“Bob says: ‘Where you from?’ I say, ‘Birmingham’. He goes, ‘Birmingham? How’s Ozzy!’”: the unlikely time Rob Halford met Bob Dylan, the man who gave Judas Priest their name

Judas Priest‘s Rob Halford and Bob Dylan.

There’s a long list of bands who have taken their names from other bands’ songs. The Sisters Of Mercy were named after an old Leonard Cohen classic, Radiohead lifted their moniker from Talking Heads’ Radio Head,  Deep Purple borrowed the title of a 1930s big band number written by Peter DeRose, and Motörhead re-appropriated the title of Hawkwind’s Motorhead (the latter was written by Lemmy, so his old bandmates could hardly complain).

And then there’s Judas Priest. The future metal gods were founded in Birmingham in 1969, albeit with a completely different line-up to the one that would subsequently become famous. It was original bassist Brian ‘Bruno’ Stapenhill who came up with band’s name, inspired by the Bob Dylan song The Ballad Of Frankie Lee And Judas Priest, taken from Dylan’s 1967 album John Wesley Harding.