JUDAS PRIEST Songwriters Give Inside Look At Tracks On Classic Album 'British Steel'

July 1, 2009

To celebrate the 30th anniversary of its landmark album "British Steel", JUDAS PRIEST is showcasing the set in its entirety on a series of U.S. tour dates this summer. The band's songwriting triumvirate — frontman Rob Halford and guitarists K.K. Downing and Glenn Tipton — recently provided Billboard.com with a track-by-track look at the making of "British Steel". Read the feature at this location.

JUDAS PRIEST kicked off its "British Steel" 30th-anniversary tour Monday night (June 29) at the Murat Theatre in Indianapolis, Indiana.

The band's setlist was as follows:

01. Rapid Fire
02. Metal Gods
03. Breaking The Law
04. Grinder
05. United
06. You Don't Have To Be Old To Be Wise
07. Living After Midnight
08. The Rage
09. Steeler
10. The Ripper
11. Prophecy
12. Rock Hard Ride Free
13. Victim Of Changes

Encore:

14. Freewheel Burning
15. Diamonds And Rust
16. You've Got Another Thing Comin'

Check out photos at this location.

Fan-filmed video footage of the concert can be viewed below.

In a recent interview with Greg Prato of RollingStone.com, Rob Halford stated about the making of "British Steel", "It was a very interesting time for us. I've always believed that most times, the best material from any band is their first two releases. PRIEST is a little unusually different in that manner, because this was our sixth studio release. Suddenly, the band seemed to change shape, and you get a very distinctive moment coming from PRIEST, in terms of the way the songs were written and the production. We'd just come off the back of mixing 'Unleashed in the East', and we were on a schedule to release a full studio album. We were burning the candle at both ends, because we had some ideas, but we didn't have enough. So quite a bit of the writing took place at a house that was the former home of John Lennon [Tittenhurst Park, in Ascot, Berkshire, England] — Ringo was living there at the time. There was a lot of stuff going on in the U.K. — socially/politically, it was in turmoil with the Thatcher government and the unions, street fights with coal miners and the police. It was a really volatile bit of a revolution around the late '70s. I think some of that went into my writing as a lyricist. If you listen to the words and messages on British Steel, it's full of that angst."

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