TIM OWENS 'Pissed Off' By JON SCHAFFER's Drunken Antics

Former JUDAS PRIEST/current ICED EARTH singer Tim Owens has revealed to Revolver magazine that he was worried that joining forces with ICED EARTH mainman Jon Schaffer was a bad idea shortly after the band started a press tour of Europe in October. No sooner had he and Schaffer arrived in Spain than the guitarist hit the bar and began pounding drinks. "I went to bed at 11 o'clock, and at two in the morning I hear Jon yelling in the hallway," recalled Owens. "He was still drunk when he got up in the morning to fly to Germany, and he pissed me off so bad. He was screaming obscenities in the airport, and on the plane he kept yelling, 'Tim will have prune juice! Tim will have prune juice!' I said to the publicist, 'If he's not sober by the time we do the interviews, I'm not doing them.' If we had been on a boat, I would have pushed him off. I thought, 'Man, I'll never make it through a tour with this asshole.'

"At the end of the flight, Jon looked at me innocently and goes, 'Are you mad at me?' He really couldn't understand because he didn't remember a thing that had happened. Which was a relief, because it meant he didn't do anything on purpose."

In the same article, Schaffer revealed that he's laying the foundation for his most multidimensional project yet: a science-fiction conspiracy concept album based on songs from the band's 1998 disc, "Something Wicked This Way Comes". The story will cover 12,000 years of human history, and Schaffer hopes it will be a springboard for a series of comic books and possibly a motion picture.

"I haven't written down the plot yet," he said. "But I have all the outlines for the story in my head, and I'm really excited about how it's coming together. This could be my 'Star Wars'."