JUDAS PRIEST singer Rob Halford recently took part in a SiriusXM Volume virtual town hall with host Mark Goodman. During the chat, Halford discussed bands holding virtual concerts amid the coronavirus pandemic and how they compare to actual live shows. He said (see video below): “It just shows you the strength and power of music that we’ll go to extraordinary lengths to make a connection. And I love this virtual thing, but it is virtual. I love it when I see [you] in person, and you’re sitting across the mic and I’m sitting… It’s a real tangible experience, isn’t it? And that’s the way music is intended to be experienced from a live performance aspect of it.
“Look, I love to watch bands on my laptop and watch bands on the television or whatever, but you can’t beat a live concert experience,” he continued. “And we will get back to that. It might take some time, but we will get back to that. It’s like anything in life that you’re going through that’s a challenge and that’s a difficulty — it’s not gonna last forever.
“This horrible thing started in March. It’s now October. The thing about it is it feels like it’s been going on for years, doesn’t it?” Halford added. “Is it me, or it just seems like it’s been going on for years. And I think a lot of that is due to the fact that it’s disrupted every aspect of our lives, particularly in music, where we could look at the calendar and go, ‘On this day, I’m gonna see JUDAS PRIEST at the blah blah place, and I can’t wait. There’s my focus for this month. Next month, I’m gonna go and see blah blah.’ That’s gone. But it’s not gone for good. We will get back there to that point and to that experience. And hope is the word. It prevails. And we’ll be in each other’s company again and we’ll be rocking and rolling and screaming and roaring and having the best times of our lives live with each other.”
Halford‘s autobiography, “Confess”, was released on September 29 via Hachette Books. The book has already been described by the U.K.’s The Telegraph as “one of the most candid and surprising memoirs of the year.”
