Judas Priest vocalist Rob Halford came out as a gay man during a 1998 interview with MTV, which according to Halford himself was not at all planned. Halford told Apple Music's Hattie Collins that he preceded a sentence during the MTV interview with "Well, speaking as a gay man," and the news just took off. Despite the unplanned nature of the revelation, Halford said it was a beautiful moment.
"It was beautiful. It was very unplanned. It was one of those things where I'm at MTV in New York, I'm talking about a project that I was working on, and in the casual course of the conversation — we were talking about the overall music and the direction and the feelings — and I said something to the effect of, 'Well, speaking as a gay man… blah blah blah blah blah,'" he said.
"And then I heard the producer's clipboard bounce on the floor. It was one of those gay sharp intakes of breath: 'Oh my God! He's come out.' And so there I was. And I did the interview. And then I walked back to the hotel and went back to my room. And [I was, like], 'Now everybody knows.' And then, of course, it hit the newswires. And that was that."
Check out the full interview below. Halford will also release his autobiography Confess on September 18, which you can pre-order here.
Here is the original MTV report:
