Rob Halford, the lead singer of Judas Priest, recently participated in a podcast interview with WTF With Marc Maron where he spoke about his worries about being rejected because of his gay orientation. The frontman admitted that he wasn’t prepared for the great reception he received when he came out as gay after speaking about the ongoing persecution against LGBTQ+ persons in the US and throughout the world. Then he provided the following justification: Yeah, you’re afraid of being rejected. That is the main explanation. “People won’t love me because I’ll tell them who I am,” said the speaker. If so, does it make sense? Well, it does if you’re gay and have a job that, for some reason, fits that description.
He continued by thinking back on the industry pressure he encountered to conceal his sexuality in order to safeguard the band’s success: “I wonder if I would still be in the closet if I hadn’t come out the way I did. Because I mention in the book having to conceal my sexual orientation, as advised to me by those in the business, “Don’t tell them that you’re gay.” The band will disband as a result. What an awful thought, yet it’s a reality. The members of the band and others working at the label were aware.
Halford also discussed his opinions on the bullying of LGBTQ+ persons earlier in the interview, saying: When will it all come to an end? As long as there are assaults occurring, particularly those carried out by extremists motivated by politics or bigotry, I don’t believe they will ever come to an end. Don’t give bigots a louder voice since you can’t get rid of them or anyone with that kind of thinking.
During a 1998 MTV News interview, the singer came out as gay. He discussed the difficulties he encountered as the first out homosexual frontman in the metal community in an interview with Metal Hammer in the early 2000s. Halford said. “I think that kind of experience, when you feel alone and like you’re the only gay guy in the world, is something that every homosexual guy goes through. Back then, you didn’t discuss those kinds of topics. Nothing was said about it in the news, on TV, or in soap operas. And, you know, I didn’t feel like I was genuinely a part of something bigger for me until I was in my late 20s.
However, as he explained in the remainder of his Metal Hammer interview, the rock star doesn’t see himself as a gay icon. He finds it intriguing that, simply because it deviates from the usual, his sexuality garners greater media attention. Rob also said that because the homosexual media could find it difficult to relate to the heavy metal scene, which is frequently viewed as a very male milieu, he hasn’t interacted with them much.
