JUDAS PRIEST's K.K. DOWNING Talks 'Nostradamus'

Jeb Wright of Classic Rock Revisited conducted an interview with JUDAS PRIEST guitarist K.K. Downing on May 6. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow.

Classic Rock Revisited: How much did you know about Nostradamus?

Downing: Zero. It wasn't too difficult to learn about him. Our manager printed a few things up for us to look at. When you start seeing things like he requested to be buried standing up then it gets interesting. He wore a medallion around his neck that had a year on it. The people that dug him up, when his body was exhumed, saw the year on the medallion and freaked out because it was the year they dug him up. The second time he was dug up was by soldiers who drank wine out of his skull. They got massacred on their way home. He also dabbled in metal by mixing metals together he probably was getting high off the fumes. I am not saying I am a believer but he had a lot of really cool metal content in his life. It was quite a journey and a challenge for us to do. The emotions are really there. We have put our emotions into our music before but this is just a lot more in depth.

Classic Rock Revisited: Is it different writing about him because he was a real person?

Downing: I think that it has added strength because you are documenting a person with a strong personality. Whether you believe or whether you don't, one thing is for sure and that is that he became very, very famous and he is still famous. Every now and then you get these people like Nostradamus or Einstein who stay famous forever. The more we got into his life we found that he was very relevant to the music of JUDAS PRIEST. We have delved into fantasies before like "Blood Red Skies" or "Sinner" and that is our fantasy world but with Nostradamus there is more of a substance there. I think that gives it more validity and emotion.

Classic Rock Revisited: Musically, Glenn Tipton and you played a lot differently that you have in the past.

Downing: We have never played this much acoustic on a JUDAS PRIEST album. It was actually joyful to get our teeth into something like this from a musical point of view. We felt we had more licence to push the boundaries. We wondered if we could pull this off with mixing classical and metal. Rob said this, and I shuddered when I first heard him say it, he said, "JUDAS PRIEST are going to do the first, in the history of metal, the first ever metal opera." I am thinking, "Wow, we had better get to work." Glenn and I had some of the very first synthesized guitars in the early '80s. We were able to create just about any sound we wanted by converting an analog signal to a midi signal. We pulled the old equipment out of the closet and there were a lot of pops and squeaks and we looked at each other and said, "We had better fucking go get some new gear." We have guitars now that are totally geared up and ready to go. Things moved on in the world of technology and we were able to use that technology to make choir sounds and orchestra sounds. The classical elements of Nostradamus' time were now there. We thought that this could give us a bit of longevity. We are all headed to our sixties, you know. We thought we would like to create a record that our fans could really sit down and listen to like we did in the old days. We wanted to give it that amount of intensity just like I did back with albums like Electric Ladyland. That album may not have been considered a concept album by a lot of people but it was sure as hell conceptual to me. It took me to another planet. I think Glenn actually said this to me when we were in the studio. He said, "I wonder that when people create these great albums if they know it is that great when they are doing it." The chances are that I doubt they do, really. You don't know until you put it out into the marketplace. I think timing is very important. I think some of the JUDAS PRIEST records we did were too early and some of them might have been too late. "Painkiller" may have been premature. Having said that it was a bit responsible for the new movement. We started touring with five tracks off that album and by the time we finished we were playing two. It was a bit of a hard sell, that album. When an album has been around for a decade then it becomes a classic. It is the same with a band. You don't get to be a legend until you have been around for a million years. You can be an overnight success but you can't be an overnight legend.

Classic Rock Revisited: On "Angel of Retribution", PRIEST tried something different with the song "Lochness". Some said, "Brilliant!" and some said, "What the fuck is this?" Was there any thought when doing "Nostradamus" that if you didn't get this fucking right then it would be horrible for PRIEST?

Downing: Sure, that enters your mind. People often talk about our younger fans and that we should do something that is more modern. We have a lot of younger fans but we have a lot of older fans as well. It is a great consideration as far as I am concerned. The older fans, I am talking about me and lots of other people, will say, "Thank fuck somebody has made a record that has a lot of meaning for me." If you make a movie then you want all the ingredients leading up to a great ending. You watch it in its entirety and you don't dissect it. Someone might think that the beginning was the best because some guy got his throat slit or they drop a guy off of a building but that is not the whole movie. It will be a great day in hell, or heaven, when we are able to go out and play this think in its entirety. Rob can play Nostradamus and we can be in character as well. I think it would take this experience to a different plateau. We have been very innovative and versatile in our career but we still have a ways to go. It is still going to be down to the fans acceptance. This album is fucking full of melody. We are telling the fans that it is okay to be melodic.

Read the entire interview at www.classicrockrevisited.com.