Judas Priest vocalist Rob Halford has been around long enough, and has seen enough success, to know his way around the music business. In a recent interview with the The French Connection: The Music Business And Beyond podcast, Halford revealed one of the pieces of advice that really made a difference in his life.
Halford said while Judas Priest was on tour with Kiss, Gene Simmons told him pretty much not to sweat what other people thought and to just keep doing what he was doing.
"Here's one that might sound a bit superfluous," said Halford. "We have a great friendship with Gene [Simmons] and Paul [Stanley] from Kiss. And Priest were out on this big tour — we were invited to open up for Kiss — and I was just talking to Gene about the music business, and he goes, 'Let me just say this: It doesn't matter what they say about you, as long as they've got your picture and they spell your name right.' There you go. That says a lot.
"Especially in music, there are so many opinions, and there are so many different points of view, it's out of your control, and you really have to figure things out, because the way that some of the negativity can intrude into your own personal life — 'You suck'; 'I hope you die of cancer'; all this horrible stuff — you've gotta learn how to deal with that. You see it particularly in popular music with younger people.
"When young people get famous quickly, how can they handle it? You need experience. You need wisdom. And so that simply message from Gene, I still remember it: 'It doesn't matter what they say about you, as long as you get your picture in and they spell your name right.' And that has some validity."
Judas Priest is currently working on new material, which Halford recently compared to Painkiller.
