Glenn Tipton
Today we will tell you about guitarist, composer and songwriter Glenn Tipton!
(Photo: Kevin Winter)
He is considered one of the fathers of modern heavy metal guitar, the other half of the legendary guitar duo of the band "Judas Priest" alongside K. K. Downing, and the only musician besides bassist Ian Hill to have played on all nineteen of the band's studio albums over five decades. Here are 38 interesting facts about Glenn Tipton...
1. He was born on October 25, 1947, in the town of Blackheath in Staffordshire, England, near the industrial city of Birmingham, to his parents Olive and Doug Tipton, with the full name Glenn Raymond Tipton.
2. As a child, he attended Olive Hill Primary School and at the age of eleven he transferred to Halesowen Technical School, during which time he developed a keen interest in painting, football and birdwatching, hobbies that accompanied him throughout his life.
3. His first musical exposure came from home, when his mother Olive taught him to play the piano at a young age, a classical training that gave him a broad harmonic and melodic perception that would later set him apart from other guitarists in the metal scene.
4. His older brother, Gary Tipton, played guitar in a successful local cover band called "The Atlantics," and the young Tipton used to sneak into his room and admire his guitars, but he was forbidden to touch them.
5. Unlike most guitar legends who started playing as children, Tipton only started playing guitar at the age of 19 in 1966, when he purchased a simple Hofner acoustic guitar and began practicing chords in his spare time.
6. Before becoming a full-time musician, he worked for about five years at the British Industrial Plastics factory in the town of Oldbury, a difficult and rough life experience that shaped his uncompromising work ethic.
7. The first electric guitar he bought was an old, beat-up Fender Stratocaster, which was later replaced with a white 1961 model that became his main instrument early in his career, until the guitar was stolen from him after a performance in Newcastle.
8. With the insurance money he received following the theft of the guitar, he purchased a black Fender Stratocaster and a Gibson SG Special guitar, two instruments with which he was filmed at the historic "Judas Priest" performance on the BBC television program called "The Old Grey Whistle Test" in 1975.
9. He took his first steps on stage in local blues-rock bands in the Birmingham area, including "Shave 'Em Dry" and "Merlin", in which he collaborated with vocalist Pete Hughes.
10. In 1971, he formed the hard rock and heavy blues band "The Flying Hat Band", in which he served as lead guitarist and lead singer, alongside bassist Peter "Mars" Cowling, who later played with Pat Travers, and drummer Steve Palmer, brother of Carl Palmer from the band "Emerson, Lake & Palmer".
11. The Flying Hat Band was signed to the prestigious Vertigo Records label and even recorded material for a debut album at Central Sound Studios in London in 1972, but the record company decided to shelve the album and the band disbanded, with the original recording tapes remaining in Tipton's private safe.
12. In April 1974, as the band "Judas Priest" was about to enter the studio to record its debut album, the record company Gull Records demanded that the band add another musician to thicken its sound, and instead of a keyboardist or drummer, guitarist K. K. Downing chose to add Glenn Tipton as a second guitarist.
13. Tipton joined the band at the very last minute during the recordings of the debut album "Rocka Rolla" which was released in September 1974 and produced by Rodger Bain, the producer of the first three albums of the band "Black Sabbath", and contributed guitar and synthesizer solos to the album.
14. Thanks to his childhood background, Tipton was the one who played piano and keyboards on Judas Priest's early albums, including the stirring piano openings on classics like "Epitaph", "Here Come the Tears" and the iconic ballad "Beyond the Realms of Death".
15. The band's second studio album, the 1976 masterpiece "Sad Wings of Destiny," fully cemented the historic combination between Tipton and K. K. Downing, who, along with Rob Halford's powerful operatic voice, laid the foundation stones of heavy metal in songs like "Victim of Changes" and "The Ripper".
16. While K. K. Downing's playing style was characterized by raw aggression, rough blues, and wild use of the tremolo arm, Tipton brought melodic precision, classically influenced structures, and advanced techniques of legato, sweep picking, and tapping to the band as early as the late 1970s.
17. A prime example of his greatness as a composer and guitar soloist is heard in the epic ballad "Beyond the Realms of Death" from the 1978 album "Stained Class", in which he composed and performed one of the most moving, dramatic, and highly regarded guitar solos in the history of heavy music.
18. Later in 1978, the band released the album "Killing Machine", renamed in the United States to "Hell Bent for Leather", on which Tipton alone wrote the American theme song "Hell Bent for Leather" and the chilling ballad "Before the Dawn", alongside the concert hit "Take On the World".
19. In 1979, the acclaimed live album "Unleashed in the East" was recorded in Tokyo, which documented the band's stage power and became their first platinum album, with Tipton and Downing's guitar performances still considered a school of metal playing.
20. In April 1980, Tipton, along with Rob Halford and K. K. Downing, led the massive commercial breakthrough album "British Steel", recorded at the Tittenhurst Park estate owned by John Lennon and Ringo Starr, and included the timeless anthems "Breaking the Law", "Living After Midnight" and "Metal Gods".
21. Surprisingly for a leading guitar band, in the song "Breaking the Law" Tipton and Downing chose to forgo a guitar solo entirely in favor of police sirens and the sound of shattering glass created by using milk bottles in the mansion's kitchen, while in the hit "Living After Midnight" Tipton performs the short, catchy solo.
22. In 1982, the band reached the peak of their success in the United States with the album "Screaming for Vengeance", which opened with the iconic instrumental section "The Hellion" and the song "Electric Eye", and included the band's biggest hit on the American charts, "You've Got Another Thing Comin'".
23. The cutting and dizzying solo in the song "You've Got Another Thing Comin'" was played by Glenn Tipton, who also led the writing of the great classics from the band's next album, 1984's "Defenders of the Faith", most notably "Freewheel Burning" and "The Sentinel".
24. In the mid-1980s, he left the traditional Fender and Gibson guitars in favor of close collaboration with the American guitar company Hamer, which developed for him the famous Hamer GT signature models with their unique angular shape and Kahler bridge, which accompanied him for decades.
25. On the 1986 album "Turbo," Tipton was the driving force behind the incorporation of Roland G-707 guitar synthesizers into the band's sound, a bold move that spawned the huge hit "Turbo Lover" and gave the band another platinum album in the United States.
26. In 1990, at the age of 42, he stunned the metal world when he upgraded his playing technique to extreme levels of speed and aggression on the masterpiece album "Painkiller", in which he played one of the greatest and most virtuosic guitar solos of all time on the title track.
27. Alongside his activities in his mother band, he contributed his playing as a guest on albums by surprising artists, including a guitar solo on the song "Spirit of America" by British pop star Samantha Fox from 1991, and a guest appearance on the song "Drink the Fear" by the American post-grunge band "The Nixons" from 1995.
28. During Judas Priest's hiatus in the mid-1990s following the temporary departure of Rob Halford, Tipton recorded his first solo album, "Baptizm of Fire", released in February 1997 on Atlantic Records, on which he also sang all the lead vocals himself.
29. For the recording of the album "Baptizm of Fire", Tipton recruited a dream team of rock and metal musicians, including bassists John Entwistle from "The Who", Robert Trujillo, who then accompanied Ozzy Osbourne and later joined Metallica, Billy Sheehan and Neil Murray, drummers Cozy Powell, Shannon Larkin and Brooks Wackerman, and keyboardist Don Airey.
30. On this album, he also performed a heavy and fast cover version of the classic "Paint It Black" by "The Rolling Stones", and recorded the quiet and personal song "New Breed" with his nephew, drummer Rick Tipton, and his young daughter Karina Tipton, who participated in background vocals.
31. After leading "Judas Priest" on two studio albums with vocalist Tim "Ripper" Owens, the albums "Jugulator" from 1997 and "Demolition" from 2001, he reunited in 2003 with Rob Halford and released the successful comeback album "Angel of Retribution" with the band in 2005.
32. In March 2006, he released a second solo album under the name Tipton, Entwistle & Powell called "Edge of the World", which was composed of rare and hidden recordings that he made in his private studio in the mid-1990s with his late friends, bassist John Entwistle and drummer Cozy Powell, and its proceeds were donated to the NHS Hospital in the UK.
33. In 2008, he led the writing of his band's dual symphonic and conceptual epic, "Nostradamus," and in 2009, he contributed original guitar solos to the soundtrack of the popular video game "Brütal Legend" starring Jack Black.
34. After K. K. Downing left the band in 2011, Tipton chose young guitarist Richie Faulkner to join Judas Priest, and together with him he recorded the 2014 album "Redeemer of Souls", which entered the top ten on the US Billboard charts.
35. In February 2018, ahead of the release of the band's acclaimed eighteenth studio album, "Firepower," Tipton bravely revealed that he had been battling Parkinson's disease for ten years, having been diagnosed with it in 2008, and announced that producer and guitarist Andy Sneap would fill in for him on full tours, while he would continue to be a full member of the band and join them on stage for encores.
36. Following the revelation of his illness, the band established the special fund The Glenn Tipton Parkinson's Foundation in June 2018, which raised hundreds of thousands of pounds to fund medical research and pioneering treatments for Parkinson's patients around the world.
37. In November 2022, Tipton was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame along with his bandmates from the band "Judas Priest", and took the stage in Los Angeles for an exciting and historic performance alongside Rob Halford, Ian Hill, Scott Travis, Richie Faulkner, as well as his longtime partner K. K. Downing and former drummer Les Binks.
38. In March 2024, he again demonstrated his inexhaustible creative power when he released his nineteenth studio album, "Invincible Shield", with "Judas Priest", which received critical acclaim and reached number two in the UK Albums Chart, and in which Tipton contributed writing and playing, including on the powerful song "Sons of Thunder".
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