Interview with Glenn Tipton (Judas Priest)

Glenn Tipton, guitarist and one of the 3 primary songwriters for the legendary band Judas Priest, spoke with Metal Express Radio to discuss the release of his Tipton, Entwistle, Powell album, Edge of the World, and the re-release of Baptizm of Fire.

Glenn Tipton, from the legendary band who started it all, Judas Priest, joins us today at Metal Express. Welcome Glenn!

MER:
We’re actually connecting today to talk not so much about Judas Priest, but about your 2 solo albums that hit the streets on March 7, 2006 via Rhino Records and Warner Music, the re-release of 1997’s Baptizm Of Fire, and an album that was also created around that time frame, Edge Of The World. Let’s start with Edge Of The World. This album is actually being put out as a Tipton, Entwistle, and Powell title rather than just Glenn Tipton. We all know that John Entwistle and Cozy Powell are no longer with us … did you release it under this title as a tribute to them?

Glenn Tipton
Yes, absolutely. Baptizm of Fire was a true solo project, but I wouldn’t call Edge Of The World a solo album … when you work with legendary talent like Cozy and John, it was never intended to be a true solo effort. Instead it was much more of collaboration.

MER:
People typically don’t view John Entwistle as a Metal type of guy, but I understand he actually was a “closet Metalhead” of sorts. How did your association with John come about … were you friends with him for a long time prior to recording this album?

Glenn Tipton
Yes, but I actually approached Cozy first … I had always wanted to work with Cozy since I have for a long time respected so much of what he has done – personally I viewed Cozy as one of the all-time great Rock drummers — and wanted to take advantage of his interest to work together. We had many discussions about Bass players and who we should approach, and eventually Bill Curbishly, the manager of Judas Priest who used to previously manage The Who, helped us make the connection with John. At first we weren’t sure if John would be interested, but after talking about it with him, he said he’d love to be a part of the project.

MER:
In getting to know this album, I think people are going to react to it in a very positive way, and everyone who hears this record is going to wonder why this album was put on the shelf for so many years. What happened?

Glenn Tipton
Well, I originally took the recordings to Atlantic, and we sat down and listened to them and they seemed to really like them, but as everyone knows at that time in the music industry, the trends were in the midst of change. The response from the label was that they would support a solo effort of sorts, but that they felt younger, more contemporary musicians should be involved to better fit in with the changing times. It was pretty clear that I had no choice but to at least give their suggestion a try and to see what would come of it. So I went about creating a new batch of songs and got in touch with a number of additional musicians and what essentially came out of all that was Baptizm Of Fire, which I think came out very well. However, there was a distinct difference between the two albums. In the end, it was a great experience to work with all of these young musicians … their enthusiasm comes through and gives additional character to each track on that album, and I’m very pleased with it. The only negative that came out of the experience was that Baptizm Of Fire caused Edge Of The World to be left on the shelf … and I always felt that Edge contained some of my best ideas. Plus it was more than that … it was John and Cozy’s work too, and I always felt that this work should be heard. Bringing the story current, Rhino was receptive to both re-releasing Baptizm Of Fire as well as the original batch of songs written with Cozy and John … I just feel so fortunate to have worked with such classic musicians and to finally have this album be heard.

MER:
Overall, both of these albums seem to be a bit more varied in musical styles than what you’ve done in Priest. How did you approach writing material for these albums compared to writing for Priest?

Glenn Tipton
When approaching a solo album, you have to want to do it for the right reasons. People have to understand that at that time, the future of Priest was uncertain. I wasn’t trying to write something that was better than anything Priest has done, because nobody can do that … and to start, I’m only one-fifth of Priest … the others in the band are immensely talented with their contributions. So when sitting down to write, I wanted it to come from the heart, so to speak, and to just write from instinct and to see what would come of it, and to write lyrics that may never have been appropriate for a Priest album. I’ll have to admit that it took a while to really find my way, and many of my initial ideas got scrapped early on … especially from a vocal perspective. After a while, though, I did find my way, and started uncovering opportunities to write specifically around my vocal capabilities so that I could use my voice as another musical instrument and convey my individual character.

MER:
In many tracks there are hints of keyboards … something definitely not prevalent in Priest songs … who played the keyboards?

Glenn Tipton
Well, Don Airey played a lot of the keyboards, but I do play some of the keyboards myself. Don’s such a magician when it comes to playing the keyboards … you can tell him what you want to hear, and somehow he comes up with it right away. I’m no where in his league, but I did split some of the duties with him.

MER:
Moving now more towards Baptizm Of Fire … many of your fans are familiar with this album. Why the re-release? Did you feel the album didn’t get a fair shake the first time around?

Glenn Tipton
One publication recently rated Baptizm Of Fires as one of the Top 10 Most Underrated Albums of all time. That made me feel pretty good, actually. Yes, I think the album should have drawn more attention that first time around, but you know, sales-wise, it drew pretty respectable figures. When you make a solo album, you can’t go into it thinking you’re going to change the face of Rock ‘n’ Roll, or with the attitude of “look at me and what I can do.” In the end, to me, it’s was just about making good songs and having the opportunity to work with other great musicians. As long as a handful of people enjoyed it, that’s good enough for me.

MER:
The album has been remastered as part of the re-release. Listening to both versions, in the re-release it seems as if your guitar work was brought out to be more prominent in the mix, and that your vocals were dropped down a bit. Am I hearing this right?

Glenn Tipton
We really didn’t do anything intentional with the guitars or the vocals, but we did bring the mid-range up a bit, so I suppose the natural result of doing that is to give the impression that the guitar volume has been increased. Overall, we didn’t change anything drastically.

MER:
This re-release includes 2 bonus tracks, “Himalaya” and “New Breed.” “New Breed” is unique in that your daughter and son are involved. Was the first time you’ve involved your family in your work?

Glenn Tipton
Yes, absolutely. One day my daughter was down at the studio and was messing around with the keyboards and she put something together that caught my attention, we decided to build a song around it. It was a good opportunity to work together with her, and at a point we said we need to lay down some drum work on top of it. My son stepped up and said he’d play the drums. He had been at the University, and had gone in as a guitarist and came back as a drummer of all things … so he came in to play the drums, and laid down a killer drum track. I was very proud of him … just goes to show you how the young kids these days are so versatile as musicians and can switch from being guitarists to drummers just like that!

MER:
With Priest and both Rob Halford and Ripper Owens, you’ve always been surrounded by incredible vocal talent – perhaps 2 of the best in all of Metal. Now for both of these albums, you took your own place as lead vocalist. How comfortable did you feel in front of the microphone?

Glenn Tipton
Originally, I didn’t plan to be the vocalist for these albums. At first, I just put down vocal tracks to establish the melodies, and that’s where we started. As the project went on, my vocal abilities improved a little bit, and it was Cozy who said one day that he thought I should sing the album. Now in no way, shape, or form am I claiming to be anywhere near the level of Rob or Ripper … those two are far and away in a league of their own. When you step on stage with Rob everyday, there’s no way you can confuse your own talents with a person of his caliber. For these albums, I think there just became a familiarity with hearing my voice by the others with the demos that kind of led us to decide that having me sing the album was the right way to go. I guess subconsciously, I probably wrote the songs with my voice in mind, so it kind of just became the comfortable thing to do to keep me as the vocalist. Believe me, I’ve got no delusions of grandeur regarding my vocal abilities … but I think we got away with it!

MER:
The title track for this album, “Baptizm of Fire,” is such a great instrumental song … have you ever thought of just putting together an entirely instrumental album someday? Seems like you may really have some unique potential on that front …

Glenn Tipton
Well, in all honesty, I think if I did an entirely solo record, I’d end up boring people half to death. As a writer and music fan, I love a good song and I set out to write good songs, that’s my ambition … not to write an album full of instrumentals to just showcase my guitar playing. I don’t think there would be that much interest in that type of thing from me.

MER:
Well, no interview with Glenn Tipton can totally leave out a few update questions on Judas Priest … word has it that the band will take 2006 off from touring, and that work will begin soon on another studio album. What’s the status and schedule on that record?

Glenn Tipton
That’s true, we will be starting a new record soon. Soon at the beginning of April, Rob and K.K. and I will get together and present our initial ideas to each other … and we’ll really excited about this record, we think we’re really on to something this time. We don’t want to set any specific deadlines just yet … instead we’d just like to let the writing process evolve at its own pace. Then, of course, we’ll tour in the next year to support it … but that’s about all I feel comfortable in saying about it now, other than we’re really looking to shake up the setlist this time around, meaning we’re going to have to spend extra time rehearsing … and people who know us know that Judas Priest doesn’t like spending undue time rehearsing!

MER:
Metal Express interviewed K.K. Downing during the 2nd leg of the United States tour, and he mentioned that some internal discussions within the band were happening at that time about headlining a tour in the future where a consortium of bands may join together and tour as something along the lines of Ozzfest … Priestfest, if you will. Is that idea still bouncing around?

Glenn Tipton
We all do feel that a lineup of “Classic” Metal bands would be very well received at this moment … we think the time is indeed right for that … that’s actually the type of show that I’d like to even go and see. However, it’s premature to speculate on anything, because we really have very little idea on what the future may hold for such an event. What we do know is that we will undoubtedly put together a very comprehensive tour that may take a year and half to complete, but we really haven’t seriously considered any bands to play along with us, and we have no idea who might even be available at that time. All of these things we’ll take a closer look at when the time is right.

MER:
Also on the Priest front, it looks like the concert DVD released recently, Rising In The East, recently was certified “gold” in the USA … that’s got to be encouraging for the band.

Glenn Tipton
Very much so. We recorded 2 shows, although we just wanted to use 1. When you know you’re going to be recorded, you tend to tighten up a bit and may play a bit too conservative. So after getting a good recording during the first show, we knew that we good let ‘er rip for the second show, and that’s the one we ended up using. We were quite pleased with the end result.

MER:
In April 2005, the Live Vengeance ‘82 concert that was recorded, and most notably played on MTV in the early 80’s will be released on its own on DVD. This was somewhat of a historic tour in that it marked the beginning of really cracking through into the USA market … beside the concert.

Glenn Tipton
We just thought we’d give people the opportunity to have this video as a stand-alone release … as you know, it was first released as part of another compilation several years ago. We’re happy, though, that we were able to make this more available.

MER:
To close this out, is there any final message you’d like to convey to all of your fans out there?

Glenn Tipton
It really felt great to put out Angel of Retribution last year, but I want people to understand that Angel wasn’t the end for us; actually it was just the beginning. We’re all very confident that we have at least 2 or 3 more great albums in us, along with plenty of touring on top of that. And we’ll all very much looking forward to the future.