JUDAS PRIEST's K.K. DOWNING, GLENN TIPTON Talks 'Nostradamus', Metal Guitar

Greg Prato of GuitarSite.com recently conducted an interview with JUDAS PRIEST guitarists K.K. Downing and Glenn Tipton. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

GuitarSite.com: How did the idea of "Nostradamus" come up?

Downing: I thought if we don't do [a concept album] now, maybe we won't, because it's a big project to do something like that. We pulled it together fairly quickly — it might have been a couple of years, but we did some shows during that time. We could start to see connections with Nostradamus. We've always done "content," like "Blood Red Skies" and "Electric Eye" — y'know, fantasy things — over the years. So we thought, "This is 'ready made,' almost." The more we read up on him, it was intriguing really.

Tipton: After the last album, "Angel of Retribution", we already decided a concept album would be the way to go. It was in Germany somewhere — we talked to our manager, Bill Curbishley. Bill suggested Nostradamus, and it just went from there. He had such an interesting life story — it wasn't really his prophecies that we were intrigued about, it was his life. For a guy from the 16th century, he's certainly left his mark. He was a very intelligent guy obviously, to come up with these prophecies. A man of vision, and wasn't afraid to speak out. He lost his wife and daughter tragically in the Plague, and the church came after him and exiled him. Then, he found a new love and a new life. He had a really interesting life and he inspired us. It just seemed to fall into place.

GuitarSite.com: How did you approach "Nostradamus" as a guitarist?

Tipton: Funnily enough, a lot of the concepts and early compositions on this were done on keyboards. We wanted a slightly different angle. Some of them came from messing around on keyboards and then putting it to the guitar. As a songwriter, what I do a lot is I have "bursts" on the guitar. I don't touch it for a long time, and then I pick it up and play it intensely. I like to play the guitar when I want to play it. I wouldn't say I've got a love/hate relationship with it, but there are days when I don't want to know and I'm not really productive. But then there are other days when I can't wait to pick it up, and that's when I'm prolific. When we get together, we pool all our ideas. So we just did the same with "Nostradamus".

Downing: We had the first synthesizer guitars back in '85, which we used on the "Turbo" album — but we only used various non-classical sounds. So, pulled that out — an old Roland whatever it was — and it was full of pops and squeaks, so I thought, "This is no good." So I went out and bought a Godin guitar, and spoke to [Godin], and they sent another one over. Then, spoke to Roland — the GR28, got one of those. Also got the Axon rack-mounted module. Started to play guitar, and what came out was string sounds and voice sounds. I found it was pretty exhilarating to do that. I think it's fair to say that without real radical effects, it's difficult to get atmosphere.

GuitarSite.com: What is your take on the current state of metal guitar?

Downing: There's a lot going on, but a lot is fast and furious, and pretty aggressive, really. I grew up in the '60s, and experienced the evolution of it all — from blues to progressive blues, rock, hard rock, heavy rock, and heavy metal. I'd have to say I'm a big classic metal fan. But some of the new stuff is exciting — there's no two ways about it.

Tipton: I think there's some great guitar players out there that are restricted by the current trends and so-called "rules" of metal — where you shouldn't play too much lead. I think that's a shame. You don't have to overindulge, but I know a lot of great guitar players — you watch them play a set and they hardly play any lead. As long as the lead breaks are appropriate — they can be short, they can be long — they should be played. I'd like to see more of them break the rules down and do what they want to do. Because I know they're capable of a lot more than what they're playing. It's time to break the chains.

Read the entire interview from GuitarSite.com.