JUDAS PRIEST frontman Rob Halford was just one of more than 250 artists, journalists, and industry figures who contributed to Rolling Stone’s new “500 Greatest Songs Of All Time” rankings
Halford recently sat down with the folks at Rolling Stone to discuss his picks for the survey, praising fellow artists like Ozzy Osbourne, Ronnie James Dio and MOTÖRHEAD’s Lemmy Kilmister, among others.
The JUDAS PRIEST singer also included the early METALLICA classic “Ride The Lightning”, to which he commented: “Old ‘TALLICA. New ‘TALLICA. I’m old school, man. I bet you guys are the same about PRIEST. It’s crazy, isn’t it? It’s usually the first two or three albums that you make in any given band that are the reference points to who you are and what you’re about. And so, for me, those first batches of METALLICA, the extraordinary way that they interpreted their style of metal and branded it with such a unique force just generates as much now as it did then. So, ‘TALLICA, ride the lightning on the heavy metal Harley.”
He also commented on the addition of SLAYER’s “Angel Of Death”, saying: “I’ve always been a SLAYER fan. I love this kind of extreme metal music with a band like SLAYER and ‘Angel Of Death’. They were a bunch of guys out of the Bay Area that spread this new kind of gospel of metal in this extreme form. The sheer terror of SLAYER which hit us all like a ton of heavy metal bricks really did the same to me. And out of all of the great SLAYER songs that I personally love to smash my head in to and with, ‘Angel Of Death’ — oh, yeah, baby!”
Some other notable Halford additions to the list were his Number One song, BLACK SABBATH’s “Paranoid”, DIO’s “Holy Diver” and MOTÖRHEAD’s “Ace Of Spades”.