Marshal Of The Million-Mullet March

07/23/2002 4:00 PM, Yahoo! Music
Nate Nichols

If America's warriors of virtue want a poster boy for the Puritan work ethic, they need look no farther than Rob Halford. Every two years, the singer stamps his brand on an adventurous new album and tour. That's Halford the man, Halford the band, and Halford the Freddie Mercury-style changeling who led arena headliners Judas Priest to the heights of heroic fantasy in the '70s and '80s. Of course, the voice of FM anthems like "Breaking The Law" and "You've Got Another Thing Comin'" is a solo star now. He's currently preaching the heavy metal faith at European festivals supporting his new album, Crucible (Metal-Is/Sanctuary).

"It's been a tremendous creative 12 months beginning to end on Crucible," says Halford by phone in Los Angeles. He has a radio-announcer baritone that's a distant relative of his onstage battle-cry. It's a dry Birmingham brogue, to be exact, and Rob's voice projects a calm enthusiasm as he prepares to fly overseas and unleash a 90-minute spectacle loaded with Judas Priest standards and newborn anthems from the Halford band.

"I get stoked every time I walk out onstage, more so now than ever," he says. "These are my golden years in metal and I'm loving every minute of it."

Indeed, the golden years are upon us for many rockers hitting age 50: Bowie, Iggy, Ozzy, Aerosmith. Many, like Halford, are finding an ideal opportunity to rev up their creative engines in what was once considered a young man's game.

Today, Halford is as much an idol to up-and-coming American metalheads as Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf were to the pimply novices of the British Invasion. Halford's players honed their chops as U.S. teens, raised on Black Sabbath, Priest, Iron Maiden, AC/DC...and Pantera and Tool.

Judas Priest ended a six-year hiatus when they crossed the same ocean and age gap to hire a ringer from Ohio named Tim "Ripper" Owens to replace the departed Halford as lead screamer in 1998. Four years later, the Halford exodus has become one of the rare amicable divorces in major league rock. In fact, the split produced a sort of metallic miracle of the fishes and loaves. Instead of two bands with half the power, fans now get two fists full of dynamite, with the Halford band and the Priest each recording challenging new CDs and hitting the tour circuit with six-strings set on shred.

"I was talking to Ken yesterday," Halford says, referring to Judas Priest guitarist K.K. Downing. "We speak to each other on the phone--we usually end up reminiscing. But he did say, 'Tell me what songs you're doing, so we don't do the same ones when we go out,'" Halford laughs.

Early this year, the Priest released their second Ripper-driven CD, Demolition (Atlantic). The new DVD of last year's marathon Christmas show at London's Brixton Academy hit stacks on July 23. And this summer, the 20th anniversary of the band's multiplatinum LP Screaming For Vengeance, Judas Priest Mach II strafes halls from Fargo to Poughkeepsie to Lubbock.

Meanwhile, Halford is lining up U.S. dates to follow his European crusade. Which means your chances to cash in on stack-amp classics like "Living After Midnight," "The Green Manalishi," and "Electric Eye" are doubled down, casino-style.

"I don't think that what I do, or what Priest represents, is nostalgia. I think it's very current, very fresh, very important, very much a 'now' feeling musically," asserts Halford. "I'm happy that I can still maintain my friendship with Ken and Glenn and Ian and we can be civil and polite and give support," he says, referring to original Priest guitarist Glenn Tipton and bassist Ian Hill.

He's referring to bonds that go deeper than the business. It's a personal history of British teens on the scene in the late '60s for a musical lightning strike.

When I sat down with K.K. and Ian earlier this year, K.K. recalled life as a 15-year old adventurer, hitching rides to the Isle Of Wight Festival to see Jimi Hendrix in action. A few years later, the upstart Priest began hitting Los Angeles, working their way up from the Whisky and Starwood to the Santa Monica Civic and then to the Us Festival in San Bernardino.

If there's one recurring theme on his mind about the scene today, K.K. sums it up directly: "Our generation, we were novel. But now music seems all novelty."

"Gimmick has taken over," Ian adds. "What the band plays takes second place to how they're portrayed. Before, music came first, image came afterward."

Still, K.K. is cautious not to sound like the disapproving, out-of-touch authority figure. "It's all a cycle," he allows. "I remember one of our early U.S. gigs supporting Kiss," he says, adding that he and his crew were a bit… skeptical about the lizard-bat costume show.

"I told the guys in Kiss, 'Great band, but God--is that pretentious!' We were telling them to get real, come down to earth," he says, his eyes rolling with 20/20 hindsight. "In turn, the same thing happened to us at a certain point with grunge--Pearl Jam and all of it. The people are all saying, 'You gotta have a checked shirt and shorts, that's your stage gear, man. It's all there on the racks.'

"Meanwhile, we were still paying somebody good money to put the studs on the leather," K.K. laughs. "Suddenly the roles are reversed. Now we're thinking, [stage whisper] 'Do we look pretentious in this?' Blame it on Spinal Tap!"

Of course no one could've predicted during the Seattle explosion that 10 years down the road grunge would be extinct and that punk rock's favorite nemesis, vintage metal, would be celebrating not just a renaissance, but practically a lovefest. In any case, today punk is partying with pop radio, and the kids feel the party goes better with metal. Weezer proudly don their Iron Maiden concert tees, and a band like Sum 41, spreading faster than acne on the day of the prom, makes no distinction between loving punk, rap, and metal equally. The next thing you know, Rob Halford--plus Tommy Lee on drums--joins Sum 41 onstage to perform "You've Got Another Thing Comin'" on the MTV 20th anniversary special.

"I thought that was just so very cool of Sum 41 to do that," says Halford. "You can't really say anything more than a big thank you to them for the opportunity, because it was wonderful. If you go deep into it, it was a very meaningful thing to do."

The youth factor also proves critical in Halford's ambition to "take a giant step forward" with Crucible. The Halford band features Phoenix-based Ray Riendeau, who played bass on the singer's 1998 tour with goth experiment Two. Bobby Jarzombek is the group's San Antonio drum prodigy, famously billed by Halford as "the best metal drummer I know." On guitar, you'll find a martial artist and self-professed freak for Priest, Pantera, and Prong named Patrick Lachman; also on axe is Mike Chlasciak, a Polish import who was a star student at Boston's prestigious Berklee School Of Music, where he developed the blistering technique that led to solo albums like the self-explanatory Territory: Guitar Kill!!!.

"I'm the metal diva of the band these days," says Halford serenely. "I have as much an attitude and a temperament as I ever did. I think Pat comes close to being a chip off the old block; I see a lot of myself in Pat's ways. Ray, our bass player, fits in mid-temperament between me and Pat. Bobby, our drummer, is just the opposite. He's very laid-back and very cool and solid. He's not the least bit mercurial, which is what Pat and myself are like. He's a bit against the norm, because most drummers are completely off their whack, two lumps of wood in their hands going ballistic, smashing everything in sight. But Bobby's so cool, calm, and collected as an individual. Mike is the most pleasant individual you'll ever meet. He's very easy-going, very secure and confident in what he does with his guitar. He appears to be the least stressed-out individual in this band. I seem to be the stressmeister."

The purpose of the singer's creative stress was threefold: Halford was committed to working with producer Roy Z to capture all the vocal possibilities he still has on one record, and to create the memorable lyrics and strong vocal melodies that have brought the singer his greatest success.

Halford's verdict? "With Crucible, I feel we've really hit the mark. This is a great example of the tremendous talent in this band. It shows not only what we're capable of doing now and doing well, it opens up all the possibilities for the future as well."

If Ozzy is now America's dysfunctional TV dad, Halford is its flamboyantly masculine bachelor uncle. He survived the '80s, when the Priest were put on trial for the suicide pact of two troubled fans in Nevada. He survived the '90s, coming out as an openly gay man on MTV. His 1998 experiment in gothic pop, an album called Voyeurs, overseen by Trent Reznor and released under the name Two, solidified his reputation as a creative gambler, a creature of reinvention.

Yes, Halford is indeed a Puritan, if you define him as a man of musical faith. It's worth noting, after all, that a crucible is the vessel of fire where impurities are removed from superheated metals.

"The music business is as tough as it ever was," he warns. "Putting together another world tour is just as stressful and full of its headaches as it ever was, but I don't think it should be any different. Because, let's face it, nothing comes easy in life. It shouldn't be handed to you on a platter--you should work for it. The most important thing for me in what I do is it reaches and touches and affects so many more people. That's the power of music, and I never diminish that understanding and great gift that music is."

I mention that July 4, 2002 marks 10 years to the day that the singer announced he was leaving one of rock's most prolific and durable bands. You could call it Halford Independence Day.

"It's 10 years, is it? I think I'm onstage with Slayer in Bulgaria that day," he notes, quick to throw in: "Bulgaria. There's something appropriate about that, isn't there?" It's a moment of pure Halford: part outlaw rock star, part Nathan Lane.