02/12/2024
Here's Rob Halford in July 1981, showing everyone how DENIM AND LEATHER is done. ⚓✨ Though Judas Priest wasn't part of the "new wave" of the NWOBHM, their British Steel LP in 1980 was hugely influential to the younger bands around them, especially as they graduated from AC/DC openers in 1979 to full-fledged headliners soon taking Def Leppard and Iron Maiden out as support.
✒ READ DENIM AND LEATHER, by Michael Hann:
♠ https://www.bazillionpoints.com/nwobhm
FROM THE BOOK:
Malcolm Dome: "Priest’s influence has always been underplayed. They were very important. Not just in terms of music, but the image. You look at the image around the time of Unleashed in the East , when they suddenly went into leather and studs, which became really the metal uniform, and that came from Priest."
K.K. Downing (guitar, Judas Priest): "We wouldn’t have to wear all the same suits like the Beatles—we’d have to design our own clothes, but they all came together. It’s almost like The Magnificent Seven in a way—they’ve all got their own identity, but they’ve all got the gun belts and they’ve got the hats. Or it was almost like one of those military things, where everybody’s got their own look, but they’re all a part of the platoon, you know? So I’m thinking they look fearsome together."
Rob Halford: "I think there’s this feeling in a band of wanting to find unity, as far as the visual side. And Ken was the first one to adopt that change in what he was wearing, we all picked up from and developed, pretty much all the same time...Once I personally attach myself to an idea that can be developed and explored, I just go for it. And so I’d go in and out of various s*x shops in London, and it became part of the overall imagery of the band. There was nothing more attached to it than that..."
Read all about it—including both sides of the story of K.K. Downing's feud with Iron Maiden singer Paul Di'Anno—in DENIM AND LEATHER...
