Rob Halford left Judas Priest in 1992 and rejoined in 2003, though he really never wanted to leave at all. According to Halford in a recent interview with Heavy1, the split happened over a communication breakdown that he detailed in his new autobiography Confess.
"I think it's important, yes. There are lots of unauthorized books about Priest, and they're all made up of little tidbits of gossip and information or rehashed interviews from other magazines. If you want the truth, you go to the source. Never in a million years would I ever have wanted to leave — formally leave, go away — from Judas Priest. It was genuinely a communication breakdown.
"Artists, musicians, we're super-sensitive people. My God, the smallest thing can make us [react negatively]. Me, diva — the diva Metal God. And that's just kicked back artistic sensitive emotional instinct. So I thought here was an opportunity just to try and explain what really did happen. And it just seems crazy that 10 years had to pass. But as I say in the book, some of that was not coming from me; it was coming from different places. And so just to set the record straight, I think, was important."
Halford and the band are currently working on a new album, and Halford himself was recently vaccinated for COVID-19.