Yesterday, ex-Judas Priest guitarist K.K. Downing voiced his displeasure after not being asked back to the band when guitarist Glenn Tipton announced he'd be stepping down from his live duties due to his Parkinson's Disease diagnosis. A portion of Downing's statement also insinuated that live fill-in guitarist and producer Andy Sneap might have also laid down some of the guitar parts that were attributed to Tipton, specifically saying "I know Andy Sneap — and he is one of the greatest contributors to rock and metal that you will ever have the privilege to meet. To that end, I have no doubt that his contribution to the new Judas Priest album was much more than just as a producer."
This didn't sit super well with vocalist Rob Halford. Halford tells Fox Sports 910 that that portion of Downing's statement is "a thousand percent false," and further states that "everything that you hear from Glenn on Firepower is the amazing Glenn Tipton."
"Let me just say that the great joy of Judas Priest is that we've never gone into this kind of arena of a public dispute. And it's so easy to fall into that trap in social media today. How many people have you seen in sports, for example, that have made a rash comment on Twitter, just on the heat of the moment, emotionally. You know, we're all human, we've all got feelings, and we have a tendency to blurt out the first thing that is on our minds, and rightly or wrongly, things can kind of come back and chase you afterwards in a negative way.
"So, with regards to everything that was made in [K.K.'s] statement today, a lot of it, to me, is completely superfluous. But the one point that I would like to clarify and have on record is this insinuation that Andy Sneap was covering Glenn's guitar parts on 'Firepower', and I can categorically state that that is a thousand percent false. Because I was with Glenn for all of his guitar work, and he worked really, really hard. Imagine this guy in the tenth year of Parkinson's. I've never seen anybody so brave in the fact that every song was a challenge for him to make it work, but he did — consistently, day after day. It was just a very powerful thing to experience firsthand. And this just goes to show you about the amazing stories that surround invididuals around the world that are dealing with Parkinson's in their life."
Judas Priest's Firepower is out on March 9.
