Rob Halford
Singer and songwriter Rob Halford is celebrating his birthday today!
(Photo: Jim Louvau)
Here are 16 interesting facts about the "Metal God" with the infinite range of vocal:
1. He shares the same birthday as Gene Simmons from "Kiss" and guitarist Vivian Campbell from "Def Leppard" and former "Dio".
2. Before starting his musical career he worked in a cinema that screened pornographic films.
3. He returned to his "roots" when he played a clerk at a porn video store in the 2002 film "Spun", which also starred Mickey Rourke. See here:
4. He is a die-hard cat lover. In a 2020 interview, he revealed that he owned around 100 cat shirts.
5. In 2010 he participated in an advertisement for the communications company "Virgin Mobile". He played a priest. See here:
6. Rob also served as a lighting technician in the theater before joining "Judas Priest", this contributed to his theatricality in performances and among other things to the idea of entering the stage on a motorcycle.
7. Speaking of motorcycles, during the final show of the "Painkiller" tour in 1991, Halford crashed his motorcycle onstage and broke his nose. Despite briefly losing consciousness, he recovered and returned to complete the encore.
8. It was his sister Sue who made the connection between him and "Judas Priest". At the time, she dated Bassist Ian Hill through whom Rob was accepted into the band. Hill later married Rob's sister which made them brothers-in-law who play in the same band.
9. He used a real submachine gun loaded with blanks and fired it over the stunned audience during the "British Steel" tour.
(Photo: ultimate-guitar.com)
10. In 1986 he was completely cleansed of drug and alcohol addictions. This did not stop him from singing background vocals in the song "Feel Good Hit of the Summer" by the band "Queens of the Stone Age" also known as "Nicotine, Valium, Vicodin, Marijuana, Ecstasy and Alcohol".
11. He performed as the lead singer of "Black Sabbath" at three different shows. He first replaced Ronnie James Dio for two shows in 1992 after Dio refused to open for Ozzy Osbourne. He later replaced Ozzy during a "Black Sabbath" performance at Ozzfest in 2004. During the 1992 shows, Halford also took the opportunity to bring back songs that "Black Sabbath" had not performed for some time, simply because they were among his favorites and he believed the fans would want to hear them.
12. Although Halford is a car collector he only got his driver's license at the age of 38.
13. Halford played the harmonica in songs, "Rocka Rolla" and "Cheater" from "Judas Priest"'s first album.
14. He wrote all the guitar parts for the album "War of Words" of his band "Fight" which he formed after leaving "Judas Priest", so technically he also knows how to play the guitar. But he stated in an interview that he is probably the worst guitar player in the world.
15. He publicly came out as gay in 1998 during an interview with MTV. The moment was not planned as a formal announcement; while answering a question, Halford casually used the phrase "speaking as a gay man", effectively coming out in the middle of the interview. He was pleasantly surprised by the overwhelmingly supportive response he received from metal fans.
16. The movie "Rock Star" starring Mark Wahlberg was originally supposed to be called "Metal God". Halford's lawyers claimed it was already Halford's trademark and threatened to take legal action if the movie producers did not choose a different name for the film. The film's producers were convinced and changed the name.
Before joining "Judas Priest", Halford sang in several local bands, the last of which was "Hiroshima". When he joined "Judas Priest" in 1973, he brought drummer John Hinch with him from the band. Hinch would later play on the band's debut album "Rocka Rolla".
Halford's first performance with "Judas Priest" took place in May 1973 at the "Townhouse" in Wellington, Shropshire, more than a year before the release of the band's debut album "Rocka Rolla".
In 1992, Rob Halford wrote and recorded "Light Comes Out of Black" with members of "Pantera" for the soundtrack of the film "Buffy the Vampire Slayer". Working with Dimebag Darrell proved particularly significant for Halford, as he later explained that it was the first time he had written a song by himself, giving him the confidence to pursue his own musical direction outside "Judas Priest". The song was completed in a single day.
In fact, Halford considered trying to recruit Dimebag Darrell for his new project. He later explained that he decided against it because he felt it would have been unfair to tempt Dimebag away from "Pantera", who were on the verge of becoming one of the biggest metal bands of the 1990s.
The formation of "Fight" happened almost by accident. While Halford was getting tattooed, he and his tattoo artist began talking about music. Halford discovered that the tattoo artist played in a band, went to see them perform, and eventually recruited bassist Jack "Jay Jay" Brown and guitarist and keyboardist Brian Tilse from that band for "Fight".
Following "Fight", Halford made one of the most unexpected stylistic turns of his career when he formed "2wo" with guitarist John 5. The project combined rock and metal with industrial music, and released its only album, "Voyeurs", in 1998.
"2wo" also had a direct connection to Trent Reznor of "Nine Inch Nails". Halford happened to visit Reznor's studio in New Orleans and played him some of the material he had been working on. Reznor subsequently became heavily involved in reshaping the project's sound, and "Voyeurs" was eventually released through his "Nothing Records" label.
Halford even made it to "The Simpsons". In the 2014 episode "Steal This Episode", he performed a humorous version of "Breaking the Law", with the lyrics changed to "Respecting the Law". It was another indication of just how far the song, and Halford himself, had crossed over into popular culture.
In 2022, on the night "Judas Priest" received the Musical Excellence Award and was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Halford found himself singing "Jolene" alongside Dolly Parton, Pink, Annie Lennox, Pat Benatar, Simon Le Bon, Sheryl Crow and others. His connection with Parton later developed into an actual collaboration, with Halford appearing on "Bygones" from her 2023 rock album "Rockstar".
One of Halford's most successful later collaborations came with "Five Finger Death Punch". When the band initially approached him about appearing on "Lift Me Up", they were told that he was too busy working on a new "Judas Priest" album. After hearing the song, however, Halford personally called them and said that not only did he want to sing on it, but that he would fly to Las Vegas to record with them. The song subsequently reached No. 1 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock chart.
The story behind Halford's departure from "Judas Priest" is more complicated than is often assumed. Halford wanted to record a side project and had received the blessing of his bandmates, but was reportedly told that, for contractual reasons, he had to formally "resign" from the band in order to do so. The letter he wrote was leaked and interpreted as an actual resignation from "Judas Priest", and the situation deteriorated until the separation lasted for more than a decade.
In 2005, Halford was invited to a reception at Buckingham Palace celebrating the British music industry, where he met Queen Elizabeth II. When the Queen asked him why heavy metal had to be so loud, Halford explained that the music needed to be played loud so people could headbang to it. He later described meeting the Queen as one of the special memories of his life.
More than two decades before publicly coming out, Halford had already incorporated clear references to his sexuality into the music of "Judas Priest". On "Raw Deal" from the 1977 album "Sin After Sin", he included references to Fire Island and its gay culture. Halford later recalled that he thought the meaning was obvious, yet almost nobody picked up on it. In 1981, a fan approached him who understood what the song was about, and the two later became partners.
Halford is also a huge fan of Christmas music, so much so that he has released two Christmas albums. In 2009, he released "Halford III: Winter Songs" with his band "Halford", combining traditional Christmas songs with original material. He returned to the idea in 2019 with "Celestial", this time turning it into a family project featuring, among others, his brother Nigel and his nephew Alex Hill.
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