JUDAS PRIEST Frontman: 'It's Inevitable That CDs Will Become Obsolete'

Metal-Temple.com editor Orpheus Spiliotopoulos (also a writer for Rock Hard magazine) recently conducted an interview with JUDAS PRIEST frontman Rob Halford. A couple of excerpts from the interview follow:

Metal-Temple.com: Why did you decide to release new HALFORD tracks exclusively on iTunes and not as an EP, for instance? I mean, I doubt if half of Europe even uses iTunes, as far as metalheads go at least.

Rob: Well, this has been kind of a dilemma for me. Apple iTunes is the world’s largest legitimate format in download experience and quality transfer and all forms of video media. I have tons of video music on my iPod — from DEFTONES to whatever. I don't want anybody to be left out here and I have to look at a way to make sure that everybody gets what they need. I think that most metal fans are connected to the Internet. I mean, they've got to be? What's Metal-Temple.com? You know what I'm saying? So, you know, anybody that wants to check out Metal-Temple.com has go to be able to go on the Internet, they've got to have a computer, a PC, whatever to be able to do that. This is just the way of the world, you know. I mean it's inevitable that CDs will become obsolete; you have to face that fact. It's like the way vinyl became obsolete, cassettes became obsolete, 8-tracks became obsolete. It's just some people are unfortunate. I think there'll always be a market for some kind of physical collection. It's just moving south fast. This is gonna happen to everybody before they know it — I tell you. It's not going to come along creeping and slowly, it's just gonna be within the next few years all the record companies are going to go "We're no longer doing retail manufacturing of CDs." You're going to have to get everything that you want directly from Sony Music Online, Rob Halford Music Online, IRON MAIDEN Online... MAIDEN just released their record on Apple iTunes but admittedly they provided a CD format as well...

Metal-Temple.com: I couldn't agree more, but don’t you think that the CD market is still huge?

Rob: Yeah, but it's rapidly diminishing. For me, I'm not as big as IRON MAIDEN as a solo artist from an economic point of view. And that's the crucial point here. If I wanna make a record and manufacture CDs, for convenience and for maintaining control and servicing, it just makes more sense to me to do it through digital download experience. It's just being practical, it's absolutely being practical. If I was in another world, if what I was about to do now was a more massive situation then I'd be in the world of CD manufacturing, putting them into trucks and everything, waiting for some guys to pick them up and put them in the stores — the fucking nightmare.

Metal-Temple.com: What do HALFORD, FIGHT and TWO have, in your opinion, that JUDAS PRIEST never had? If you don't mind me asking and with all due respect, were those things [elements] the reason why you left PRIEST, music wise, in the early '90s?

Rob: I think that out of all of those times, the FIGHT band to me was very distinctive. The was that FIGHT sounded and performed live. The music that was created, for me it was a long way from what I was doing with PRIEST and I mean, that was the reason why I stepped away from PRIEST. To look for an experience, new journeys and adventures with different musicians, different players, different styles, sounds and approaches —- that I wasn't experiencing with Glenn [Tipton], K.K. [Downing], Scott [Travis] and Ian [Hill]. That's definitely what the FIGHT record was and more so the TWO experience with Trent Reznor from NINE INCH NAILS. I think that both of these bands, collectively, were what I always wanted to do and try away from the PRIEST experience. But the HALFORD band of course was more in line with everything that we love about JUDAS PRIEST. And I think that subconsciously that was me, you know, finding the way back to PRIEST, with that band, with those songs, with those performances. I heard comments by people saying about the "Resurrection" album that this is the greatest PRIEST album that PRIEST never made, in all different kinds of critiques. And of course that's where I was going. I had my time away from PRIEST experimenting with these chances. When I got those out of my system and I looked into my heart about what was really the most important thing to me, musically, and where I really felt the most complete, it was with JUDAS PRIEST. And so there’s no doubt — with "Resurrection" more than "Crucible" because with "Crucible" the band was progressing more in a different direction — that "Resurrection" was definitely making a sound that just screamed where my heart is at. So that’s basically how I view those three separate moments, FIGHT, TWO and HALFORD.

Read the entire interview at www.metal-temple.com.