Halford en The Advocate III

Tell me about feeling isolated with all those straight-arrow rockers.
It's horrible. The show ends, everybody goes to the titty bar or the nudie bar, and they all pick up a bunch of chicks and go up to their rooms. That's not me. I'm a gay man. So it was a very isolated, lonely kind of experience. You do this great show in front of thousands and thousands of adoring fans...

And so many of them are men!
Yes. Isn't it crazy? All those guys, and I'd go back to my room alone. It's 11:30; you close the door and watch The Tonight Show and fall asleep while everybody else is banging away down the hallway, doing orgiastic rock-and-roll things.

You never picked up any men?
Yes. You know, I had a few of the rock-and-roll groupie experiences with other gay men who were hanging out backstage. My gaydar would go off. But that was very isolated.

Were you aware of other closeted gay rock stars? Did you know Freddie Mercury [Queen's lead singer, who died of complications from AIDS in 1991]?
Well, Freddie... I just sometimes have these real emotional experiences and feelings about him, especially when I listen to his music. I worshiped him as a performer and as a musician. I just wished that we could've become friends. We came so close. I remember going to Mykonos [Greece] one time, and the plane stopped over in Athens. I was with a bunch of my gay friends, and we went to this gay bar in Greece. Freddie was there too. He was in one corner, and I was in one corner, and we kinda smiled to each other and waved, "Hey, hi, how are you?" He was in Mykonos for two weeks on his huge yacht, which he'd festooned with bright pink balloons. It just kept going around and around the island. I wished there would've been an opportunity for us to get together. I was devastated like everybody else when he passed away.

When you first joined Priest, what was the climate like in the early '70s in England you were gay?
The gay culture was established, but it was very underground; it was still being badly spoken of by all forms of politicians. You went to only certain bars, and it was all secret, and nobody knew where the bars were, nobody was in the streets. There was no trying to assimilate into society.

What made you create the leather look for Priest?
The imagery I created was simply out of a feeling that what I was doing before the leather and studs and whips and chains and motorcycles didn't fit me. Priest was going onstage in very flamboyant saggy pants. It was very extroverted and fluffy in its visual tone, but I didn't feel right. I've got great videos of me wearing outfits that I stole out of my sister's closet. I couldn't figure out what to wear. How do I dress with the music that sounds this way?
So I said, "OK, I'm a gay man, and I'm into leather and that sexual side of the leather world--and I'm gonna bring that onto the stage." So I came onstage, wearing the leather stuff and the motorcycle, and for the first time I felt like, God this feels so good. This feels so right. How can I make this even more extravagant, because this music is so loud. It is so larger than life. So the first place I went to was a leather shop in London called Mr. S.

Who were they selling to?
To the gay crowd that's into the leather scene. But I remember going in there and seeing these harnesses and wristbands and cock-ring-type things. I just introduced myself to the owners and explained what I was looking for, and they started to make things for me.

You never thought, Oh, my God, I'm doing this gay-man leather fantasy in the middle of a hetero heavy metal rock show?
Oh, yes, I did! I thought to myself, Do you realize what you're doing here? I mean, you've got the whole thing going--the body harness, the handcuffs. You've got the whip, you've got the chains. This is like some total S/M fetish thing going on! But nobody seemed to have a problem with it, and everybody was crazy for it, so we kept doing it.

Resumen Pegamin:

• Soledad
• Conocí a Mercury en Mykonos
  
• Llevé la estética S/M del underground gay al gran público