JUDAS PRIEST: 'We Don't Plan On Retiring'

All five members of JUDAS PRIESTRob Halford, Glenn Tipton, Ian Hill, Scott Travis, and the band's latest addition, 31-year-old guitarist Richie Faulkner (LAUREN HARRIS, DIRTY DEEDS) took part in a press conference yesterday (Thursday, June 9) at this year's edition of the Sweden Rock Festival in Slvesborg in southern Sweden. You can now watch video footage of the 23-minute question-and-answer session below. Also available is performance footage from the Sweden Rock Festival concert.

On the band's future plans:

Tipton: "We don't plan on retiring. We've said that this is our last world tour. It takes a chunk out of your life 18 months. We won't be doing any more world tours as such and in many parts of the world, it will be the last time people will get a chance to see us. But we're not gonna stop. We've got an album in the can now, we will start to write with Richie, there will be more albums, and who knows?! There might be a string of dates that we can manage to do. We're just not gonna do another major world tour. We've been doing it for 40 years and it's time to let the younger bands have the chance."

On replacing JUDAS PRIEST's founding guitarist Kenneth "K.K." Downing, who announced his departure from the band in April:

Faulkner: "In reference to filling K.K.'s shoes, they're big shoes to fill. He's an influence on my playing, I'm a great fan of him and the band and the [guitar playing in PRIEST] in general. I'm not taking anything away from anything he'd ever done. So I know what I've gotta do as a fan and as now a member of the band. I knew some of [the songs] already obviously as a fan, I knew some PRIEST songs; I learned them growing up and there were some which I didn't know; some of the stuff that's on some of the earlier records that we're doing as part of the set I had to learn. So I knew some and I got to learn some new ones as well, so it was a great experience, really."

On how JUDAS PRIEST chose the setlist for its farewell tour:

Tipton: "We're playing at least one song off every album. Obviously it's the farewell world tour, so we've really gotta put a lot of the old favorites in there. We got a lot of feedback from our web page, we requested what people really wanted to hear, so we put a set together based on that. Plus we're playing at least one song from every album and we're doing stuff that we haven't played before, such as 'Never Satisfied', 'Blood Red Skies' and 'Starbreaker'. I think we didn't play that for many years. So there's a real mixed bag. Our mission, really, was to play at least song off each album each year and we tried to pick the songs that everybody wanted to hear. Obviously they'll always want 'Painkiller', they'll always want 'Hell bent For Leather'. We've got so many songs, it's really difficult to choose, and somebody is always disappointed. [But] I think we've covered most of them."

On K.K. Downing's reasons for leaving JUDAS PRIEST:

Rob Halford: "I don't think any of us will really know. You probably read what he put on his web site about saying that he just felt that if he was to stand on the stage not for the right reasons, then that was the wrong thing to do. And that's a really sincere thing to say. When you walk out on stage in front of those thousands and thousands of fans, you want to be there, you want to be able to play. None of us really understand the true reasons [for him leaving], 'cause we've all got different theories. I think what we would really love everybody to focus upon now is that this is a great time to celebrate for JUDAS PRIEST, 'cause it is a farewell. We don't want people to be depressed and sad, we want people to rock out and have a great time and enjoy seeing this amazing guitar player, Richie, with us in the band and just live the metal."

JUDAS PRIEST's setlist for the Sweden Rock Festival was as follows:

01. Rapid Fire
02. Metal Gods
03. Heading Out to the Highway
04. Judas Rising
05. Starbreaker
06. Victim of Changes
07. Never Satisfied
08. Diamonds & Rust (JOAN BAEZ cover)
09. Prophecy
10. Night Crawler
11. Turbo Lover
12. Beyond the Realms of Death
13. The Sentinel
14. Blood Red Skies
15. The Green Manalishi (With the Two-Pronged Crown) (FLEETWOOD MAC cover)
16. Breaking the Law
17. Painkiller

Encore:

18. The Hellion (taped intro)
19. Electric Eye

Encore 2:

20. Hell Bent for Leather

Encore 3:

21. You've Got Another Thing Comin'

JUDAS PRIEST will launch the U.S. leg of its farewell world tour on October 12 in San Antonio and the band promises that it will go out with a bang. Halford said, "We're pulling out all the stops. We've built a brand new stage set, we've got all the effects that people love us for the lasers, the fire, the bombs, the smoke, new costumes, and the bike. It's just a full-on metal extravaganza."

Press conference:

Performance: