Rob Halford on sobriety, health scares, the ‘remarkable’ Glenn Tipton, and being Grammy-nominated 50 years into Judas Priest’s career
Some old-school metalheads may blast the Grammy Awards for supposedly having no rock cred, but that absolutely isn’t the case for Judas Priest’s Rob Halford, an unimpeachably credible rock legend and possibly the jolliest man in metal. Priest are nominated this year alongside “a great kind of broad demographic of all these different generations of metal maniacs” — Metallica, Gojira, Spiritbox, and Knocked Loose featuring Poppy — for Best Metal Performance for “Crown of Horns,” a track off the band’s 19th studio album, Invincible Shield. And Halford could not be more brimming with more “absolute shock and excitement and feelings.”
“We treasure every opportunity and every moment of recognition,” gushes the 73-years-young metal god, grinning over Zoom from his home in Phoenix. (This Gold Derby interview in fact begins with the Zoom notification “The Metal God has entered the waiting room,” Halford thus making a suitably thrilling virtual entrance.) “You feel like it’s a win already. The nomination is a win. … This is like a pinnacle. … We’ve had multiple nominations, but to get one for this record is just an extra blessing, because of all of the things that surrounded it.”
Halford is referring to a slew of serious health issues that have plagued three Judas Priest members in the years since they recorded their previous album, Firepower. In 2018, less than a month before Firepower’s release, guitarist Glenn Tipton, who’d been with Priest since 1974, announced that he had Parkinson’s disease. In 2020, Halford was diagnosed with prostate cancer during “that horrible COVID epidemic going on, and that caused a lot of reflection. … I was going to the hospital for tests and masking up and all that kind of stuff, and then we had to take it out, and then I had radiation.” And in 2021, guitarist Richie Faulkner underwent emergency open-heart surgery for 10 hours after his aorta ruptured onstage in the middle of “Painkiller” at Louisville’s Louder Than Life festival.
“All of these things are really vital parts and ingredients of the story of Invincible Shield,” muses Halford. “We all carry this invincible shield within us. We don’t really know we’ve got it until we are pushing up against something. When you’re faced with a challenge or a difficulty, whatever it might be, you find you’ve got this kind of resource of power — like the people that are going through the horrible tragedy of the Los Angeles fires right now and using music. Probably somebody [in L.A.] is listening to Invincible Shield right now. The healing power and unification that music brings to us all is such an important part of who we are as people. And I think all of that essence went into Invincible Shield.”
Tipton, who is still an active member of Priest’s writing and recording lineup but is no longer able to tour with the band, was actually first diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2008. “He was amazed as much as we all were that he’d had a Parkinson’s condition for a really, really, really long time. He started to feel it in his playing and just little things going on, and eventually he took the tests and they told him, ‘You’ve been living with this for a number of years. This has been going on and you haven’t been aware of it.’ So, I don’t know how many years it’s been,” says Halford. “And to still see him with us fighting and staying on top of all these things… like, when you have Parkinson’s, it affects you. It affects various parts of your body. He can play the guitar, he can pick it up, he can maybe pick out a note or two and he can find a riff or two. And there’ll be some riffs coming along, I’m sure, for the next Priest album, whenever that happens! So, that part of him is still there. But to have that beautiful way of displaying your musicianship, all of these great lead breaks that Glenn has made over the decades, all of that, to have that taken away from you, that’s the brutal cruelty of Parkinson’s.
“But he’s still there,” Halford emphasizes. “He’s still Glenn: ‘When are we going to have another writing session?’ All of this kind of positivity. And he’s surrounded by love and positivity from his bandmates, from his family, from the fans around the world, and people like yourself who bring him into this interview. … I saw Glenn just recently; I went to see him around New Year’s Eve. He’s just this remarkable man. We have the [Firepower] song ‘No Surrender,’ which is kind of an homage to Glenn and to all people that are facing these types of episodes in their life. Never surrender, never give up, never give in — that’s been Priest’s mantra from day one.”
As for where Halford’s seemingly boundless positivity springs from (anyone who has read his harrowing autobiography, Confess, knows he endured some extremely dark times, including years of substance abuse and living in the closet), he answers without hesitation: “My sobriety.” This past Jan. 6, he celebrated his 39th anniversary of being clean, but he admits that he has still struggled over the years.
“I used to have really, really, really bad depression, not only when I was drinking, but as I came out of drinking. I think that kind of came from my mom’s side, with the DNA and all that kind of stuff,” says Halford, who surprisingly never went to therapy but did his own “research” to better understand his condition. “Somehow, I got through that. One day at a time. It’s a great way to live, because you’re living in the moment. It’s not important worrying about tomorrow, because you don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow. Plans and ideas and dreams are vital, but tomorrow hasn’t happened. Yesterday’s gone. It’s in the past. You can’t change anything. You can maybe look at things that could be utilized to fix things in the next opportunity. So, living in the moment is just so important. And look where I’m at in my life! I’ve got nothing to complain about, absolutely nothing to complain about.”
And so, while Halford greatly appreciates lifetime-achievement accolades like Judas Priest’s recent long-overdue inclusion in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame — where he dueted with fellow Class of 2022 inductee Dolly Parton, aka “Saint Dolly,” looking absolutely smitten (“I have to look at that on YouTube just to see that it really happened!”) — recognition for a new recording almost means even more to him. This year’s “Crown of Horns” Grammy nomination incredibly coincides with both the 50th anniversary of Priest’s debut LP, Rocka Rolla, and the 20 anniversary of Angel of Retribution, the album that marked Halford’s return to the group after a 15-year recording hiatus. Halford’s second run with Priest has now officially lasted longer than his first one from 1973 to 1992, and he doesn’t take that for granted. He is well aware that “rock ’n’ roll has no guarantees,” and that the sort of career he and his bandmates have enjoyed is quite rare.
“Sometimes I think it’s better to have these [awards] happen later on, because some [bands], for whatever reason, get a little bit jaded. But that’s never been the case with Priest,” asserts Halford, noting that the group has been nominated at the Grammys six times, but didn’t win their first trophy until 2010. “To have a new destination in music is really important. We could be resting on our ‘Breaking the Law’/‘Living After Midnight’ laurels that are still important for every show that we do, but we are not. We’re curious as well: ‘What can we do next?’ … That desire has never really left us. And that’s another crucial part of the fact that here we are, over 50 years later, loving what we do and seeing no end in sight.”
Halford says both he and Tipton are “full of ideas, always ideas,” and his iPhone is always “full of stuff,” so there likely won’t be another long gap before the next (hopefully Grammy-nominated) Judas Priest studio album. “I wake up in the night and I’ve got a song in my head and I put my phone on and I do a little riff or an idea… and then I get up and have breakfast and I play it back, and it’s absolute rubbish. Rubbish!” he laughs. “But [my phone] does have ideas in it all the time. Words — I love words. I found a new word the other day that I put in the phone. One word for me as a lyricist can trigger a whole message for a song. So, this phone is always with me.”
Halford is excited to attend the 67th Annual Grammy Awards, which will still take place Feb. 2 at Los Angeles’s Crypto.com Arena despite the recent devastating L.A. fires, and he’s pleased that the retooled ceremony will have a fundraising component and honor first responders. “It’s going to be a great night, a great celebration, a lot of love and light, and you need that. You need that to build from tragedy,” he says with his usual optimism and compassion.” So, he may leave that ceremony with a second Grammy statuette to place on his metal mantel. But what about an Academy Award? His above-mentioned Confess memoir could certainly inspire a compelling biopic, although he has “no idea” who could play him onscreen.
“I mean, the good news is Robbie Williams has just shown us that you can be a chimpanzee! So, that would be great. Let’s think of me as some kind of exotic creature,” Halford chuckles, referring to the Take That pop star’s semi-autobiographical recent musical fantasy Better Man. When Gold Derby suggests Timothée Chalamet, who so convincingly transformed into Bob Dylan in the more Oscar-baiting biopic A Complete Unknown, for the Halford role, the metal god says, “I haven’t seen that yet, but he’s such a beautiful actor and he’s got so much talent and he can turn his hand to anything, so I’d be very happy with Timothée. I’ll [teach] him all of my Black Country yam-yam type of cadence in the way I speak.
“We’ll see. Who knows? Anything is possible.”