ROB HALFORD: 'I Find Myself More Than Ever To Be At A Wonderful Point In My Life'

Pat Prince of Powerline A.D. recently conducted an interview with JUDAS PRIEST frontman Rob Halford. A few excerpts from the chat follow below.

Powerline A.D.: Do you find being an entrepreneur exciting? I mean, it's a pretty exciting thing, having your own apparel and having other different projects going on.

Rob Halford: It is, yeah, and I don't lay claim to all of that because a lot of it is by this wonderful team of people that I work with. There are very few of us that can get to where we get to without the support and the dedication of other people. That's certainly the case with my primary focus of work with PRIEST, of course. That's the band that leads in my life and always will. With my solo activities, it's all the great people who work over at the offices in Phoenix, and Marc Sasso, my designer for the apparel company in New York. It's all great, you know, everybody's connected and everybody has the same type of enthusiasm and confidence and all the optimistic things I seek from people.

Powerline A.D.: It can be challenging for a creative person to get into the business and legal side of things.

Rob Halford: More importantly now with all the constant stealing and thievery that surrounds us, sadly. You know, Gene (Simmons) was talking about the new KISS record the other day, saying that it's still very simple: you're stealing from people and that's illegal. And then the big debate starts and then we go back to Lars (of METALLICA) and Napster and all this kind of thing, but it's still ongoing. So you need to protect yourself. You need to surround yourself by the right legal language. And before you know it you have an entrepreneur in your title as well, but it's important. I find myself more than ever to be at a wonderful point in my life. 58. I'm still a singer for one of the world's greatest metal bands with PRIEST. I've got my solo activities, my record company, the clothing line. So things are wonderful and I'm out having a blast.

Powerline A.D.: And it makes perfect sense for you to have your own apparel. You've always successfully connected fashion and image to music.

Rob Halford: Yeah, it is important. Again, a lot of people cite PRIEST as the inventors of the look and the sound of metal, and I think we'll take that, you know. It's an important part of what people know about the metal world. What I'm doing recently with this initial launch — with the tried and trusty t-shirts — is a step in that direction. I don't know where it will end up. We may just stay in this particular avenue but ... it's all based on the feedback. No matter what you do, in whatever career or business you run — if the support is there and the growth is there then your ideas start to move forward.

Powerline A.D.: I think it can create a buzz, especially with the fans. I can remember when I was a kid — and we were already into PRIEST — but we would go down to the newsstand to see what Rob Halford was wearing or what PRIEST was wearing. You know, the image created a buzz as well as the music.

Rob Halford: Those are... I was going to say those were the good old days. You know, the one thing I pride myself on is that I haven't turned into a cynical, bitter old man, which is very easy to become in rock n' roll. Just by virtue of living for fifty-eight years. But I don't feel that way, and the point that you raised... I know that it's just as important to the fans of new metal bands or whomever it may be. Nowadays, they don't have to go down to the corner newsstand. You just log onto to the internet and it's there for everybody to enjoy instantaneously. We live in a world of instant gratification, as you know, now. So the excitement and the buzz is to some extent more difficult to sustain, don't you think?

Powerline A.D.: Did you ever have it in the back of your mind to do your own apparel?

Rob Halford: No, I hadn't. To be perfectly honest it was out of ideas that started to be discussed when we launched Metal God Entertainment about a year ago — the platform for Metal God Entertainment. We are very slowly but methodically laying out this platform, providing projects that become real and go out into the world. At the moment — with the record company that goes through Metal God Entertainment — we've shown the ability to make really good quality product, and initially a lot of it has been on the reissues of the HALFORD and FIGHT stuff. But it was important just to let people see and feel and touch and go "Yeah, well, Rob's doing it. He's talking about it, but here's the real thing. I'm holding it in Best Buy"... or wherever. So, that's great. It's all very real ambitions that are coming to life. And, so, just one of the things that came out of that about a year ago was "What do we all feel about opportunities we can explore with clothing ideas" and we were like "Do we want to?, is it worth it?, the economy sucks." But we just said let's go ahead slowly and steadily and see what we could put together. And we just got excited when the designs and the ideas started to come forward, and we thought, "C'mon, let's see what happens." You never know what's going to happen with an idea until you lay it out to everybody. The initial feedback's been great. I just had a really crazy day in New York ... flew in and out of New York and had like 15 hours of intense grilling by people in the clothing industry and they were all very cool. They didn't kind of push me to one side. I think the fashion world is very much like the music industry — or film industry — something new is happening all the time. That's America. That's the dream. That's why I love this country. And even though we are going through the recession there is still light at the end of the tunnel. We haven't stopped. All the creative people haven't gone "Let's forget everything. Let's just stop and wait til things turn around." You can't do that. Everybody's working hard in all portions of life — whether you are in the auto industry that seems to be somewhat surviving or the record industry ... everybody's in a struggle together. But we all need to keep the ideas coming. So, that was the philosophy that we had with just moving ahead with Metal God Apparel.

Read the entire interview from Powerline A.D.