Judas Priest's Glenn Tipton Talks About Nostradamus, Touring And More

Band Photo: Judas Priest (?)

SundayMercury.net recently conducted an interview with Judas Priest guitarist Glenn Tipton. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

On plans for the band's latest album, "Nostradamus", a concept double album, to be performed in its entirety:

"Our ambition is to perform 'Nostradamus' from start to finish when everyone's got used to it and they all know it. We'll certainly pick some special venues as we'd like to make an event of it. We'll be looking at venues around the world that would contribute to the classical and operatic side of the project."

On an incident on their 1984 "Defenders of the Faith" tour, which means they're unable to play at one of the world's top arenas:

"Madison Square Garden banned us for life. The audience went berserk and ripped all the seats out. They cost more that quarter of a million dollars to replace. Me and Ken [PRIEST guitarist K.K. Downing] went back there to see a tennis match which John McEnroe was playing in. We went incognito, wearing hoodies so no one would recognize us but the ushers came up to us and said, 'Thanks for the new seats, guys.'"

On the upcoming European tour with Megadeth and Testament:

"The intro tape will be 'Dawn Of Creation' from 'Nostradamus', then 'Prophecy' and 'Death', and for our playout there's the title track so the fans will get plenty of 'Nostradamus' as such. . . There's 'Hell Patrol', 'Devil's Child', 'Sinner' — classic Priest, plus the unmissable 'Painkiller' and 'Hell Bent For Leather'."

On Judas Priest's next project:

"We might do a live album. We've recorded quite a few shows so we have to get together and listen to those and a think about that. But with us you never know what's around the corner. We never really plan. We finish a tour, take a break, then we go into a room and start to write. We're very lucky in this band that we have a great writing formula, we never know what we're going to come up with. That's the beauty of Priest, you never know what's coming next."

Read the full article at SundayMercury.net.