Rob Halford thinks that Judas Priest looked a bit like Greta Van Fleet back in their early days

Rob Halford thinks that Judas Priest looked a bit like Greta Van Fleet back in their early days

Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford was recently interviewed by RollingStone in a career spanning interview that covered a lot of ground.

With respect to Judas Priest‘s black and leather look and how does he go about finding a look, Halford indicated:

“A good look has been important since rock & roll began. I think the way that Priest had that journey of visual discovery was just by experimentation more than anything else. If you look at primitive footage of Priest on The Old Grey Whistle Test on the BBC [from 1975], when we looked a little bit like Greta Van Fleet [laughs], it’s remarkable. I think we developed our look in simple steps. You’d look at yourself and go, “No, this doesn’t feel right. The music is so strong, angry, and dark in places, and it’s deep and full of power … and I’m wearing a paisley shirt. I need to do something about this.” [Laughs] So just putting out a simple leather biker’s jacket was, for my part, just a major, major step. Suddenly you look at yourself in the mirror and go, “That’s more like it. Now it’s connecting.” From that point on, it began to develop.

Of course, me being the gay metalhead fashionista, I couldn’t wait to really extrapolate on that and take it to all those glorious places with the help of my main guy, [clothing designer] Ray Brown, who’s been with Priest forever making these incredible works of art.”

In terms of his tough look and whether he feels that he has to keep that up because he makes hard rock, Halford opined: “There are all different types of gay people, as there are all different kind of straight people in the way that we show ourselves off, how we speak, how we dress. I think that’s the beautiful kaleidoscope of life in the way it manifests itself, regardless of whether you’re gay, straight, bi, black, white, Asian, Latino. That’s just the glory of it all.

When I’m dressed to the nines in leathers, that’s a personification of me that’s really no different to when I’m offstage. I love drag queens; I fucking love drag queens. They’re some of the most fiercest people on the planet. One of my great friends, Chi Chi LaRue, is just the master of that world. And so, that’s another way that we express ourselves in the gay community. And then when you take all the drag off, you’re unrecognizable, and yet your heart and your soul and your spirit are still in the same place.”

You can read the rest of the interview with Rob Halford at RollingStone‘s website.

Judas Priest performing “Dreamer Deceiver / Deceiver” on BBC [in 1975]: