Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford and guitarist Glenn Tipton discuss why they are still touring despite claiming in the past that they were going to stop.
According to blabbermouth.net, Tipton explained on last week’s Rockline: “We, uh, lied. [laughs] The statement we made was we’re gonna do no more world tours. As we said before, it takes a massive chunk out of your life. It’s pretty arduous out there — almost two years, the last one, playing two and a half hours every night, four or five shows a week. But we enjoyed every second of it. And we said that at the end of it, we weren’t gonna do any more world tours, but we didn’t’ rule out any dates. And we just got so enthused with the new album and everything that we put some dates in and we’ll see where it goes from there.”
When asked by Rockline host Bob Coburn if it’s fair to say retirement didn’t work out for the band at all, Tipton replied, “We lied. We lied. We didn’t mean to.” Halford added, “Actually, it’s Richie Faulkner’s fault; let’s blame Richie. We can’t overemphasize the importance of having Richie with us at this point in our career.”
He continued, “When Richie joined us for the Epitaph tour, extraordinary things were happening night after night after night. And that, accompanied with some of the things that Richie was doing backstage before the show, laying down licks with his little portable recording gear, it was just this energy that was just out of control. So, naturally, when you come off a tour like that and you digest everything, you’re just raring to go and we couldn’t wait to get into the writing mode and start making music for Redeemer Of Souls together.”
As previously reported, Redeemer Of Souls is number six on The Billboard 200 chart. The band has also added some additional tour dates to their North American tour, click here to see the itinerary.
32 Responses
Join the list of others (not in any particular order):
The Who
The Eagles
Ozzy Osbourne
KI$$
Scorpions
Garth Brooks
Motley Crue (sometime in the future)
Feel free to add to the list everyone.
Here’s another fun list: how many bands are there that actually DID retire when they said they were going to (not counting the odd one-off reunion show here and there) ? Cream, Led Zeppelin and The Ramones are the only ones I can think of off the top of my head. Are there others I’m not remembering?
Actually there is another one I just remembered: The Beatles.
Rick,
I just said that..jinx-LOL!!
Dana from ET.com 🙂
The Beatles. However, they broke up as opposed to retiring. But, they never reunited.
Dana from ET.com 🙂
Thin Lizzy did a farewell tour and then, of course, Phil passed away not long after. Technically, the retirement didn’t stick since they started touring again years later. But that was Phil’s band and they did go on a farewell tour with him.
I think in zeppelins case, it was less about staying too long and more of, if not all of, bonhams death being the reason zep quit..IMO..
Well, I still have audio tape of the Who’s “final concert” from 1982 in Toronto…..ROTFLMAO !!
On another note, in every Priest interview I hear and read, Rob and Glenn really go out of their way to highly praise the addition of Richie, and perhaps he deserves it too. However I also get the feeling Rob and Glenn are also, in their own subliminal way, making it known that K.K. was the reason why Priest originally had intentions of retiring. Seems like K.K. was the bad apple in the barrel, and now that he’s gone, Priest has re-energized themselves.
god I hate to bring up Kiss, but although KK was never a trainwreck, Ace and Pete were DESTROYING Kiss and all of their dreams so, they did a farewell tour and in their defense it WAS the last time all four original members toured. And the “new” guys re-energized Kiss. The funny thing about Kiss is if one was blind, there would be no controversy. It’s all about who is wearing the makeup. Ridiculous. Preist made it clear, no global extended tours. I know Glenn is being sarcastic and funny. Too bad this story was blatantly put up in a sensationalist way . You read the headline, then go to the story…and uh! BS just like the Enquirer or Drudge. Kind of surprising but after that old Kiss story ran a week or so ago…what do you expect? Really, really bums me out.
The controversy with Kiss is not all about the make-up though…..If that were true, ditch the costumes and play your newer stuff…Unfortunately, there’s one or two decent songs on each new discussion and the rest is mediocre/crap at best….but then, honestly and objectively looking back, EVERY album was like that, including the solo discs….
If you listen to Eddie’s podcast with Priest you will get your answer.
good point Medved
Wait’ll the Crue does festivals, Hard Rock runs. “We said last “tour””. File under Kiss.
Why file under KISS? KISS wasn’t the first band to announce a farewell tour and then continue to tour.
Festivals or residencies are different than touring. They said they would never TOUR.
Glad they stayed around I liked the concept album a lot but this new one is more straight forward kick ass rock CD! If they had quit when they said they were a lot of people would of been sad, not my self like I said I the concept album. Hope they make a few more CD’s before they really hang it up.
Suckers!!!!!!!!!!!