K.K. DOWNING ON WHY HE LEFT JUDAS PRIEST: “I JUST WASN’T ENJOYING IT ANY MORE..IT HAD RUN ITS COURSE”
Former Judas Priest guitarist K.K. Downing spoke with Dean Pedley of The Midlands Rocks about why he left Judas Priest and how the music industry has changed over the years. Highlights from the article appear below.
Discussing British Steel:
“It’s always the hardest thing in the world to follow success, if I had a pound for every time someone has said to me why don’t you write another album like British Steel but the thing is you can’t – those songs have already been written. If the people that wrote it tried to sit down and write another one you would end up with a watered down version; you wouldn’t better it because it’s already out there, it would just sound like a poor copy.”
On why he left Judas Priest:
“I’ll never get away from this retirement thing, but what happened was that I quit, retired implies that I am not physically able to do it. I am able to do it but I didn’t want to do it; I just wasn’t enjoying it any more, a lot of things had changed. I think I counted about thirty reasons why I didn’t want to do it at the time and that is an awful lot of reasons. In all honesty, I think that in so many respects it had run its course. If you’re part of a songwriting team you get the recognition and reward for creating something, but for me Priest became about going out and playing live and replicating exactly what people had enjoyed ten, twenty or thirty years ago. The fans would be just as happy if they could see us bin all of the modern guitars we now play and take them on a walk down memory lane because I think that’s what people enjoy most. And I understand that because if I could go out now and see Eric Clapton with Cream then I would be the happiest person in the world.
One of the beautiful things about being in the industry was the ability to continue to invent and create, constructing songs and making good records. You do feel the need to be creative and that was taken away with the downloading thing and as you get older the balance of the scales starts to tip. So if you can’t be creative why would you want to continue to dedicate the time into something. I suppose if the industry was still healthy and people still had to spend their hard earned money buying a record it would be different, but if you give something away then it has no value. We used to buy an album and think well it’s not that good but I’ll play it a million times I’m sure I’ll get into it and now it doesn’t really get a second chance. In the past there was always the opportunity to create a record like Dark Side of the Moon or British Steel or Back In Black that would be one of those albums that would be indelible and people will always come back to. And I think that opportunity has gone now and I think it would take a miracle for one of those to happen again. If you consider an album like Nostradamus then if that had been released in 1978 then it would have been another Dark Side of the Moon but it is all about the timing. When you think about it in the early days we had the opportunity to write great songs, play great solos and have great vocal performances but people get used to it and it is hard now to get the reaction of “Wow, have you heard the new Priest album.” The industry has changed so much… I see companies that are repackaging and rehashing and that started happening to us and that was not a pretty thing to be a part of. It’s kind of duping the fans a bit because there are fans around the world that have got to have everything to complete their collection so even if there are only a few thousand of them if you put out a box collection it might be $100, which is a lot of dollars, and so for me that is something that I didn’t get into music for.”
Read the entire article at The Midlands Rocks.
source: themidlandsrocks.com
Can’t fault his reasoning…godspeed, K.K. Downing.
And thanks for the memories.
He has some points but there are 2 things he is wrong about. 1) The music business had to change operations and the downloading had to happen cause for decades and decades who was making the big bucks and ripping off musicians in the studios and fans at the stores??? The record companies. A record, cassette or cd that sold for $15 on average the musicians were lucky if they got max $1.50 per each one and I’m only going as far back as 20 years ago. Since then in most music genres there have been very rare ultimate classic standout awesome production albums released and with the downloading going on it was like a chance to preview an album before getting stuck after you buy it and really don’t like it. Today in 2014 since years record, film and etc companies have closed down cd/dvd manufacturing locations, store music/films online on their servers across the world cutting hundreds of thousands of job from labor to transport only to still charge $15 on average for just electronic authorized downloads………………………………..ARE YOU FREAKIN KIDDING ME??? Hell no way and until they lower their prices by 75% and give more to the artists downloading will only become a bigger unstoppable problem for them.
Cheers Eddie, glad you liked our article.
Finally someone who is telling the truth about the industry today and what it has morphed into. Thank you K.K.!
KK was one of fav’s growing up. Miss you in Priest KK, but happy that you’re happy.
So sad. He sounds just completely beaten down by the industry – very bitter. Almost the rock equivalent of the old man yelling at his grandkids “Back in MY day, we didn’t have all this fancy DOWNLOADING nonsense!!” Can’t blame him one bit though. He’s a legend and deserved better.