I bet, you didn’t see this coming.
UGLY KID JOE singer Whitfield Crane claims that he was once asked to join JUDAS PRIEST.
This almost became a reality in the mid-1990s after Rob Halford left the band.
PRIEST recruited vocalist Tim “Ripper” Owens in 1996 and released two studio albums, 1997’s “Jugulator” and 2001’s “Demolition”, before reuniting with Rob in 2003.
In a new interview with Metal Rules, Crane as wasked about it.
He said:
“JUDAS PRIEST. It was when Glenn Tipton was doing his ‘Baptizm Of Fire’ [1997 solo] record, and I got Shannon Larkin, [UGLY KID JOE‘s] then-drummer, to play on it. He played two songs and replaced some bada*s drummers on that because it was click-tracked. And Glenn pulled Shannon and me aside and said, ‘You boys can have the PRIEST gig if you want it.’ And Shannon and I were pretty much into PRIEST.
“I mean, we loved PRIEST. And we went, ‘Ah!’ And all I said was this, ‘Say it again.’ And Glenn‘s a pretty f*cking brilliant — I mean, he goes, ‘What do you f*cking mean, ‘Say it again’?’ And I’m all, ‘Just say it one time?’ And he’s, like, ‘You can have the f*cking PRIEST gig, mate.’
“And, well, I was thinking, we can’t do it, because you can’t be Rob Halford. You can’t be David Lee Roth. It’d be cool, and considering my love for PRIEST, which is immense, that would have been cool to do it, but not really. It’s not a good move. But to jam with Tipton and to know those guys — I mean, those are my f*cking heroes. JUDAS PRIEST, I mean, f*ck. But man, old-school PRIEST, Jesus, God. So, yeah, I got offered PRIEST, back in the day. I never said that to anyone.”