Judas Priest named the band after a Bob Dylan song.
The inspiration for the name was Bob Dylan’s 1967 song “The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest”. Bruno Stapenhill was the one who came up with the name. The band was also regularly rehearsing at Dylan’s house in Stone Cros
Judas Priest had a viral video made about them back in 1986.
In 1986, two guys made a 15-minute video in the parking lot of a Judas Priest concert called Heavy Metal Parking Lot. The video captured the heavy metal spirit of that era. It became very popular among youngsters and was disseminated on VHS.
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Judas Priest have 17 studio albums, 6 live albums, 6 compilation albums, 10 video albums and 34 singles.
They have sold more than 40 million albums worldwide, with 12 million copies in the US.
The band also received a Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance in 201
‘Redeemer of Souls’ (2014) is the band’s highest charting position album so far.
It peaked at number 6 on the Billboard 200 chart.
For the 35th anniversary of ‘British Steel’ album, Judas Priest released a British Steel blend of Dark Matter Coffee.
Initial bags of this blend came with a “cassingle” tape, featuring the appropriately java-indicative “Grinder” and “Snakebite.”
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Rob Halford used to work in porn cinema before joining Judas Priest.
Rob explained to Loudwire:
“It was a porn cinema. It was about half as big as this room, had three chairs and guys going [emulates vigorous masturbation]. It cost about two pounds to get in.”
British Steel’s iconic razorblade cover image is the work of artist Roslaw Szaybo.
He also designed Judas Priest’s instantly recognizable logo. Ironically, despite being friends with the band, Roslaw was not a fan of metal music himself.
During the British Steel tour, Rob Halford routinely fired an actual machine gun from the stage.
Halford remembers:
“It was a real machine gun full of blank bullets. Yeah, and I had this idea, at the end of ‘Genocide’ … I’d take the machine gun (laughs) and fire into the crowd. And everyone thought ‘Are you fucking mad?’ … It was a full-on machine gun, a John Dillinger-type thing. Of course, a fire marshal would come to check and it’d be ‘These are the flash pots and this is the machine gun …’ And they’d go, ‘What the fuck? A machine gun?’ The fire marshal had to watch the guy load it with blanks and give it to me.”
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Judas Priest were wrongfully defined as ‘death metal’ on The Simpsons show.
On 5 January 2014 the band appeared in the episode “Steal This Episode” of The Simpsons playing a parody of their song “Breaking the Law.” Their music was referred to as “death metal.” The producers decided to apologize for the mistake by having Bart Simpson write “Judas Priest is not ‘Death Metal'” in the opening sequence chalkboard gag.
Judas Priest is also one of the Beavis and Butt-Head’s favorite bands. The iconic duo regularly broke out singing the refrain. There was even a scene where they chant to the tune of the chorus: “Washin’ the dog! Wash-in’ the dog!/ “Washin’ the dog! Wash-in’ the dog!” while trying to lauder a poodle.
A movie Rockstar was based on Ripper Owens’ story.
Tim ‘Ripper’ Owens, who replaced Rob Halford in the band from 1996 to 2003, was discovered by drummer Scott Travis in the Priest tribute band, British Steel. Owens was able to re-create Halford’s ear-splitting shrieks with ease.
The 2001 movie “Rock Star,” telling a story about a tribute band singer who is asked to join the real band is loosely based on Owens’ life.