Currents

More than 50 years after it exploded into the public consciousness in the late 1960s, heavy metal is still one of the most popular subgenres of rock and roll. Even as rock has faded from the mainstream, heavy metal endures with legions of fans across the world, from Scandinavia to the United States, to countries like Botswana, whose heavy metal subculture is burgeoning. There is perhaps no single individual who personifies the genre more than Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford. Halford’s powerful vocal abilities, which range from high-pitched screams to guttural growls, set the bar for what a heavy metal singer should be. It’s also ironic that the rock legend who epitomizes heavy metal’s hyper-aggression and masculine excesses is also a gay man.

Rob Halford was born in 1951 outside of Birmingham, England to mother Joan and father Barrie, who worked in a steel mill. Halford’s first musical influences came from his Aunt Pat who introduced him to Elvis Presley and Bill Haley & His Comets. Hearing their music for the first time was a life-changing experience. The Beatles, The Who, and the Rolling Stones also numbered among the bands that shaped Halford during his formative years. It was clear early on that Halford was cut from a more artistic cloth. Unlike so many of Birmingham’s young men, he showed no interest in working at the local steel mills. Instead, he preferred to sing and write poetry.

Halford realized he was gay when he was a preteen during a time when same-sex relations were illegal in Great Britain. In 1954, over a thousand men in England and Wales were in prison for the crime of being gay or bisexual. It wouldn’t be until 1967 that homosexuality was legalized, but by that point, the damage to Halford’s psyche had already been done. Halford grew up ashamed and disgusted by his sexuality, a feeling that only worsened when he’d hear people say that gay men should be locked away. Despite his best efforts to conceal his sexual orientation, his father Barrie discovered the truth after finding a gay pornographic magazine his then 13-year-old son Rob had accidentally left in his car. Barrie asked if the magazine belonged to Rob. When Halford, having been raised in a household where honesty was valued above all else, said yes, his father stormed out of the room. They never spoke about his sexuality again.

As a teenager, Halford took to heavy drinking and abusing prescription pills to cope with the shame over his sexuality, a habit that would plague him for years. The only thing that made him happy was music. In 1973, Halford’s sister Sue introduced him to guitarist K.K. Downing along with her then-boyfriend, bassist Ian Hill. The pair were looking for a new lead singer for their Birmingham-based band named Judas Priest, which was among the many groups inspired by Black Sabbath, the first true heavy metal band (and also based out of Birmingham). These bands were all made up of young working-class men just as influenced by the roar of industrial machinery from nearby factories as they were by the rock music they’d grown up listening to. Downing and Hill invited Halford to be the band’s new lead vocalist, and in 1974, Judas Priest released their first studio album, Rocka Rolla. The album, deeply influenced by blues and lacking any distinctive style to differentiate it from the many other hard rock bands competing in the market, was a commercial failure and received no attention from the press.

Judas Priest’s second album, Sad Wings of Destiny (1976), despite also being a commercial failure, marked a turning point both for the band and the heavy metal genre itself. Black Sabbath and Deep Purple may have created heavy metal, but their song structures were based on the same blues influences that permeated conventional rock and roll. In Sad Wings of Destiny, Judas Priest stripped away the blues trappings to lay bare a bombastic sound of pure brute force. The album’s opening track, “Victim of Changes”, became the blueprint for every Judas Priest song that followed. The nearly eight-minute epic features lengthy twin guitar solos from K.K. Downing and Glen Tipton, but its defining moments are Rob Halford’s banshee-like screams. The album laid the foundation for heavy metal as we know it today, without which bands like Iron Maiden, Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth, Anthrax, and Pantera would never have come to be.

Looking to take that next step, the band left their small-time record label and signed with the much larger and more established CBS Records. The move paid off, and with the backing of a major label, Judas Priest’s popularity began to rise. Even so, punk rock was overshadowing heavy metal. Part of this had to do with image. Punk bands and their fans eschewed the flamboyant fashion choices that rock groups from the 1970s were famous for, preferring a simpler style that reflected their working-class backgrounds. Punks cut their hair short or spiked it, and wore tattered t-shirts, jeans, leather jackets, and denim vests. Women wore fishnet stockings littered with large holes. Both sexes wore eyeliner and adorned themselves with piercings. Shirts and patches displayed messages meant to offend Britain’s upper-class establishment. Some punks even went as far as wearing swastikas to shock the masses. Meanwhile, metal acts like Judas Priest were still dressing in the hippie-inspired clothing bands had been wearing since the late 1960s. Punk rockers made them look tame by comparison. Judas Priest realized they needed to update their image to match their aggressive music.

Heavy metal is an extravagant version of rock and roll. The volume is louder, the lyrics are brash, the guitar solos are excessive to the point of self-indulgence, and the singers push their vocal cords to the absolute limit. Judas Priest didn’t just perfect heavy metal’s sound, they also perfected its image by applying the genre’s intentional overkill to their fashion style — one that has its roots in the gay leather subculture. The inspiration to swathe themselves in all-leather outfits has been falsely attributed to Rob Halford, who has repeatedly clarified this misconception over the years. In his autobiography, Confess (2020), Halford wrote:

“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 on stage 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. It just didn’t do it for me. My sexual preference was for men, sure, but I was and still am pretty vanilla.”

Halford explained that the band was seeking to emulate the attire Marlon Brando’s character wore in The Wild One (1953), the first film to depict outlaw biker culture. Ironically, The Wild One was also the original inspiration for the gay leather subculture, so Judas Priest was emulating leather daddies even if that wasn’t their intention. According to Halford, it was guitarist K.K. Downing who presented him with the idea of dressing entirely in leather. Halford loved the idea, and he and Downing went to an S&M shop in London to buy outfits and then model them to the other band members who agreed that the new look would solidify their image.

In 1979, when Judas Priest first donned their leather-and-metal-stud look, Rob Halford knew the moment they stepped on stage that the band had finally found their identity. Halford added to the spectacle by driving a motorcycle on stage right before they played “Hell Bent for Leather”, a stunt that remains a staple of the band’s concerts to this day.

Judas Priest’s fans connected with the band’s new image too, and began dressing up in leather for their shows. Leather quickly became the de facto uniform for metalheads across the globe. Gay and bi men who participated in the leather scene were undoubtedly amused by the mostly straight men unknowingly emulating their subculture. Halford reinforced this homoerotic imagery by wielding a leather riding crop on stage and venturing into the crowd to whip members of the audience, where predominantly straight men enthusiastically gathered around hoping to be on the receiving end of his whip. Judas Priest began selling buttons that read, “I’ve been whipped by Rob Halford”, which became one of their best-selling items of merchandise. Heavy metal’s leather culture wasn’t just borrowed from gay leather culture, both groups also shared a similar motivation: wearing leather to accentuate, exaggerate, and celebrate their masculinity.

Judas Priest adorned their iconic black leather look at the same time they changed their musical style. Beginning with 1978’s Killing Machine (released as Hell Bent for Leather in the United States in ‘79) the band shortened their songs to a more commercially acceptable length in an effort to get air time on the radio. This shift launched the band to the peak of their career with the release of British Steel (1980). On both sides of the Atlantic, songs like “Breaking the Law” and “Living After Midnight” were in the regular rotations of rock radio stations.

Despite Judas Priest establishing themselves as heavy metal’s premiere band, Rob Halford was well on his way to becoming another one of rock and roll’s great tragedies. While young men remained Judas Priest’s core fan base, the band’s stardom began to attract their first groupies. Obviously, Halford never had any dalliances with groupies, but he also never dared to take any male fans back to his hotel rooms either.

“If I fancied a guy in the crowd,” Halford wrote in his autobiography, “how did I go about it? What were the chances of him being gay (or, if he was, of admitting it)? What if I got it wrong, made a misjudged pass, and got a smack in the mouth? And, of course, the overriding fear that was to limit my existence for decades: What if it got out that I was gay, fans didn’t want anything to do with a band fronted by a queer, and it killed Judas Priest stone-dead?”

Although his bandmates accepted him as a gay man, the group’s management pressured Halford to keep it a secret. Halford didn’t let that prevent him from sneaking hints about his sexuality into the lyrics of some songs, including “Raw Deal”, about Halford’s experience at a gay bar in Fire Island, New York, and “Jawbreaker”, now widely accepted as an allusion to giving blowjobs. These winks and nods in Halford’s songwriting did nothing to assuage his isolation and shame as his substance abuse escalated.

By the 1980s, heavy metal had become one of the most popular genres in music, but true mainstream acceptance still eluded metal bands. That all changed on July 13, 1985, when Judas Priest and Black Sabbath’s original lineup temporarily reunited to perform at Live Aid. Judas Priest began the decade playing small clubs hoping to do just well enough to make another record, and Black Sabbath managed to be commercially successful during the 1970s despite their songs hardly receiving any radio play. Now they were performing on the same bill as Madonna, Phil Collins, Led Zeppelin, and Duran Duran on a broadcast watched by over a billion people across the world. It was proof that heavy metal could not only coexist with pop music but could be pop music as well.

But the band’s soaring success mattered little to a man who could never be himself. Rob Halford’s addictions fueled a series of dysfunctional romances, culminating in Halford’s relationship with a man named Brad who was also an alcoholic and cocaine addict. Both men’s binges frequently led to bouts of violence. Halford hit rock bottom when he assaulted Brad and then attempted suicide days later by washing a fistful of sleeping pills down with Jack Daniels. Thankfully, Halford survived and checked into rehab in 1986. He’s been sober ever since.

Performing sober for the first time was a nerve-wracking experience, but as soon as Halford began singing, he felt a joy he’d never known during all his years of drinking. Halford even maintained his sobriety during the most trying time of his life when his boyfriend Brad committed suicide. In a 2022 interview, Halford recounted that period in his life:

"I think about it all the time […] It's an addiction. [...] I've lived one day at a time for 35 years now. And that's all that matters. It's the moment. You live in the moment — not yesterday, not tomorrow; it's now.”

Although Judas Priest’s success continued in the years after Halford achieved sobriety, the frontman longed to pursue his own solo projects. While the rest of the band initially supported Halford’s desire to spread his wings, they balked at the prospect of him taking several years off to do it, as did the band’s manager and record label. Halford was given an ultimatum by the label to resign from the band if he wanted to pursue a solo career, which he ended up doing, leaving the band in 1992.

Free to pursue his musical projects with full creative control, Halford’s personal life remained painfully constrained. Living as a closeted gay man was an ongoing conflict throughout the 1990s. In 1992, Halford was arrested for public indecency after being entrapped by an undercover police officer while cruising in a public restroom in Venice Beach, California. While in the police station, Halford was convinced his arrest would make headlines across the world and destroy his career. As it happened, every cop at the station was a Judas Priest fan and they ensured Halford’s arrest was kept quiet. He paid a small fine and was released.

On February 4, 1998, Rob Halford came out as a gay man during an interview with MTV. It was a spontaneous decision on Halford’s part.

“I think most people know that I’ve been gay man all of my life and it’s only been in recent times that it’s an issue that I feel comfortable to address.”

Halford provided a deeper reason for leaving Judas Priest, saying that he felt held back and intimidated into remaining closeted. He also stated that homophobia was still unfortunately common in the music industry. In the interview, Halford doesn’t sound happy about coming out, he just sounds exhausted from decades of keeping his sexuality a secret. However, he soon found the peace he’d been seeking for decades. After his remarks aired, Halford was bombarded with letters of support from LGBT people who wrote that his decision to come out inspired them to grow more comfortable in their own skin.

Rob Halford rejoined Judas Priest in 2003, this time fronting the band as a proud, openly gay man. Since Halford’s reunion with Judas Priest, LGBT rights have made unfathomable strides. The Netherlands legalized same-sex marriage in 2001 and over 30 countries have followed suit. Public acceptance of LGBT people has grown by leaps and bounds, and not exclusively in the West. Halford himself is married to a former United States Marine named Thomas Pence. They have been together for over 25 years. Now in his early 70s, Rob Halford has been an elder statesman in both the heavy metal and LGBT communities for almost 30 years. Metalheads have bestowed Halford with the honorific nickname “Metal God” for his embodiment of the genre’s ethos.

Judas Priest, like most metal bands, has been critically derided throughout their career. Many of these same critics sit on the selection committee for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, an institution that has inducted very few metal bands. Despite their commercial success and cultural impact, Judas Priest had similarly been excluded from the Hall of Fame despite having been eligible since 1999. However, their long wait came to an end when they were finally inducted in 2022 alongside Eminem, Carly Simon, Duran Duran, and Dolly Parton.

At their induction ceremony, Judas Priest performed a medley of their hits, and later that night, Halford joined several other inductees to sing “Jolene” with Dolly Parton. It must have been a surreal site for metalheads to see a Parton-Halford duet, but it demonstrates that the love of music can transcend not only genres, but all human categories including sex, race, and sexuality. Throughout everything — from his shame-ridden teenage years to Judas Priest’s period of early discovery; through unheralded obscurity and monumental success; from the crushing lows of addiction and loss to self-acceptance and Metal Godhood — music was the common thread that wove through Rob Halford’s remarkable life and (ongoing) career. In fact, it might just be the only thing capable of bringing humanity together.

Published Oct 25, 2024