Judas Priest – Rob Halford: “By launching into the theater, my homosexuality became obvious”

“I’m not the type to ask myself, ‘What if things turned out differently?’ I take life as it comes. At 69, Rob Halford does not want to imagine his life if he had revealed his homosexuality earlier. Because, for a long time, the singer of Judas Priest, who however wore explicit leather outfits on stage, hid his sexuality. Even with the members of his group, the omerta was in order. “It comes from British phlegm,” smiles Halford. As long as I sang well, and was in good shape to go on stage, they weren’t interested in the rest. We have always operated this way, without asking questions about our private lives. “

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For more than twenty years, Halford therefore preferred to “stay in the closet”, rather than having to assert himself in the very testosterone world of hard-rock. “Since childhood I felt different, I quickly understood that men could have a form of femininity in them. Even the most manly. And it was by launching myself into the theater that my homosexuality became evident. But when Judas Priest formed in the early 1970s – Halford joined them in 1973 – it was inconceivable that their singer was more focused on boys than on girls. “On the album ‘Sin After Sin’, I wrote ‘Raw Deal’, a song about the wandering of a couple of men on Fire Island, the mecca of gays. Everything was said. Well, nobody ever told me about it. No journalist has asked me why I wrote this… Maybe the texts are not that important… ”

Halford nevertheless decides to put his career before his intimacy and, in order not to have to think too much about it, drowns in alcohol and drugs. Until that day in 1997 when he spoke his truth. “Because I had decided to be sober, to be honest…” The times have also evolved, and his coming-out allows Judas Priest to recover. Almost thirty years later, the group filled the halls in front of an audience of loyal metalworkers, now coming to see the Priest as a venerable icon of the past. Halford recounts many details in his autobiography, such as this reception by the Queen of England during a private ceremony, a great personal pride of the singer. “Honestly, even in a wheelchair, I’ll be singing ‘Living After Midnight’ for the rest of my life. I am lucky to be stimulated by what I read, what I see, what I hear, and it gives me ideas for the future. “No matter what, I’ll keep screaming like a skunk!” ”