A DOUBLE BILL THAT SCREAMS VOLUMES
Through the years of Deep Purple and Judas Priest live performances
Deep Purple and Judas Priest have teamed up for a double-bill tour that stops at Montreal’s Bell Centre on Wednesday. Here are excerpts from our previous coverage of the hard-rock veterans.
Deep Purple a blast, and not just from the past
Monday, April 1, 1985
When words like “seminal” are used to describe a band, skeptics can be forgiven for expecting the worst, especially when the band in question hasn’t performed together for more than a decade. But those who went to the Deep Purple show expecting a dinosaur to lumber onto the Forum stage last night found an agile, adaptable survivor instead.
This regrouping of the classic lineup — Ian Gillan, Ritchie Blackmore, Roger Glover, Jon Lord and Ian Paice — isn’t an attempt to rehash for cash. Instead, it’s a glint of brightness under the tarnished surface of heavy metal from one of the genre’s founders.
The opening chords of Highway Star were like a clarion call from a time when spiked collars were still reserved for canines. Sure, all the heavy-metal histrionics were there — the frenzied keyboard solo, the kneeling guitar heroics, the fists punching the air. But such gestures don’t seem quite as clichéd when they ’re executed by the people who originated them.
— Lucinda Chodan
The music speaks for itself Wednesday, Aug. 19, 1998
Deep Purple’s performance last night at the Molson Centre was a reaffirmation of the power of a standards-packed catalogue, and the band’s ability to draw 5,500 faithful to a hockey rink years after their last notable chart hit.
Opening with the lava-lamp and basement-chemistry nostalgia of Hush, they pounded out the rock of ages for more than 75 minutes. Vocalist Ian Gillan sauntered around, occasionally flailing away at a set of bongos at centre stage during the many instrumental breaks.
Deep Purple’s music speaks for itself, a fact underscored by Gillan’s stage patter. “This is not really about a woman, and it’s not really about Tokyo,’’ the casual frontman asserted before (surprise!) Woman From Tokyo. The audience was left to either figure out the meaning for themselves, or succumb to the evening ’s most arena-friendly chorus.
— Jordan Zivitz
No expiry date on Purple’s performance
Wednesday, Aug. 11, 2004 Often one step away from overthe-top absurdity, Deep Purple could rival the worst progressive-rock excesses if their frequency was fine-tuned. But last night at the Bell Centre, they proved the virtue of listening — each player respecting the others — and reminded that classic rock can be dramatic without being bloated.
Silver Tongue — from last year’s fair-to-middling Bananas — was a brave opener, perhaps an implied statement of faith in new material from an oldies act. But when it was followed by the far superior Woman From Tokyo, any old-versus-new debate was settled.
What’s striking about Deep Purple’s show is that Woman From Tokyo still sounds so vibrant. Indeed, all evening, songs long ago stripped of their initial thrill were performed with complete conviction. A stomping Strange Kind of Woman, the ominous Perfect Strangers, even Smoke on the Water. They all sounded fresh.
Ian Gillan’s rich voice has grown a little pinched — most noticeably when he valiantly tried to stay true to the screeching-tire chorus of Highway Star — but has weathered the years remarkably well. Only a first-class singer could deliver the infantile sexual wordplay of Knocking at Your Back Door and not send a shuddering cringe through a room of 6,400 people in 2004.
— Jordan Zivitz
‘Hundreds of broken bottles everywhere’
Thursday, March 29, 1984 Several people were taken to hospital for drug overdoses and at least 12 were arrested by police last night before, during and after a performance by the heavy-rock group Judas Priest that packed the Montreal Forum.
“It was one of the worst disturbances ever while a rock show was being held at the Forum,” said Sgt. Ross Trudel of the Montreal Urban Community police, who was in charge of security operations during the concert.
Shortly after the show had started, police were called to the Atwater métro station to evict between 200 and 300 young people who had gathered there to escape the chilly night.
“There were fights and there were hundreds of broken bottles everywhere,” Trudel said.
— Montreal Gazette
Judas Priest still last word in metal
Thursday, July 21, 1988
Judas Priest had been in town since Sunday, rehearsing in the cavernous hull of the Forum. Last night was blast-off night for the band’s North American tour, and they were counting on having a lot of hungry metals to feed.
It didn’t turn out that way. A meagre 3,800 arrived at the Forum in time to see opening band Cinderella. By the time the Priest hit the stage, the crowd had passed only the 4,000 mark.
Led by Rob Halford, the British band remains a favourite among metal cognoscenti. Judas Priest has never compromised on its leather-and-studs outlaw image, despite encroaching age. The band exists in a netherworld, outside the light of radio airplay. Fans like this just fine, savouring their role as defenders of the faith.
Electric Eye got things going at a fair clip, guitarists K.K. Downing and Glenn Tipton supplying the writhing twin leads that are the band’s trademark.
Fists were raised, and the noise level was, too, the crowd being leather-lunged enough to make 4,000 sound like twice that. The biker rebel anthem Breaking the Law had fans as old as Halford swearing fealty to his every gesture.
Halford can still screech like a 200-year-old crone, making him the best howler in a young buck’s game. The band was, overall, in tiptop shape, merciless in volume and sinister in attitude.
— Mark Lepage
Priest court case ‘a joke,’ fans say
Thursday, Oct. 18, 1990
Judas Priest, the heavy-metal rock band charged last summer with inciting two young Utah men to commit suicide, plays the Forum tonight.
But in interviews yesterday at Rock en Stock, a Crescent St. record store specializing in heavy metal, Priest fans and other shoppers scoffed at the suicide case and voiced strong support for freedom of speech.
“I’m glad they won (the court case),” said Pat Denotarias, 21. “It’s kind of a joke. You can’t blame the music, it’s usually the upbringing.”
Denotarias, who will be at tonight’s concert with friends, has owned the band’s Stained Class album, the 1978 release involved in the Utah case for four years and said, “I’m still sane.”
The precedent-setting case began when the parents of Raymond Belknap and James Vance took Judas Priest and its label, CBS Records, to court. The parents argued that the alleged subliminal message “do it,” in a song called Better by You, Better Than Me, was responsible for their sons’ suicides. After a month-long trial, Judge Jerry Whitehead cleared the band Aug. 24.
Rob Halford, singer with the band, has said over and over that Priest records have never had any subliminal messages. “Why on earth would we put something on a record that you can’t hear?” he asked Canadian Press last weekend. “And ... if we were going to do that, why not make it something like, ‘Buy seven copies of this album’?”
— Mark Lepage
Pallid reaction despite the headlines
Friday, Oct. 19, 1990 Conditions could not have been creepier, or better. A howling rainstorm was pelting the Forum walls, and a suicide controversy was still selling albums and newspapers. Yet on this most appropriately horrendous of metal nights, Judas Priest could barely draw a fistfight for the opening show of its Painkiller tour.
You know the funeral’s over when a mere, miserable 4,000 sodden metalheads can be bothered to troop out for the most heavily hyped heavy-metal tour of the year. Judas Priest delivered enough screeching headbanger anthems to kill livestock at 50 paces, but a rote audience response indicated the band’s heyday is behind it.
Rob Halford hit the button early in the show, making reference to the band’s legal difficulties and attempting to rally the metal legions in defence of free speech and the right to sing about goblins and Harleys.
“We recently went through some s--t in a little place called Reno, Nevada. We all know what we think of that, don’t we?” Halloween Halford growled.
The pallid reaction indicated at least 4,000 Priest fans haven’t renewed their newspaper subscriptions. Even older songs like The Ripper, the ancient Hell Bent for Leather and a sizzling Electric Eye couldn’t raise much more from the crowd than respectful appreciation for The Elders. Case closed.
— Mark Lepage
Back in fighting form Thursday, Oct. 13, 2005 “Priest! Priest! Priest!”
The chants started early for the reunion of seminal British heavy metal band Judas Priest, from a modest but vocal crowd of 5,000 at the Bell Centre last night.
And while the group made a point of playing several — too many? — songs off the comeback album Angel of Retribution, there was a palpable energy in the room from the opening notes of the power-charged Electric Eye.
His bandmates clad head-totoe in leather, Rob Halford (who rejoined the band for the new record) wasn’t going to be outdone. He appeared in the pupil of the bloodshot-eye backdrop, in a studded, tassled black leather getup of his own.
He came and went with theatrical pomp over the next several songs — striking poses, screaming, shouting, singing with quasi-operatic intensity, and striding about the stage with a regal sense of ceremony. Every bit the veteran dignitary, he introduced songs with a cackle and a growl.
— T’Cha Dunlevy A theatrical and premature funeral
Saturday, Nov. 26, 2011
You’ve got to respect a metal band that has the good grace not to be late for its own funeral.
Or epitaph. Almost 40 years after Rob Halford brought leather and bastard opera to the band and heavy metal, Priest trundles through a farewell tour that hit the Bell Centre theatre precisely at 8:45 p.m. Thursday for its scheduled obsequies.
The “theatre” format was suitable here, given Halford’s formal presence and costumes. Impressively war-locked-out in studded leather greatcoat and metal moonboots from the KISS vault, he struck a patriarchal figure with his bald head, goatee and heavy stride. The general-admission mob on the floor contributed the first roar-along in Metal Gods, the undeniable driving anthem Heading Out to the Highway cranked generously only three songs in.
Surprisingly, original member K.K. Downing retired from the band before the epitaph. When you’re done, you’re done, and replacement Richie Faulkner played his role in the twin-guitar thing with aplomb. But even with vet Glenn Tipton still dweedledeedweedling away, all eyes and ears were on Halford, as large a vocalist as metal produced. And he was in fine crone voice, delivering the operatic wails and piercing, patentable shrieks that made him a defining presence in the early and mid-eras. No pyro here — the band’s concise, tight songs were all that was needed, expected or desired.
Halford would swagger deliberately off and make his re-entrance in every other song, somehow carrying a wardrobe of 200-pound chrome-plated coats and what looked like exoskeleton pants, clapping authoritatively and bowing after songs.
The crowd bellowed the “I’m Your Turbo Lover” refrain to the singer in as comprehensive a statement as (un)needed that his gayness never gave pause to his audience.