In a recent interview with BUILD, JUDAS PRIEST guitarist Glenn Tipton discussed joining the band on stage during a March 20 concert in Newark, New Jersey, his first public performance since announcing his retirement from touring. He said:
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“It’s just amazing to get, first of all, support from the band,” Glenn said. “The texts and emails from all over world, and to hear the audience was very emotional. You don’t like to see a grown man cry, but we did.”
On recently released new album ‘Firepower’: “It just worked beautifully,” he said. “Right from the word go, it was great. It could have been a case of too many cooks, but it wasn’t. They just hit it off straightaway. [It] was the most enjoyable album we’ve ever recorded. The vibe and everything was just great.”
On selecting setlist for the tours: “It’s very difficult,” he said. “It’s one of the most difficult things to do, because you name any track and you leave it out, and you disappoint somebody. We try and just give a good representation across the board of where the band’s at, where we’ve been and where we’re going. You can soon tell if the order is wrong or what one sticks out like a sore thumb. It’s just experimentation. Then when we get a new album out, some of the old favorites have to go as well for the new songs. It just happens — it evolves. That’s all I can say. You never really get it right. That’s why you usually have to make some tweaks [after] the first few shows.”
On being described as a legendary heavy metal act: “There was a period in time where a lot of bands dropped the tag ‘heavy metal’ because they thought it was unfashionable. We’ve always been proud to be a heavy metal band,” he said. “If you consider tracks like ‘Eat Me Alive’ and ‘Last Rose Of Summer’, the difference couldn’t be more extreme, but it’s still to us heavy metal, it’s still JUDAS PRIEST-style heavy metal. It can be what you want it to be. There’s no rules. That’s how we always looked at it. If there are rules, they can be broken. We’re proud that we’re a heavy metal band, and we’ve flown the flag for years as a heavy metal band and always will.”
Via Blabbermouth.com