3 posts tagged “bloxwich”
Yesterday I had the most remarkable experience of attending the Birmingham leg of Judas Priest's current tour of the UK and Europe - Priest Feast 2009 - at the LG (formerly NEC) Arena.
Having not seen Priest live in the flesh for many years, yet still following their career with enjoyment and fascination, I had already determined to renew my concert-going acquaintance with the Black Country legends this time around. Better yet, I was very excited to have been offered a Photo Pass for the event by no less than Bloxwich lad Rob Halford himself following his recent visit to Walsall Local History Centre. I considered this a great personal privilege - these lads are the stuff of legend here in heavy metal land and their music has been echoing around the world since the days of Apollo. They have always been my musical heroes, having enjoyed their songs for longer than most young metalheads have been alive!
So it was that on a cold February evening I stepped gleefully into the Arena and, having picked up my pass, found myself "thrown into the pit" like a true "sinner" (!) with various other photographers mostly from magazines and agencies - a good bunch of lads, and such is the camaraderie amongst us "smudgers" :O) Rock paparazzi? You betcha!
There were of course three bands performing that night - with Priest
top of the bill, naturally, and being supported ably by Testament and
Megadeth, both bands of considerable repute which will be well-known by metalheads of the new
generation especially. And we would have the chance to photograph all
three - an exciting prospect!
The rules for photographing these kinds of events are pretty strict, understandably. Only photographers with official passes are allowed to use pro (SLR-type) cameras during the performance, to start with. On this occasion, after a wait for the supervisor we were marched under escort into the hall just before each performance was to commence, and ushered into a special secure area between the audience and the stage with, therefore, effectively unrestricted access to the artistes, albeit from a lower viewpoint than the ideal. But it would not do to interfere with the view of the punters, naturally, so it was up to us to make the best of our privileged, and undeniably exciting, position.
As photographers, most of us were also time-limited to taking pictures within the first two songs from Testament and Megadeth, and the first three songs by Judas Priest. Once the music began, a feeding frenzy of
fellow photographers took place. Getting good results under such pressurised and high-energy conditions is a difficult task. Trying to capture the essence of a
performance in a short time with unpredictable and swiftly-changing lighting and constantly-moving subjects often in relatively low light is both a demanding technical and artistic challenge. Everything from total darkness to a face-full of smoke and strobe lights means you inevitably have to take far more shots than usual to be confident of a good selection of usable final images. Even then, there are no guarantees in this business! Finally, our time run out, we would be hauled unceremoniously out by the highly professional event stewards, either to wait our time in the foyer till the next band, or for those of us with tickets to temporarily hand in our cameras and slope off to enjoy the delights of the cream of heavy metal bands.
Both Testament and Megadeth especially are a talented and energetic bunch of guys: they reminded me very much of the great days of the "New Wave of British Heavy Metal", when the talent was raw and powerful, and the music could transport you into the realms of ecstasy or leave you lying bloody and battered with a smile a foot wide, not knowing where you were and not caring. Or maybe that was just down to too much lager from the Walsall Town Hall bar :O)
But seriously, as you might expect, the first two bands went down a storm with early arrivers, and as the place began to gradually fill up the evening soon turned into a metalfest of epic proportions. But no-one who has never seen Priest in the flesh would have believed the reception that awaited them when, at long last, the intro to 'Nostradamus' began to rend the air - nor the astounding, wonderfully over-the-top show that was to come for the next hour and a half!
After three songs, my third and final stint in "the pit" came to an end and I swiftly made a bee-line for the standing area, working my way down near the front. What with Rob using his incredible voice like a cross between a sledgehammer and a scalpel, thundering bass laid down by Ian fit to shake a pacemaker loose, the extraordinary drum-gymnastics of Scott, and the mind-blowing, nirvana-transporting twin guitars of Ken and Glenn, it was not long before I was rocking my head off with the rest of the thousands who had made the pilgrimage to see the real "metal gods" that night. By the end of the evening, after a mix of masterful music from "Nostradamus" and classics from their astonishing career (long may it continue!) I know I and many others had shed tears of pain, joy and not a little nostalgia, and both my ears and my heart lay bleeding on the arena floor. All this plus a personal apperance by Death and Rob Halford on a Harley Davidson - what a night!
Believe me, if you have the chance to see these guys, don't miss it - despite advancing years (the band formed 40 years ago (I was ten that year!) and Rob has been with them for more than 35 of those) the lads still rock as heavily and as melodiously as ever. They have a power and a presence that is undeniable. To my mind - and that of thousands of metalheads, several generations of whom were present on that memorable Saturday night - there's still nothing to touch them as the quintessential showmen of the great tradition of British heavy metal that they began all those years ago.
Truly, a genuine industrial revolution began in heart of the Black Country when Judas Priest came together. Thank the gods they are still with us today, giving pain and joy in equal measure, and hopefully they will rock on for many years yet to come. But whatever the future holds, their legend will be with us always...
METAL DOG
With special thanks to Rob Halford, Judas Priest and Sue Halford.
All pictures (c) Stuart Williams.
On Friday 6 February I had the great pleasure of meeting one of my greatest musical heroes ROB HALFORD of Judas Priest on my own turf as it were, when he visited Walsall Local History Centre where I work.
Naturally I was only too delighted to give them the grand tour and introduce them to my colleagues while showing Rob especially some of the remarkable local and family history facilities that his home town of Walsall makes available to the public.
Picture: Stuart Williams.
Among many other things, I showed Rob a microfilm of the Walsall Observer newspaper from 1978 with a short piece on the return of Priest on tour and the entry in the 1970 Electoral Register for Walsall showing Rob, Sue and their parents for the first time at their then home in Kelvin Road, Beechdale, Bloxwich. Also on visiting the air conditioned strongroom where the archives are securely stored he saw old Ordnance Survey maps as far back as 1886 showing that the area he had lived in during his youth was a real "heavy metal" hive of industry including some of the world's earliest industrial revolution blast furnaces.
The visitors also checked out old photographs of the town including author Jerome K. Jerome, the old town centre, and the town of Bloxwich in 1969 at the time Priest was being formed. I introduced them to Walsall's oldest document, a parchment containing the charter granted to lord of the manor William Ruffus by King John of England around 1225 ad.
Needless to say the more recent items brought back family memories for Rob and Sue, and also for me because I was at school in Bloxwich not far from Rob's own school and home, and around the same time, though Rob left school a few years earlier than I did. He went to R.C. Thomas Secondary Modern school in Field Road, Bloxwich while I was at Blakenall Heath Junior school; after he left school I went on to the late, great T.P. Riley Comprehensive School which that other local musical legend Slade star Noddy Holder attended some years before.
While touring the archives we also chatted about Rob's local connections, the history of Priest which is of great interest to me, his autobiography, and Priest's plans for a Nostradamus tour in the not too distant future, hopefully including the Royal Albert Hall - if that comes to pass, I shall certainly be there!
Last but not least we chatted about the Centre's 'Walsall Rocks!' project which I and colleagues had been working on since late last year but which has been set back a little by the departure of one colleague (Linda Coyne) and the recent illness of another. But as I said to Rob and Paul Ford, the archivisit who is now helping me to set up the project, the show must go on! It is very important that we make the effort to collect, preserve and make available the documentary and audio-visual evidence of musicians, singers and bands from the Walsall area, including those who have had such a remarkable influence on rock and metal music in particular, and most notably the Black Country's greatest band Judas Priest including our own local hero Rob himself.
Thanks for dropping by, Rob! I look forward to seeing you again before long. Next stop - Priest Feast at the LG Arena :O)
METAL DOG
Special picture credit: Unless otherwise indicated, all photos in this post were taken by LIBBY WARREN.
Today I attended the opening, by the Mayor of Walsall, of a new permanent exhibition at Walsall Museum, which is housed in the Walsall Central Library in Lichfield Street.
The exhibition, which fills the Local History Gallery there, is entitled 'The Changing Face of Walsall' and celebrates, in artefacts, words and pictures, the history of the town and Borough of Walsall, England, from the 1200s to the present day. As part of my work at Walsall Local History Centre I had provided the Museum with many of the photographs used in the excellent new displays, but a great additional pleasure for me was seeing that my suggestion of including Judas Priest's Rob Halford, a local lad, in the Walsall Wall of Fame section of the exhibition had been taken up! Well done, Walsall Museum :O)
Rob of course spent his youth in Walsall, on the Beechdale Estate, part of Bloxwich, and still owns a house in the town. In fact most of the current classic line-up of the band came from nearby and in other Black Country towns (not to be confused with Birmingham; it is often said that Priest is a Birmingham band but that's not actually the case, despite the fact that Walsall is only about ten miles from Birmingham).
Anyway, Rob well deserves his place in the Walsall Wall of Fame, and I'm pleased to have had the opportunity to encourage the inclusion of the Metal God - a real local hero!
METAL DOG
