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
I’ve been listening to Redeemer of Souls this past week and was pleasantly surprised. Awesome dual guitar work, excellent production, etc. Anybody else get goosebumps during Halls of Valhalla when Rob does the scream in the middle of the song? Victim of Changes live version does that for me too. Hey, I’m glad they DIDN’T retire. ROS is a solid piece of work! Get it and enjoy it!
Halls of Valhalla is my favorite song on the album, at least right now. As for the scream in Victim of Changes, I love the version of that song on the Live Vengeance ’82 dvd. Rob really lets it rip on that song.
Eddie, Where’s your review for the new Priest album, WOW!! This album blew me away, absolutely without a doubt one of greatest the albums they have ever done, period!! It has everything, bone crunching riffs, wicked guitar licks, pounding bass and drums, Rob’s voice is classic, sounding better than ever. Every song is fantastic. Great production, they covered everything. Album of year!! Hell this may one best albums I have heard in last 10 years. Buy this album Now!! Eddie, keep up the great work your doing, we need you to keep the flag flying for hard rock and metal. Thanks for what you do!
As long as they’re putting out new music like a real band, I’m all for it. Just don’t let them be some loser nostalgia band, a bunch of old men going through the motions and ripping fans off just for the money. Priest, just like Maiden, are doing the best work of their careers in my opinion. Mötley retiring, that I get. They play nothing but old stuff, and do they same old set of songs every single time going on 10 years now. Not to mention they all hate being in Mötley Crüe, proven by the fact they put out next to nothing as far as new stuff goes. Priest and Maiden are totally different.
who cares what they said?!?! It’s 2014 and the Priest is back!!! Oh baby Casino Rama in ontario and October 7th cant come soon enough, well a couple weeks of summer would be nice!! WOOOOO!!