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Rob Halford interview: ‘The Queen asked me why heavy metal is so loud’

Heavy duty: Rob Halford, of West Midlands rockers Judas Priest, kept his sexuality hidden for 26 years - Tim Mosenfelder/Getty
Heavy duty: Rob Halford, of West Midlands rockers Judas Priest, kept his sexuality hidden for 26 years - Tim Mosenfelder/Getty

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II makes a surprising appearance in Confess, the frankly eye-popping autobiography of Rob Halford, frontman of veteran British heavy metal rock band Judas Priest. A staunch royalist since the Queen visited his hometown of Walsall in 1957, Halford was thrilled to be invited to a music business reception at Buckingham Palace in 2005.

Greeting Her Majesty, the overenthusiastic rocker was ticked off by the late Cilla Black for breaking royal etiquette and reaching out for a handshake. “Cilla was nudging me in the ribs, saying ‘I can’t take you anywhere!’” laughs Halford, recalling how the Queen gave his hand “the slightest brush with the tips of her fingers”.

It was at this moment that the Queen asked the question many music lovers have always wanted to ask: “Heavy metal,” she said. “Why does it have to be so loud?”

On the phone from his kitchen in Phoenix, Arizona, Halford laughs at the memory. “It’s a good question,” he concedes. “It’s so we can bang our heads, Your Majesty,” is what he told the Queen. But he’s had a chance to give it serious thought since then, considering the rock form’s origins with Black Sabbath in Birmingham in the late Sixties, just 11 miles from Walsall, and the Black Country roots of Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant.

“The character of the West Midlands is born and bred into heavy metal,” says Halford, who, at 69, still talks with the heavy vowels and archaic pronunciations of the area. “It is loud but it’s full of angst. Maybe it needed to be that loud so you could hear it above the steam hammers, and the welders, and the coal mining, and the heavy industry when we were growing up.”

Judas Priest in 1979, with Rob Halford centre - Michael Ochs Archives
Judas Priest in 1979, with Rob Halford centre - Michael Ochs Archives

Halford’s book vividly describes the greyness and soot that filled his childhood, and the pounding sound of the iron works he passed every day on the way to school. Confess is a rip-roaring tale, a funny, often shocking and genuinely emotional story of how a sensitive, working-class boy became known to fans all over the world as the Metal God. Tattooed, leather clad and steel-studded, he and his band evolved from Seventies prog and glam rock into hard-riffing pioneers of the new wave of British heavy metal, selling 50 million albums over their 50-year career, and still going strong today.

But for decades, Halford harboured a secret he feared might destroy his career, driving him to drink and drug addiction and suicidal despair. Halford is homosexual, something he realised at 10 years old, but kept hidden until he was 36, “a gay man fronting a straight band in a macho world”.

“It’s different for young people today – there are resources,” says Halford. “Growing up, gay people were all in hiding, we were all afraid, we could go to jail.”

His fear of exposure was exacerbated by the impact of sexual abuse by older men when he was a naive youngster. “I still think that’s left me broken. Even now I find it difficult to be intimate with somebody. So that whole business of hiding in the closet, it’s all wrapped up in the psychosis of what happened to me from an early part of my life.”

It led to an almost split-personality existence, with Judas Priest indulging in a wildly hedonistic rock and roll lifestyle whilst their charismatic frontman led a haunted private life of loneliness, celibacy and repression. Like Elton John, Freddie Mercury and George Michael, there were rumours about Halford’s sexuality, but he didn’t come out until 1996, with unplanned comments during an MTV interview.

Rob Halford's book vividly describes the greyness and soot that filled his childhood
Rob Halford's book vividly describes the greyness and soot that filled his childhood

“It was the right time for me,” he says. “Some people never come out.” By then, Halford had settled into his first genuinely stable relationship and he is still with the same partner today.

“When you’re in the closet, you’re protecting everybody but yourself. That’s no way to live. I would urge anybody, if you have the strength to face it – and it does take strength – it’s the greatest thing you can do for yourself. It really is. And you’ll be surprised, for the most part, by the acceptance that is there.”

Many of his family, friends, band members and fans told him they always knew he was gay. “So you’re going ‘Why the f--- didn’t I speak earlier?’ It’s a terrible self torture. If you can let yourself out of your prison, do it as soon as you possibly can.”

These days, he refers to himself as “the stately homo of heavy metal”, but when he started visiting gay bars in his 30s, he was warned by management about “the damage it could do to Priest if it leaked out”. Meanwhile, his alcohol and cocaine addiction was spiralling out of control. “The other party was more concerned about lining their own pockets than my ongoing battle with booze and drugs,” he says. “It’s exploitation, and that’s been going on forever in rock and roll, from Elvis to Amy Winehouse.”

In the closing days of 1985, Halford attempted suicide with whiskey and sleeping pills. “I think it was a cry for help,” he says. “Because why didn’t I finish it? Something made me drag my ass out of bed and bang on my friend’s door and say, ‘I think I’ve overdosed.’ ” He wound up in rehab and has remained sober ever since, without joining Alcoholics Anonymous. “I just stopped drinking, and I stayed stopped,” he says in his book, ascribing it to Black Country belligerence: “If you’ve got something to do, just get on with it.”

“I support AA one thousand per cent,” he says now. “There are people who absolutely need to go to a meeting and sit with others going through the same recovery. You do whatever you need to do to stay clean and sober. For me, there was a gigantic shift, a determination never ever to feel as bad as I did, ever again.”

Rob Halford with Lemmy of Motorhead
Rob Halford with Lemmy of Motorhead

A crucial moment arrived during his first sober show in May 1986. “I felt like I was floating on air, cause I was experiencing music in its purest form, free of interference, feeling the reaction of the audience and the band around me. There was a clarity that I didn’t want to ever cloud over again.”

He believes perceptions of heavy metal have changed since Judas Priest found themselves on trial in Nevada in 1990, blamed for the suicide of two young fans who, it was alleged, had been influenced by subliminal messages heard when Judas Priest songs were played backwards. The book’s account is blackly humorous, noting reports that White Heat, Red Hot backwards sounded less like a Satanic message than “evil dolphins chanting”. “If we were going to put subliminals on our album, we wouldn’t say ‘Kill yourself!’ we’d say ‘Buy more of our records!’ ” Halford noted at the time.

“It was comical, but sitting in that court was heartbreaking as well,” he says. His lawyers focused on the victims’ lives of abuse and domestic violence. They had dropped out of school, were using drink and drugs and already had criminal records.

“Those two beautiful boys were metal heads, they were our fans. They were using the power of music to deal with booze and drugs and a broken dysfunctional family.” Halford thinks the dismissal of charges was a turning point in the wider acceptance of heavy metal.

“There’s a bit of a misconception that Judas Priest are very negative. Some songs are larger than life, they deal with death, doom and destruction, but we’ve always shown the power of humanity to overcome the darkest moments. We’ve taken really hardcore, gutsy material and shown you have to battle on. That’s the UK spirit. That’s heavy metal.”

Confess by Rob Halford will be published by Headline on Sept 29. The Samaritans can be contacted 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Call 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org