With June being Pride month, heavy metal's most prominent out gay men, Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford has some advice for closeted metalheads, " just come and join us and just get out and just have a blast." Halford was interviewed by Rolling Stone's Kory Grow recently for an all-encompassing chat about 50 years of Priest, Rob's autobiography, and his coming out.
When asked to offer advice to "metalheads who feel like they’re stuck in a very straight culture but want to come out," Halford kept it simple:
Well, you don’t have to feel as alone as I did. At your fingertips are all of these resources, places you can go to help steer you through making that decision. It is up to you to decide. I have friends that are still deeply closeted of their own choice. That’s just the way it works for them.
Gay metalheads, man, just come and join us and just get out and just have a blast. Have a good time with your life and don’t be afraid. It’s just fear more than anything else: fear of rejection, fear of being kicked out of the house by your family. It’s just unbelievable how there are always cruel aspects within a family that you didn’t know. But please don’t let that stop you. It’s your life. Claim it. It belongs to you.
Halford also shared what he learned from the experience of coming out as gay in 1998:
I learned that you’ve got to let yourself out of the cage and you can’t live your life for other people. To come out into what was at the time, and still is to a certain extent, a very alpha-male–dominated experience — and that’s no disrespect to the great female metalheads — it brought me a lot of peace and helped me in my work more than anything else. If you’re still in the closet, you can’t really focus on life and what you’re here to do in life when you’ve got that shadow hanging over your head. Black it out, smash it down, burn it, tear it apart. You’re entitled to live your life as a human on this planet on your own terms.
When asked if he feels like he needs to keep up a "tough look" because he's in a metal band, Halford makes it clear there are all different types of gay folks:
There are all different types of gay people, as there are all different kind of straight people in the way that we show ourselves off, how we speak, how we dress. I think that’s the beautiful kaleidoscope of life in the way it manifests itself, regardless of whether you’re gay, straight, bi, black, white, Asian, Latino. That’s just the glory of it all.
When I’m dressed to the nines in leathers, that’s a personification of me that’s really no different to when I’m offstage. I love drag queens; I fucking love drag queens. They’re some of the most fiercest people on the planet. One of my great friends, Chi Chi LaRue, is just the master of that world. And so, that’s another way that we express ourselves in the gay community. And then when you take all the drag off, you’re unrecognizable, and yet your heart and your soul and your spirit are still in the same place.
The whole interview is pretty great, and worth a read. Halford discusses his love of cats, advice for surviving the pand
