![]() And she comes waving, ‘Hi, Rob.’ ‘Hey, Joan, it’s lovely to see you.’ And we gave each other a hug. And I’m thinking, Oh my God, she’s going to give me hell for what we did with ‘Diamonds & Rust.’ And I’ve never met Joan Baez before in my life. I’m just finishing an interview with Martha Quinn of MTV, and Martha’s wrapping up, and she’s leaving, and then we’re all backstage. “We’re down in Nassau in the Bahamas making the ‘Turbo’ album when we get a call from the Live Aid people via Bob Geldof and everybody: Would the band come up and do Live Aid in Philadelphia with all the other performers? So we just dropped everything and caught a flight. When Judas Priest fires up that track, it instantly gets the room rocking.”īut Halford didn’t get to meet Baez until 1985, when both were playing Live Aid in Philadelphia. ![]() So then for us it became a real fun, interesting experience of taking this beautiful, very fragile song, and making it into this big metal monster. Because at that moment we understood that a great song, as is the case with Joan Baez, ‘Diamonds & Rust,’ will take any kind of translation, any kind of changing direction, changing sound, however you want to describe it. This isn’t heavy metal! How can this be turned into a heavy metal experience?’ But then as the song moved on, I think it was like a bit of an epiphany for Judas Priest. ![]() And the initial gut feeling was, ‘This can’t be right. So when we first hear Joan, simply Joan and her acoustic guitar, singing the opening lines, ‘I’ll be damned, here comes your ghost again,’ we all looked at each other. we have no idea what was going to come through the speakers. We’re all aware she’s a very, very famous lady, famous musician, famous activist. Now bear in mind, we all know who Joan Baez is. ![]() We take it out and there it is, a 45 single, Joan Baez, ‘Diamonds & Rust.’ We go in the studio and open an old record player and put the single on the top and press start and watch it drop and the needle go, and then the music starts. This 45 single came in the mail, registered delivery from the label. “The first time we heard that song, we were in a little studio. ![]()
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