Bob Halford - Spring Music - Judas Priest's Rob Halford is first heavy metal band member to say he is gay - Cover Story - Interview
Sexual ambiguity is fair game in glam, disco, and even alternative rock. But never heavy metal. Until now...
The significance of a heavy metal star coming out of the most Neanderthal-posing rock genre in music is incalculable. In the world of heavy metal (a term coined by William Burroughs in Naked Lunch)--with its devil-worshiping, electric guitar-dominated image, "get me some chicks" songs; and raunchy heterosexual blue-collar fan base--homophobia is rampant. What gay man would dare take this on and risk losing his career? Even Queen's Freddie Mercury went to his grave never making a public statement. But now, after nearly three decades of living his rock-star sex life in cautious silence, Rob Halford, one-time lead singer of Judas Priest, considered by many the archetypal metal band, bangs his head on rock's meanest closed door and breaks all the way out.
Long before sweaty mosh pits with rock fans slamMing their half-naked bodies together, long before the angry wail of heavy metal bands like Guns N' Roses, Metallica, Ozzy Osbourne, or Van Halen, there was Judas Priest.
Storming out of the harsh industrial regions of northern England, Judas Priest was a gang of five furious blokes with a very loud grudge. Typical of so many bands that change the face of rock forever (the Beatles from Liverpool, Led Zeppelin from Birmingham), Judas Priest came from an English landscape as brutal and oppressive as the band's own distorted guitar sounds. Connecting fiercely with the rage of working-class fans around the world who felt they had no bright future, Priest began its defiant push for success in 1969.
After two years of false starts and small record labels, the band replaced its lead singer with a theatrical lighting technician from Birmingham named Rob Halford. With his keen writing sense and ear-splitting leather lungs, Halford was the magic that launched both the band and an entire genre of rock called heavy metal--a bombastically amplified, guitar-driven wall of sound featuring a lead singer powerful enough to cut through it all. Like the shrill, grinding noises of the metal steel mills inhabiting Britain's cold north country, Judas Priest was a brazen force to be reckoned with.
Capitalizing on Halford's sonic howling and bondage-gear dress (complete with the Harley he drove onstage every night), Judas Priest sold millions of albums and filled nearly as many arenas with nasty beer-drinking, head-banging hetero boys. The band played so loud that they were said to cause involuntary bowel movements--so who would've ever guessed that the centerpiece in this macho commotion was a gay man?
"Yeah, but look at the homoeroticism in metal music," says Jon Ginoli, front man for the all-gay rock band Pansy Division. Ginoli and his band mates were instrumental in bringing Halford out of the closet after meeting him in a San Francisco bar in 1997. The bond they formed was so strong, Halford actually risked performing live with them at three gay pride events last year--although he still hadn't made up his mind to come out.
Part of the reason for Halford's indecision was his brand-new band and record deal. After a chance meeting with Nine Inch Nails lead singer Trent Reznor in New Orleans, Halford's newly formed band, Two, signed with Reznor's label. This March, Two released its first album, Voyeurs, and in April commenced its first U.S. tour. To help launch the band, porn master Chi Chi LaRue was enlisted to direct Two's first video, for "I Am a Pig."
"When I first saw him," says LaRue, "I saw a big, tattooed, scary superstar--and the sweetest man I've ever met."
LaRue's observation is just one more dichotomy about Halford. Despite making deafening noises for nearly three decades, there was always one silence the rocker left unbroken. Now with this exclusive Advocate interview, that silence has been forever broken.
Why are you coining out now?
I really dwelled on it so long. What am I gonna gain? What am I gonna lose? I think it's true, when you become successful in the music world, you probably go more in the closet. You get under the rug in the closet because of the phobia that still exists in rock music. You could lose a record deal, a fan base. It's really difficult for any musician to come out.
And particularly in this genre of music, which you helped to create.
Yeah. Had I considered coming out five years ago, it would've been very difficult. But right now I'm experiencing the same emotions that my friends have told me they felt when they came out: this great clarity and this great peace. There have been no repercussions, no hate mail. I think people have had so many good times with my music that my coming-out is easier for them to accept. It's like, "Well, look at the great music, look at the great shows--does it really matter?"
How did you hide your homosexuality from Judas Priest all those years?
Everybody in Priest always had an awareness that I was gay.
What? Priest knew you were gay.?
What is Reichen known for again? He won the Amazing Race, dated 
CYD ZEIGLER JR, co-founder of the online gay sports news outlet and social network Outsports.com and co-author of ‘The Outsports Revolution,’ knew he loved sports before he knew that he loved men. In fact, his love of sports was the only thing that could get him to venture out of his childhood home in Cape Cod to neighboring Provincetown, home to some particularly terrifying gay guys, at least in young Zeigler's eyes.
