26BREAKING THE LAW JUDAS PRIEST

(1980)

A minor offence

Culled from British Steel, the definitive Priest album, Breaking The Law is a song of hopelessness, a cri de coeur at finding oneself discarded by society, out of work and broke. But it also makes an excellent case study in the practical application of the A minor scale. The riff is simply a meditation on that. Guitarists KK Downing and Glenn Tipton used Gibson SGS, Flying Vs and Strats back then, which would be going through a non-master volume Marshall head – most likely a late-70s JMP 50-watt head – with a treble booster in front to give it more bite.