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During an interview with MTV in 1998, Rob Halford said, “I think most people know that I’ve been a gay man all of my life.” He was right: The Metal God’s sexuality was the worst-kept secret in rock and roll, and by 1998 no one was surprised when he came out of the closet.
Did I know? Sure, I was a Judas Priest fan, but I no more thought Halford was hetero than I thought professional wrestling was real. Nonetheless, there was a lot that I didn’t know, a lot that I wanted to know. Thanks to Halford’s new autobiography, Confess, now I know.
Let me start at the beginning — for me, not for Halford. In the summer of 1982, the poster for Judas Priest’s album Screaming for Vengeance hung alongside the poster for Iron Maiden’s The Number of the Beast in the local record store. As a 12-year-old metalhead, I was transfixed by the fantastic artwork, and soon MTV had me sold on the bands as I lived out a Beavis and Butt-Head existence with my buddies.
Halford clad in leather was a hypermasculine icon. By then I knew The Village People were gay. The first record I ever bought was the 45 RPM single of “Macho Man” in 1978. The first full-length album I bought was Queen’s The Game in 1980. Freddie Mercury was tough, singing, “Another One Bites the Dust.” As an undersized kid, tough and masculine is what I wanted to be, and it was how I tried to act.
My father might have wondered if I was gay when he saw my icons of masculinity. But no, I am in today’s parlance a cis-gendered heterosexual male. But did my father know at a glance that Halford and Mercury were gay? Probably not. As Halford tells us in Confess, in the early 1970s, he didn’t even know that Mercury was gay: “Freddie Mercury was a god for me from the start. It wasn’t that he was gay—I didn’t even realize that. … I wasn’t sure about Bolan or Bowie. Freddie didn’t even occur to me; I just thought he was a fantastic, extroverted, flamboyant performer.”
It didn’t take long, though, before the rumors about Halford began to swirl. One was that he had been a performer in gay porno movies before Judas Priest. It has been a remarkably stubborn myth, but it is false. Although I probably would have denied that Halford was gay when I was 14, on a certain level I knew. I would guess other fans had a similar sense of things.
In 1998, what I wondered about Halford was if all along he was having a laugh at the young fans who donned leather and spikes in imitation of him. In Confess, he makes clear that: “Our leather-and-studs image came together gradually … and felt very natural. I thought we were channeling all sorts of things, from macho culture to Marlon Brando, but the end result was that suddenly we looked like a heavy metal band.” So, it turns out that fans like me were reading the fashion as it was sincerely intended. Indeed, nothing sexual of any kind was meant by the look. As Halford says in Confess, “The biggest myth about this new stage gear is that I had somehow masterminded the image as a cover and a vent for my homosexuality—that I was getting a thrill from dressing onstage as I’d like to dress in the street, or the bedroom. This is utter bollocks. I had no interest in S&M domination, or the whole queer subcult of leather and chains.”
Far from mocking his fans, Halford was appreciative of fans and very scared that they might learn the truth about his sexuality. “There were the claustrophobic, desperate years—so many of them!—when I felt trapped … too frightened to tell the world that I was a gay man. I used to lie awake all night wondering: What would happen if I came out? Would we lose all our fans? Would it kill Judas Priest? That fear and angst took me to some very dark places.”
Metal fans, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s, did not have a reputation for being open-minded. As with many stereotypes, there is a reason for this reputation. But of course, stereotypes are inherently unfair. Consider what Halford says about the rest of the guys in the band: “Priest clearly knew, and I am grateful that they not only never cared, but never even mentioned it to me. In the early seventies, that was incredibly open-minded of them—and a lot of working-class Midland blokes would not have behaved the same way.”
Would fans have been as open-minded as the band? Probably not. As a result, Halford suffered a great deal as he “had to live a stifling lie.” The sad and sordid details are in Confess. You should definitely read it. Halford is brave and unsparing with telling the truth about the pathetic way he lived at the height of his stardom.
I have no gripe with Halford when it comes to his sexuality. No one should. But I do have a bone to pick with him when it comes to music—and I don’t think I’m the only one. Halford put himself forward as the standard-bearer for metal, a “defender of the faith.” In the early 1980s, fans like me certainly appreciated that. Heavy metal was our faith in a way that non-fans never understood. To be faithful was to be committed as one might be a faithful friend or spouse. Think of the Marines motto “Semper Fi”—always faithful. Heavy metal did not have a written creed, but for me and many others, it was about an authentic expression of anger and a longing for triumph over oppression. Like many other great religions, heavy metal succeeded in telling fantasy tales that stoked the imagination, providing hope and catharsis.
From this metal fan’s perspective, being committed, being true, meant that a band did not compromise their sound to appeal to a wider audience. That is why it was a colossal disappointment, dare I say betrayal, when Judas Priest released Turbo in 1986. Notoriously, the music is watered down with synthesizers, and the lyrics are lame. From this fan’s perspective, it sounded like Halford and Priest had sold out to cash in on the popularity of pseudo-metal from bands like Bon Jovi. Halford denies this, though, and K.K. Downing tells a similar story in his autobiography, Heavy Duty. The band was given new guitar synthesizers, and they liked the sound. If that is true, then they were duped into making a crappy album. The follow-up, Ram It Down, was heavier but lackluster.
In 1990, Judas Priest did a complete turnaround from Turbo when they released Painkiller. Instead of watered-down glam, the new album delivered hard-charging metal. Halford says, “I still think that Painkiller is Priest’s Sgt. Pepper. It’s our musical high benchmark that everything else is measured against.” It’s a great album, an unbelievable comeback. There’s no arguing about it. It’s not Priest’s highpoint, though. (I’d say Defenders of the Faith was their best album.) Painkiller wasn’t as innovative as it was imitative. Halford doesn’t acknowledge it, but Painkiller owes a lot of inspiration to the thrash metal of Metallica and Slayer. That’s not a complaint, though.
My complaint is that Halford left Judas Priest after the album he considered their highpoint. Confess is fascinating for many reasons, and one of them is Halford’s admission that he avoids confrontation—certainly not the stage persona that he cultivated. As Halford tells the story, it was his inability to assert himself and his tendency to avoid confrontation that caused a misunderstanding that had him out of the band for 12 years. As a fan, I feel better knowing this.
From my mistaken perspective, it had previously looked like Halford left the band just when metal needed him most. The 1990s were not kind to metal (above the underground of death metal and black metal anyway), and the metal world could really have benefitted from having Halford helming Priest and defending the faith.
Was his departure from Priest a sin? No, but it was a lost opportunity. At least that’s the way it looks to me, but what do I know? Halford rejoined the band in 2004 and has continued spreading the gospel of heavy metal to this day. For that, and much more, fans like me are grateful that the Metal God has been resurrected.
