JUDAS PRIEST's HALFORD: 'Nostradamus' Turned Out To Be A Real Satisfying Experience For Us All

Spiritech of PyroMusic.net recently conducted an interview with JUDAS PRIEST singer Rob Halford. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

PyroMusic.net: So Rob, why did you decide to record a Christmas-themed album?

Rob Halford: Yeah, I mean, the Christmas time is just as important a time for me as it is for a lot of people and I just love the atmosphere and the enjoyment and the eating, the drinking and obviously the music that's associated with Christmas as well. So for me, for as long as I can remember when I was a little kid I've always liked every aspect of Christmas time and especially the music. So I've slowly but surely got around to doing it for the first time ever in my career. It's out now and the general feedback has been absolutely fantastic from all the metalheads.

PyroMusic.net: Were you expecting any kind of backlash or criticism from some metal fans for doing something like this?

Rob Halford: Well, to be honest, I don't really care these days about criticism. I mean, I used to when I was a younger man in music, I thought that the critics, you know, were that important in terms of dictating where the reaction might come and how it might affect you. But I realize now that a critical point of view is just one person's bit of feedback, so I just go ahead and make the music that I enjoy making and I've had a pretty long career doing what appears to be the right thing. So this is just another opportunity to express myself in a slightly different way. It is an unusual record, but metalheads celebrate Christmas like everybody else and they obviously listen to some kind of music through the Christmas holiday time, so this is my effort and like I said, so far, so good.

PyroMusic.net: Were you at all inspired to do this project by TWISTED SISTER, whose own Christmas album a few years back was quite successful?

Rob Halford: I think it's really cool that Dee (Snider) and the lads, who I've known for a long time made that record. I think it just shows you again that there's loads of people that enjoy that interpretation of some of the Christmas songs that we like. Of course, we in the HALFORD band tried to keep it in the same kind of texture and atmosphere musically that most people associate my work with. So I think this is a little bit more serious than Dee's record. I love Dee's record, I think it's brilliant, but I think that territory's been covered sufficiently now with that type of style and approach and it's been a real success for him. Obviously, it's done well, so it means that there's a need for that type of style of Christmas classics interpreted in that way. Of course, with us, we only did five fairly well-known Christmas songs. We did one by Sara Baraeilles, called "Winter Song" and the other four are original tracks from us. So I think our record has turned out to be quite different from some of the other things that have happened, as they should be. I don't think there's that much room to bump into each other, otherwise we're all going to sound the same, you know? So I think each of us are trying to carve out our own impressions with the way that we've covered some of these fantastic Christmas tunes.

PyroMusic.net: Moving on to JUDAS PRIEST for a moment, I think it's fair to say that "Nostradamus" received a mixed reception. A year or so on from its release, is there anything you'd change about that album or are you still pleased with the final result?

Rob Halford: Yeah, I think it's done close to 750,000 sales (worldwide) and add in the illegal downloads, it's probably done over a million. So I think that's pretty good in today's market commercially, in the business sense of things. For us in the band, it was just a wonderful opportunity to complete an idea that we'd had and we'd talked about for many, many years. Growing up as we did, there were a lot of those types of concept records around in the 70s and we always wondered how we would tackle that kind of endeavor. So "Nostradamus" turned out to be a real satisfying experience for us all. We're still determined at some point to play all of that double CD live in concert. We're having a band meeting this Christmas to figure out what we're going to do next year for PRIEST and hopefully doing something with "Nostradamus" live will be included.

PyroMusic.net: I imagine you've got a pretty expansive and impressive stage show in mind for that then.

Rob Halford: Well, PRIEST is famous for putting on these big shows — the costumes, the lights, the stage sets. Whatever we do with "Nostradamus" has gotta be a solid goal, so it's going to take a lot of thinking and a lot of production. We're going to have to bring in some special crews to talk through all of the different possibilities — and there are many. We can either keep it straightforward where we just stand there and play, but I think that would be letting the side down. 'Cause it's larger than life musically, so we have to put on a full on show. But as soon as we know what we're doing, we'll make an announcement on the PRIEST website.

Read the entire interview from PyroMusic.net.