JUDAS PRIEST Singer Says 'Everybody Loves' New Guitarist RICHIE FAULKNER

Finnish newspaper Ilta-Sanomat conducted an interview with singer Rob Halford of British heavy metal legends JUDAS PRIEST prior to the band's June 11, 2011 headlining appearance at the Sauna Open Air festival in Tampere, Finland. You can now watch the chat in two parts by following the links below.

* Part 1
* Part 2

On the departure of founding guitarist Kenneth "K.K." Downing and addition of Richie Faulkner:

Halford: "I think that, like most people in life, there comes a time when you wanna make a change or have a different feeling about the things that you wanna do and I think that's what happened with K.K. And I think that he was being a real guy, you know?! We all agree that when you walk out on that stage, you've gotta be there for the right feeling and the right reasons. And, of course, K.K. was always doing that year after year, nearly 40 years. So it's not really unusual, I don't think in rock and roll, the lineups change. We would have loved K.K. to have been with us for the farewell tour, but it just didn't happen. But we have this great, incredible new guitar player, Richie Faulkner, who has already created a sensation after the first two shows, in Holland and at Sweden Rock. Everybody loves him. He's a great, great guitar player a great guy, a real metalhead."

On Richie Faulkner's physical resemblance to a younger K.K. Downing:

Halford: "People are saying, 'It's a clone. You've got some of K.K.'s DNA.' It's just the way it turned out. We made, like, a secret search When we knew K.K. was not gonna be making the tour, we did a lot of secret, kind of, searching for another player. And Richie just happened to be the guy. And he just happens to look a little bit of the K.K. image, you know?! I think it would be silly to say, 'We looked for a guitar player that looks like Ken.' What we want is a very good metal guitar player, and that's what Richie Faulkner is."

On the "Epitaph" tour setlist:

Halford: "What we're trying to do is something from every record and mostly do the classics the classic songs that fans wanna hear, like 'Painkiller', 'Victim Of Changes', 'Breaking The Law', that kind of thing. But we did try an opportunity to make some songs that we've never played before, like 'Blood Red Skies', for example, which is The place goes crazy. It's a beautiful song very powerful song and it sounds great live. 'Never Satisfied' from 'Rocka Rolla', the very first album; 'Starbreaker' It's a really good mix. We could have had lots more. Maybe as the tour progresses, we may change the setlist a little bit. But this tour is very good. It's solid for the achievement of trying to take the fans through the music history of JUDAS PRIEST."

On performing the song "Blood Red Skies" on the current tour:

Halford: "For me as a singer, it's a different type of vocal approach. I had to really think back a long way. For me as a singer on this tour, it's been quite challenging. I almost get it I get it about 99 percent but I'm a 59-year-old metalhead and I think when I made that song, I was, like, 28 or 29, so my voice has changed. But I think it's a good job. I think all around the performance is very strong. And you can only do your best. If you give it your best, that's all you can expect. I think that at the end of the day, it's impossible to completely replicate the recording, and that would be the wrong thing to do. It's good to make it feel real, so if there's something a little bit different, that makes every show exciting. The elements of the song are the same every night, but there are some parts that are a little bit different. And that's what rock and roll is all about."

JUDAS PRIEST's setlist for the Sauna Open Air festival was as follows:

01. Rapid Fire
02. Metal Gods
03. Heading Out the Highway
04. Judas Rising
05. Starbreaker
06. Victim of Changes
07. Never Satisfied
08. Diamonds And Rust (JOAN BAEZ cover)
09. Prophecy
10. Night Crawler
11. Turbo Lover
12. Beyond the Realms of Death
13. The Sentinel
14. Blood Red Skies
15. The Green Manalishi (With The Two-Pronged Crown) (FLEETWOOD MAC cover)
16. Breaking the Law
17. Painkiller

Encore 1:

18. The Hellion (taped intro) / Electric Eye
19. Hell Bent For Leather

Encore 2:

20. You've Got Another Thing Coming

Encore 3:

21. Living After Midnight

Fan-filmed footage of PRIEST's performance can be viewed below.

JUDAS PRIEST will launch the U.S. leg of its farewell world tour on October 12 in San Antonio and the band promises that it will go out with a bang. Rob Halford said, "We're pulling out all the stops. We've built a brand new stage set, we've got all the effects that people love us for the lasers, the fire, the bombs, the smoke, new costumes, and the bike. It's just a full-on metal extravaganza."

As for whether this is really the end of JUDAS PRIEST's touring days, guitarist Glenn Tipton added, "We don't plan on retiring. We've said that this is our last world tour. It takes a chunk out of your life 18 months. We won't be doing any more world tours as such and in many parts of the world, it will be the last time people will get a chance to see us. But we're not gonna stop. We've got an album in the can now, we will start to write with Richie, there will be more albums, and who knows?! There might be a string of dates that we can manage to do. We're just not gonna do another major world tour. We've been doing it for 40 years and it's time to let the younger bands have the chance."