JUDAS PRIEST Frontman: 'I Don't See Why HALFORD Should Not Play Live Again'

Jeb Wright of Classic Rock Revisited recently conducted an interview with JUDAS PRIEST frontman Rob Halford. A few excerpts from the chat follow:

Classic Rock Revisited: Who was the brain thrust behind Metal God Entertainment?

Rob: It was combination of myself and the HALFORD band manager John Baxter. We have a big office in Phoenix where we have people working. We looked at the great success of RobHalford.com — you may have noticed how the website has really grown over the years. We used it for HALFORD and then when I reunited with JUDAS PRIEST we married some of that together. The first love of my life is PRIEST, of course. We have run tracks that we have made over the years on the website from both HALFORD and PRIEST. It just was a natural thing to use the website when we came up with the idea. Digital media has really come a long way recently. We wanted to open up the possibilities that the Internet can be used for.

Classic Rock Revisited: Our age group has finally come around to using the computer. What is the difference between these releases and what people can download elsewhere?

Rob: This is the bonus of downloading — you can just download a track and burn it to your hard drive or onto a disc and put it in your CD player in your home or car. You can also put it on your MP3 player. There is a portion of people who love to collect CDs and we will look into that. I am a middle-aged man. I'm 55 but I'm up to speed on everything that is going on with technology. There is a learning curve but I think once people see the advantages of downloading — you can get a complete record or you can get one track and you can buy music anytime you want. You don't have to get in your car and drive down to the record store. Sadly, a lot of record stores are closing down. Tower Records is gone and Peaches is going down. We are now limited to retail outlets like Best Buy and Wal-mart. I think those places will be the places that CDs are purchased. We want to encourage everyone to see the great quality you can get from digital purchases.

Classic Rock Revisited: You are also offering bonus tracks and new artwork.

Rob: We don't want to just put out the same stuff on these reissues. We have modified the artwork and we have added special tracks, some of which have never been out before. We have some items that we have drawn out of our archives. We are releasing "The Metal God Essentials Volume I", which have two new HALFORD tracks on them. You have also got the full DVD and audio performance from Rock in Rio. You can see one track when you buy "Silent Screams" on RobHalford.com. That will be bundled on Apple iTunes so you can either get the audio or the video track. We also have some great DVD work based on the early days of FIGHT. That was a real joy to put together as it tells the story of my first solo band after PRIEST. It shows rehearsals, recordings, backstage antics, life on the road and me doing bungee jumps in Australia. It is just a lot of fun. We also have very early FIGHT demos that we called K5. It is all coming to the Internet in two or three weeks' time.

Classic Rock Revisited: The other release that is coming out is the Metal God Essentials.

Rob: We saw an opportunity to bring out a nice selection of songs from all the material. On the "Metal God Essentials" you have songs from "Resurrection" and "Crucible" as well as live material, demos and two brand new tracks that have never been heard. I think it is going to work really well for us. It is "Volume I" so there is going to be a "Volume II". I think it is a great selection of songs from different eras of the HALFORD experience all put together on one CD.

Classic Rock Revisited: Tell me about the two never-before-released tracks.

Rob: You have got "Forgotten Generation" and a song called "Drop Out". These are really just two HALFORD songs that have never been released. Most people know the HALFORD band is still in existence. We are working in different territories the past few years. Metal Mike is in a band called the PAINMUSEUM, which is a very successful extreme metal act. Roy Z is the co-producer of the PRIEST reunion album "Angel of Retribution". Mike D on bass is in Los Angeles and is always working. These were two tracks that we thought we wanted to bring forward to let people know that the HALFORD band is still alive. At some point in the future, when we don't have things clashing with PRIEST's calendar, we will bring out more material.

I don't see why HALFORD should not play live again. It will be interesting to see how things go throughout our initial release phase. We are optimistic that we will do really well and that will signify when that will be. We have an understanding that at some point in the future, when time allows, we will get back out there and do some live work.

Read the entire interview at www.classicrockrevisited.com.