ROB HALFORD: 'In My Gay World, It's All Fashion'

David Marchese of SPIN.com recently conducted an interview with JUDAS PRIEST singer Rob Halford. A couple of excepts from the chat follow below.

SPIN.com: Have you always been interested in designing clothing?

Halford: Everything that you've seen me wear over the years comes from sitting down with the people who make my clothes and putting the designs together. I've always been interested in clothing. I'm not a fashionista, but I enjoy wearing cool clothes so it seemed like a natural thing to do. It's also a good extension for my Metal God production company. We want to be a broad-based platform for all production ideas — whether it be music or DVDs or clothing.

SPIN.com: Was it difficult to avoid the cliché of heavy metal style? Stuff like pentagrams and gothic lettering?

Halford: We want to provide something that everyone can relate to. Tremendous amounts of forethought went into the launch phase, so the imagery carries a rock and roll spirit — it's edgy, it's exciting to look at, it's vibrant — but the appeal is broad-based. We want to be very mainstream.

SPIN.com: So there are no plans to put out Rob Halford-brand leather chaps?

Halford: Who knows?! In my gay world, it's all fashion. [Halford came out in 1998.] It's all, "What are you wearing? Where are you going out tonight?" Blah blah blah. I don't mean that to be stereotypical! Anything's possible though.

SPIN.com: Tell me about the holiday album. You've wanted to do this for a while?

Halford: Putting this side of me onto an album is something I've wanted to do forever. When the idea first came out, it wasn't like, "Let's do 'Do Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer'." No, I'm not going to do that. We been very selective in picking some beautiful, timeless classics and giving them some great heavy arrangements.

Read the entire interview from SPIN.com.