for about a decade, and it had now progressed so he could no longer play the most demanding parts. He insisted he was not leaving the band, only changing his role. Andy Sneap, a guitarist and the producer of the new album, took his place on tour. That album, Firepower, came out on the ninth of March 2018 with Tom Allom back as coproducer for the first time since Ram It Down. It reached number five in both America and Britain. On the twentieth of March in Newark, Tipton walked on for the encores, and he described the emotion that night, with grown men in tears.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

K. K. Downing was shocked that nobody asked him to return when Tipton stepped back. That September he published a memoir, Heavy Duty, which laid out years of resentment. He wrote that Tipton had never been easy to get along with and dominated decisions, that he felt he got too few solos, and that he felt like an employee in a band he helped build. He also hinted that Sneap had played some of Tipton's guitar parts on Firepower, which Halford and Faulkner rejected. Downing called Faulkner a clone of himself, and was hurt when his oldest friend Ian Hill said fans were not missing him. Money troubles added to the pain. After his golf estate ran into trouble, he sold his royalty share in one hundred and thirty six Priest songs.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Downing's answer was to start again. After returning to the stage at Bloodstock in 2019, he played a one off show in Wolverhampton that November with two other former members, Tim Owens and Les Binks. In 2020 he formed a new band called KK's Priest, with Owens on vocals and Binks meant to drum, though a wrist injury kept Binks off the first album. Sermons of the Sinner came out in 2021 and The Sinner Rides Again in 2023. Owens, meanwhile, remained on friendly terms with his old bandmates but felt his era had been erased. Songs from Jugulator and Demolition vanished from Priest's setlists, and Jugulator has never been released on the major streaming services because its label went bankrupt.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Fifty heavy metal years

The pandemic halted the band's fiftieth anniversary tour, so Halford finished his memoir, Confess, published in September 2020. It was far more open than anyone expected. He wrote about being sexually abused as a teenager by a friend of his father and by other adults, and about years of secrecy and addiction. He also described a sexual encounter with a young man who, he later learned, was sixteen, and who robbed him afterwards. Halford said the man looked much older, that he believes it was a setup, and that he would never have gone ahead had he known his age. During the lockdowns Halford was also treated for prostate cancer. He lives mostly in Phoenix, Arizona, with his husband Thomas, and still keeps a home in his native Walsall.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

On the twenty sixth of September 2021, Priest were playing Painkiller at the Louder Than Life festival in Louisville, Kentucky, when Richie Faulkner's aorta ruptured on stage. He had no history of heart trouble. He was rushed to a heart centre just a few miles from the venue and underwent more than ten hours of emergency open heart surgery, with parts of his heart replaced by mechanical components. The rest of the American tour was postponed. That April, the band had also lost John Hinch, the drummer on Rocka Rolla, at seventy three. In January 2022 Priest announced they would tour as a four piece without Andy Sneap. After Sneap called the decision incredibly disappointing and fans protested, the band reversed it five days later.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

On the fifth of November 2022, after three nominations, Judas Priest entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. It was through the Award for Musical Excellence rather than the main performer category, which many in the metal press called a snub, and Halford came to share that view. Alice Cooper inducted them. For one night the old wounds were set aside, and K. K. Downing and Les Binks joined the band on stage for a three song set. Tim Owens, who had not been included, said he did not even get a phone call. In 2023 the band finally won back their first two albums from Gull. Then in March 2024 came Invincible Shield, which debuted at number two in Britain, the highest chart position of their career.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

With Invincible Shield, Judas Priest became the first metal band to release albums fifty years apart. The next year brought loss. Les Binks died in London in March 2025 at seventy three, and the band paid tribute to his first class drumming. That summer they could not play Black Sabbath's farewell concert in Birmingham, because they were already booked for a Scorpions anniversary show in Germany on the same day. Halford said he was gutted. Ozzy Osbourne died weeks later, on the twenty second of July 2025. Halford said he curled up in his hotel room and cried for hours. That September, Priest released a duet of War Pigs with Ozzy's vocals, his first posthumous release, with proceeds going to Parkinson's charities including Tipton's foundation.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]

In February 2026 an official documentary, The Ballad of Judas Priest, premiered at the Berlin Film Festival. It was co directed by Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine and Sam Dunn, and it covers Halford's long life in the closet and the trial. At the premiere Morello said a Priest crowd, with its mix of Latino fans, gay couples and old metalheads in leather, is a model for how we can all do better. As of 2026, Ian Hill and Glenn Tipton are the only members who have played on every album, Tipton still joins for encores when he can, and the band have said they are working on a twentieth album. More than fifty years on, the band from the foundries are still, as their fans call them, the Metal Gods.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

The people around Judas Priest

Rob Halford and Ian Hill. Ian Hill is the reason Rob Halford joined Judas Priest. Hill was dating Halford's sister Sue and mentioned the band needed a singer. Hill and Sue married in 1976, had a son named Alex in 1980, and divorced in 1984, so for years the bassist and the singer were brothers in law. Hill is now the band's longest serving member, playing since 1970.[1] [2] [3]

K. K. Downing and Glenn Tipton. Their mirrored twin guitars defined Priest's sound, but off stage the pair were never close. Downing wrote that Tipton was hard to get along with and that you related to him entirely on his terms. He felt Tipton took more of the solos and steered decisions with management. He also complained about Tipton drinking on stage. Yet Downing praised Tipton's playing and said he respected his contribution.[1] [2] [3]

K. K. Downing and Ian Hill. They were schoolmates and childhood friends from the West Midlands who joined Judas Priest together in 1970. After Downing left in 2011, the friendship frayed. When Hill suggested fans were not missing the departed guitarist, Downing called it a low blow from his oldest friend in the band. Hill later said the two had simply parted company musically, and that the less said the better.[1] [2] [3]

Rob Halford and Tim Ripper Owens. Owens replaced Halford for seven years and then made way for his return. There was a little sniping in the press over the years, but Owens says they ended up friends. Halford once invited him from the stage to come to a show in Ohio, and later asked Owens about his tours in Russia. Owens says Halford sounds even better now than he did back then.[1] [2]

K. K. Downing and Tim Ripper Owens. Two men who each left Judas Priest ended up in a band together. They stayed friends after Owens' exit, and Downing would turn up with a case of beer whenever Owens played near his home. In 2020 Downing made Owens the singer of KK's Priest. Owens has defended Downing's version of events, saying that what Downing wrote in his book about the band is true.[1] [2] [3]

Judas Priest and Tony Iommi. The two great Birmingham metal bands have been entwined from the start. The first Judas Priest guitarist had played with Earth, the band that became Black Sabbath, and in the early seventies Priest were managed by Iommi's agency, which also brought them Glenn Tipton. Halford later fronted Black Sabbath three times, and Iommi had Dave Holland's drum parts replaced after Holland's conviction.[1] [2] [3]

Rob Halford and Ozzy Osbourne. Halford saw Sabbath play early Birmingham club gigs and twice stood in as Sabbath's singer, once when Ozzy was ill. He was gutted to miss Ozzy's farewell concert in 2025. Sharon Osbourne asked for a War Pigs duet, which Halford called the first duet of his life with Ozzy. When Ozzy died, Halford said he cried for hours.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Les Binks and Mike Dolan. Binks joined as a hired drummer in 1977 and said he was never made a full member. The breaking point was manager Mike Dolan's demand that he waive his fee for the live album Unleashed in the East. Binks left in 1979 and decades later still called Dolan a con man and rip off merchant, while insisting he had no quarrel with the band.[1] [2]

Judas Priest and Tom Allom. Producer Tom Allom first worked with Priest on Unleashed in the East in 1979, then produced every studio album from British Steel through Ram It Down. After a thirty year gap he returned as coproducer on Firepower in 2018, sharing the job with Andy Sneap, and he helped on Invincible Shield and the 2024 remix of Rocka Rolla. The band called him a much better piano player than any of them.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

Rob Halford and Thomas. After years of hiding and a series of unhappy relationships, Halford found lasting love with Thomas, a man from Alabama. Halford has described nightly walks together, Thomas reading Bob Dylan's memoir, and Halford learning to cook fried squash at his request. The couple live mainly in Phoenix, Arizona, and Halford now refers to Thomas as his husband.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Richie Faulkner and Rob Halford. Faulkner arrived in 2011 as an unknown thirty one year old, and Halford has since said he saved Judas Priest. Halford described Faulkner bursting with riffs and ideas as a new writing partner alongside Tipton. Faulkner has repaid that faith, finishing a song on stage in 2021 as his aorta ruptured, and he remains in the line up as of 2026.[1] [2] [3]

Rare facts about Judas Priest

• The band's name comes from a Bob Dylan song, The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest. Founding bassist Bruno Stapenhill picked it from Dylan's 1967 album John Wesley Harding. Decades later the band's official documentary borrowed the same song for its title, The Ballad of Judas Priest.[1] [2]
• The first Judas Priest turned down K. K. Downing in favour of a guitarist who had played with Earth. When the original guitarist died in 1969, the band auditioned Downing but chose Ernie Chataway, who had played with the band that became Black Sabbath. Downing joined a later version of Priest in 1970.[1]
• K. K. Downing once trained as a chef. Before music took over, Downing attended catering college and worked as a trainee chef at the Lyttelton Arms in Hagley. He had earlier won a coin toss with his cousin to decide who would play guitar.[1]
• Rob Halford grew up on the same Walsall housing estate as Slade's Noddy Holder. Halford was raised on the Beechdale estate in Walsall, which was also home to the Slade singer. Halford still speaks with a strong Walsall accent after decades living in America.[1] [2]
• Rob Halford did not get a driving licence until he was thirty eight. Despite years of riding a Harley onto the stage, Halford only got his licence at thirty eight. In 2020 he said he owned one vehicle, a Cadillac around fifteen years old.[1] [2]
• Glenn Tipton did not pick up a guitar until he was nineteen. His mother taught him piano as a child, and his first guitar was a Hofner acoustic in 1966. He had also served an apprenticeship at British Steel.[1] [2]
• The Rocka Rolla bottle cap cover was first designed for a Rolling Stones album. Designer John Pasche originally intended the bottle cap artwork for an unspecified Rolling Stones record. A later reissue replaced it with a painting by Melvyn Grant.[1]
• The earliest pressing of Rocka Rolla thanked the band's departed singer. The very rare first British printing carried a credit reading thanks for the words, Al, a presumed nod to Al Atkins. It was removed from later versions.[1]
• Sad Wings of Destiny was produced by the pop duo behind the hit Barbados. Jeffrey Calvert and Max West were the main members of Typically Tropical, whose Barbados topped the British chart in 1975 as Gull's first hit.[1]
• On television in 1975, Halford wore a pink satin top borrowed from his sister. On the Old Grey Whistle Test the band still dressed like a mid seventies rock group, with high heeled boots and frilled shirts, years before the leather arrived.[1]
• The mausoleum on the Sin After Sin cover is a real tomb in a London cemetery. It is based on the Egyptian style mausoleum built in 1910 for Colonel Alexander Gordon at Putney Vale Cemetery in London.[1]
• Halford once said he found his lyrics in a thesaurus, not the Bible. During the Sin After Sin sessions, producer Roger Glover saw him with a thick book and asked if it was the Bible. Halford said it was his thesaurus, where he gets his words.[1]
• Les Binks' drumming with an earlier band was sampled by the Beastie Boys. Before Priest, Binks played in the pop group Fancy. Their track Feel Good has been sampled many times, including on the Beastie Boys song Three Minute Rule from Paul's Boutique.[1]
• Take On the World's drums are mostly stomping feet and hands slapping thighs. Binks said the rhythm was built from multitracked foot stomps and thigh slaps, with his drum part double tracked four times. The Human League covered the song on their 1980 tour.[1] [2]
• Van Halen's debut album came out the same day as Stained Class. Both arrived on the tenth of February 1978. On the next Priest album, Glenn Tipton began using the tapping technique that Eddie Van Halen had popularised.[1] [2]
• Metal Gods features Ringo Starr's cutlery. Recording British Steel at Ringo's house, the band shook a drawer of cutlery to mimic marching metal feet. Downing joked that Ringo's knives and forks made the true Metal Gods sound.[1] [2]
• British Steel was advertised with the pun British Steal. The album was released in Britain at a discount price of three pounds ninety nine, and the music press adverts played on the title.[1]
• In the Breaking the Law video, the security guard plays a fake guitar with the body on backwards. It was meant to copy Downing's Gibson Flying V, but the prop's body was mistakenly fitted the wrong way round. In the video the band rob a bank to steal a gold disc.[1]
• Halford once challenged Freddie Mercury to a motorbike race on Radio One. Mock outraged at the static motorbike in Queen's Crazy Little Thing Called Love video, he suggested a race. He never heard back. Halford calls Mercury his ultimate hero.[1]
• You've Got Another Thing Comin' is Judas Priest's only Billboard Hot One Hundred hit. It peaked at number sixty seven in 1982 but reached number four on the rock chart. By the 2012 Epitaph tour the band had played it live six hundred and seventy three times.[1]
• Judas Priest turned down a place on the Top Gun soundtrack. They were asked for the song Reckless in 1986 but declined, partly believing the film would flop. The soundtrack went on to sell millions.[1] [2]
• Priest secretly recorded a cover of a Stylistics soul hit with Stock, Aitken and Waterman. The 1988 sessions produced You Are Everything plus two originals. Management shelved them, but Halford, a Rick Astley fan, still calls the results stellar.[1] [2]
• Heavy Metal Parking Lot, filmed outside a Priest concert, was a favourite on Nirvana's tour bus. The seventeen minute video of fans before a 1986 show in Landover, Maryland, became a bootleg classic, and Rolling Stone later listed it among the greatest music documentaries.[1]
• The drum intro to Painkiller began as Scott Travis warming up. Travis was playing while engineers tested the drum microphones, and it became one of the most famous openings in metal. Glenn Tipton calls its solo one of his favourites to play.[1]
• As a teenager, Scott Travis dreamed of setting up his drums in an arena parking lot so Priest would notice him. He settled for handing the band a tape at the Hampton Coliseum. Years later he got the job, and he is six foot six and ambidextrous.[1]
• Halford once explained metal to Queen Elizabeth the Second. Halford, a self described royalist, recalled the Queen asking him why they play heavy metal so loud.[1]
• During the subliminal message trial, Halford showed that Exciter played backwards seemed to mention a peppermint. He used it to show that random backward sounds can seem like words, undermining the claim of hidden suicide messages on Stained Class.[1]
• Richie Faulkner deleted Judas Priest's first emails to him as junk mail. The band had a wrong phone number, so they emailed, and he assumed it was spam. When management finally called, he thought it was a joke. He had once sold sausages in Stockholm.[1]
• Richie Faulkner arranged the heavy metal album recorded by actor Christopher Lee. Lee's team sent him orchestral pieces to turn into metal songs for Charlemagne, The Omens of Death, released on Lee's ninety first birthday in 2013.[1]
• The Simpsons apologised to Judas Priest on Bart's blackboard. After a 2014 episode called them death metal, the next show opened with Bart writing that Judas Priest is not death metal over and over.[1] [2]
• Jugulator is the only Judas Priest album never released on major streaming services. Its label went bankrupt and the rights became tangled. It was finally reissued physically in the band's fiftieth anniversary box set in 2021.[1]
• The film Rock Star was first developed with Brad Pitt and a working title of Metal God. Warner Brothers optioned a New York Times profile of Tim Owens. Pitt left over creative differences, Mark Wahlberg took the lead, and the film lost money.[1] [2]
• Tim Owens once ran a bar in Akron that was made over on the TV show Bar Rescue. Ripper's Rock House became Tim Owens' Traveler's Tavern in 2015, but the venue closed for good the following year.[1]
• Halford sang on a Queens of the Stone Age song and on a Dolly Parton album. He appears on Feel Good Hit of the Summer from 2000, and on Bygones from Dolly Parton's 2023 rock album Rockstar.[1]
• Rob Halford was made a Kentucky Colonel in 2021. The honour was awarded by Kentucky governor Andy Beshear in May 2021.[1]
• K. K. Downing built a championship golf course at his Shropshire mansion. Astbury Hall was his home from 1985. Business troubles later forced its sale, and he sold his royalty share in one hundred and thirty six Priest songs in 2018.[1] [2]
• Glenn Tipton played guitar on a Samantha Fox song. He guested on Spirit of America from her 1991 album Just One Night, and also recorded guitar licks for the video game Brutal Legend.[1]

Disputed stories

These stories are told often but the accounts don't agree. Here are the versions and who says what.