Express & Star recently conducted an interview with original
JUDAS PRIEST singer
Allan Atkins. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow.
On his 1973 split with
JUDAS PRIEST:
"I was the only one in the group married and with a child, but money was a struggle. We had signed a recording contract and were playing with groups such as
BLACK SABBATH,
STATUS QUO,
SUPERTRAMP and
THIN LIZZY. We were getting bigger, but so were our overheads and we were not making any money — some of the band members were not eating much as they couldn't afford the food. In 1972
JUDAS PRIEST did 150 gigs around the country, but we didn’t take any money home. Also travelling all over the country meant I hardly got to see my family and any spare time we did have was taken up with doing photos and rehearsing. I was replaced on vocals by
Rob Halford, who is now called the Metal God, and I got a job at Sutton Coldfield Cost Office garage."
"At that time
JUDAS PRIEST were working really hard, going into Europe and it was fantastic to see that something I had started was doing so well. They had become one of these bands that we had dreamed of being. Then their album
'British Steel' came out and they were on
'Top of the Pops' and before I knew it they were a household name."
On his new band called
HOLY RAGE who will be playing at JB's in Dudley on July 25 and at the Robin 2 in Bilston on August 12:
"I had wanted to get away from the name
JUDAS PRIEST and the music but somehow I couldn't as the name and its history was always at the back of my mind. To this day I will continue to buy their albums, but as a fan and not for any sort of yearning to remember the past."
Read more from
Express & Star.
JUDAS PRIEST bassist
Ian Hill has penned the foreword to
Al Atkins's autobiography, titled
"Dawn of the Metal Gods: My Life in Judas Priest and Heavy Metal". The book, which was was written with
Neil Daniels — a freelance rock writer and heavy metal fan who befriended
Atkins during the writing of
Neil's book
"The Story of Judas Priest: Defenders of the Faith" (
Omnibus Press) — is available via
Iron Pages.
