Rob Halford has long-earned his nickname of the Metal God. The Judas Priest frontman helped to map out the blueprint of the sound and look of metal throughout the 70s and 80s, and a decade later he became the first openly gay metal frontman. Speaking to Metal Hammer in the early 2000s, Halford looked back at the period when he came out and the pressure that came with it.
“I think that kind of experience is something that every gay guy goes through – feeling isolated and feeling that you’re the only person in the world who has those kind of feelings. In those days, you didn’t talk about those kind of things,” he said. “It wasn’t talked about in the media, in soaps or on TV. And, I mean, for me it wasn’t until my late 20s that I felt I was actually part of something bigger y’know?”
