Judas Priest's Halford: 'I'm a 66-year-old metalhead but I feel like a heavy metal kid'

Judas Priest lead singer Rob Halford has become an elder statesman of rock 'n' roll, but he says it’s still an adrenaline rush to head out on tour.

“I’m a 66-year-old metalhead, but I feel like a heavy metal kid,” Halford said. “I get terribly excited to pack the suitcase and lock the door and go on the tour bus. ... Yeah, it’s a little bit different in that the bones creak a little bit more, the feet hurt. But that’s a small trade-up to the joy of going out on a world tour.”

The tour will include a stop at the Riverside Theater in Milwaukee on Tuesday. The show is sold out. 

Halford  was packing up when he spoke by phone earlier this month, shortly before the band launched its tour in support of “Firepower,” its first album in four years. Released on March 9, the 14 tracks have been heralded as “a ferocious slab of heavy metal” by Newsweek, and the title track called “the best song Judas Priest has recorded in nearly three decades” by the Associated Press. It entered the charts at No. 5 on the Billboard 200 chart — the highest U.S. debut in the band’s history.

The legendary band that would go on to define — and redefine — the look and sound of metal released its first album, 1974’s “Rocka Rolla,” to a whole lot of quiet. It wasn’t until “Stained Class” and “Hell Bent for Leather” in the late ’70s that the band started making some real noise in the genre with its fast, loud double-lead guitar riffs, hard-driving rhythms and Halford’s head-splitting vocals. Songs like “You’ve Got Another Thing Comin’,” “Victim of Changes,” “Living After Midnight,” “Painkiller,” “Breaking the Law” and “Beyond the Realms of Death” became classics.

The North American leg runs through May 1 before the tour heads to Europe for the summer. It’s a trek that Halford said will eventually include South America, Mexico and probably Australia, New Zealand, Tokyo, South Korea ... 

“When you think about it that way, it’s kind of daunting. Hundreds of thousands of miles are looming, but hey, I know the struggle that takes place when any band or person in music is trying to become professional in this world. So yeah, it’s a blessing, and we love it. We love it more now than ever before.”

It was bittersweet for Halford, Richie Faulkner, Ian Hill and Scott Travis to depart this time without guitarist Glenn Tipton, who announced in February he was stepping away from touring due to Parkinson’s disease. Tipton, a key cog in the Priest machine since 1974, was diagnosed with the early stages of the disease 10 years ago. He played on the “Firepower” album but asked that guitarist Andy Sneap, who produced the album, take his place on the road. 

It’s been inspiring to see how Tipton has powered through, Halford said.

“Glenn is a heavy metal hero the way he’s been battling Parkinson’s for 10 years. It’s Glenn’s insistence that we forge ahead. The show must go on. We’re all part of the heavy metal spirit, so the determination is probably stronger than ever now,” Halford said.

Tipton hasn’t ruled out rejoining his bandmates for the occasional appearance as his health allows. He was greeted with thunderous applause when he showed up onstage March 20 in New Jersey to play “Metal Gods,” Breaking the Law” and “Living After Midnight” for the encore.

Question: The title track off the new album is immediately identifiable as a Judas Priest song in the first few seconds. For fans, that classic sound is exactly what you want. As an artist, how do you approach embracing the past while creating music that still feels fresh?

Answer: Well, the first three tracks, I’ve always maintained, of any Priest release or any band that I’m a fan of ... I’m waiting for that stuff that I want to hear. I want to hear those riffs. I want to hear those screaming vocals, pounding drums and bass. Those are the ingredients that I’m ready to dive into, and we’ve done that on every record that we’ve ever made with Priest. 

The commitment that we make is there right from day one in terms of writing. There are certain aspects of Judas Priest that have gone through this many decades of time. Some of it hasn’t changed in that respect, so we know what we have to do. Now having said that, to accomplish what you know you have to do is a whole different set of principles as far as making sure your music is fresh, making sure that your music has its flair of originality and that each song has something to say and have kind of a stamp on it to separate it from everything else. A lot of it is wisdom and experience and knowledge gained as a musician over all these years, but it’s tough, you know. It doesn’t come easy.

Q: Judas Priest is 18 albums and nearly five decades deep into its career. What was the dream for this band band back in those early days?

A: Like with any band, it’s firstly having the best time ever to be with your bandmates, from those early jamming sessions, seeing each other maybe once a week, just to knock around a few ideas, knock around a few songs, and then when it starts to get substance, when you start to establish a kind of a sound and a feel, that’s when you want to spread the word.

(As touring expanded across England), it’s at the point where you start to feel ambitious and the dream starts to get some kind of reality attached to it. It’s a very slow process. It rarely happens overnight. You have to be prepared to make a lot of .... sacrifices. But here’s the deal: We’ve got enough petrol money, but we don’t really have enough money to feed us all. What should we do? Spend it on petrol? Spend it on the gas, because the gas gets us from A to B? We’ll eat when we can eat? Really, I’m using that in a kind of light way, but it’s true. Any band will tell you that you have to kind of get your priorities in the right place.

Q: You’ve been called innovators, icons, metal gods, among the greatest of all time. Do accolades like that ever feel comfortable to you?

A: I think you have to be very careful how your brain deals with those kinds of things. Rock ‘n’ roll is littered with tragedy from very different kinds of fallout as you do gain that kind of reputation. Maybe it’s just because of who we are and where we’re from, we don’t take those types of expressions lightly. We are grateful for them. As long as everybody is having fun with it, that’s the main thing for us. We’re a rock ‘n’ roll band. We play heavy metal music. And we want to give you a great time. That’s basically how it all boils down.

Q: Judas Priest is credited with introducing the genre to its look of leather, studs and chains. When you get the garb on before a show, is it a little like a superhero putting on the cape?

A: I think that’s a pretty good analogy. It’s like when the Packers put the football uniforms on. You change. You psych yourself up. You get ready to go out and do the work you’re going to do. It’s a team. It’s an effort. It’s everybody, again, band and fans united as one. That really hasn’t changed a lot from the moment when we started to define the look of heavy metal. It really re-enforces visually the power and the volume of the music.

Q: You’ve said that Judas Priest has always been about overcoming difficulties. What’s the biggest storm you’ve weathered?

A: My own personal alcohol and drug addiction, which stopped 32 years ago. Music was incredibly important to me at that moment, and I fully understood the value of music as a form of support through those early days of not drinking and drugging. I listened to music more than ever at that point, and I was able to connect in a way that I hadn’t for as long as I could remember. The pureness of the music, the power of the music, therapeutically, in the way that it can heal you, was tremendously strong. That’s part of the wonderful joy of listening to any kind of music. It really makes you feel good. Music is there to get you through life’s ups and downs, good times and not so good times.