Jimmy Kay from Canada’s The Metal Voice spoke to former JUDAS PRIEST Guitarist K.K. Downing as he prepares to release his autobiography on September 18, 2018.
When asked how his relationship with Glenn Tipton changed over the years, he responded: “There always was a great amount mutual respect for each other and still is. We would spend more time together than any girlfriends or wives. We were very productive, very prolific and I think we were the driving force because we had to create the songs to be sung. It was an an awful amount of work and time spent together. Was there some competitive rivalry , not really on my behalf. I always felt like I was easy going because the most important thing to me was the band, the name Judas Priest. Myself and Glenn went through decades through thick and thin and it was a great relationship but idiosyncrasies started creeping in. I was a bit too easy going, my inspirations were to make the band big not myself big.”
“We divided the solos at the end of a recording I would have 10 and Glenn would have 10 but my 10 would be 15 second solos but Glenn‘s were a lot longer, it went on a bit like that really and I kind of let that slip a little bit. But the albums, the songs were great and the solos were great .Inevitable without even knowing it some kind of pecking order starts to formulate that is why so many great bands didn’t last too long cause things get in the way. ”
When asked to respond to Ian Hills remarks saying he cannot come back to the band because he cannot do Glenn’s guitar parts, he said: “I did not understand that , it was really weird because obviously, Richie plays both my parts and Glenn‘s parts and I’m sure Richie would be the first one to say well K.K. you do your thing and I will continue to play Glenn‘s guitar parts or we could do whose ever parts and pieces, there is a way to work everything out. It was never going to be the case that I would step into Glenn‘s parts. I don’t understand what Ian was saying.”
Speaking about the Owens era in PRIEST, K.K. said: “Tim Owens did a fantastic job, what an incredible guy, he is a fantastic singer. We would come off the stage doing a fantastic gig and Ripper totally killed it but you would still get fans backstage saying hey K.K. when is Rob Halford coming back and that was kind of the theme throughout. Apart from the odd exception its one voice for one band and that is what the fans wanted. PRIEST had such a legacy with so many songs with Rob singing on them that there is always a requirement for the fans to have Rob back .”
Watch the entire interview below.
