Waxing Nostalgic: METAL MAYHEM! with Judas Priest, “Hell Bent For Leather”

By Jeffery X Martin

Except for Kelso in that one episode of That ’70s Show, there is no one whose looks cannot be greatly improved by the addition of a leather jacket. Now, I’m not trying to piss off any animal rights groups by saying that. I know there are leather alternatives. I don’t know what animal pleather comes from, though, and vinyl is horrible to have wrapped around your package on a hot Tennessee afternoon. Therefore, it is with leather we remain.

Leather first became associated with badassery during the Wild West days, when penny novels were written about horrible villains with guns and noble sheriffs with bigger guns. Leather saddles, leather holsters, and leather chaps made it a bad time to be a cow, but as is usual, fashion follows violence.

In the 1950s, bikers became the new cowboys, and I swear to the gods if you quote fucking Bon Jovi right now, I’m going to lose my mind. Marlon Brando’s presence in The Wild One, leather jacket and cap, harassing the locals and feeling up the nubiles, made a huge impact on the American culture. Look at Fonzie, for crying out loud, or whatever you’d like to call Grease.

The whole thing blew wide in the 1960s as suburban mothers tried to shield their restless young ones for joining motorcycle gangs. Hell’s Angels filled the headlines with two-wheeled terror and long hair and disrespect. Moviemakers like Roger Corman, H.G. Lewis, and Jack Hill jumped on that bandwagon, filling the silver screen with glass-pack mufflers and rape. After Altamont, we didn’t need the movies to tell us how things in the gangs could get scary.

This kind of garb, and the denotation it carried, was tailor-made for metal. The band to pick it up most famously was England’s Judas Priest. If there was a guy keeping tanners and stretchers alive in the Eighties, it was Judas Priest’s Rob Halford. This guy had leather everything. Jacket, hat, leather studded wristbands, pants, belt, even a shiny leather codpiece. If you leaned in towards his neck, he smelled like Armor-All.

Nobody doubted at all that Rob Halford was a badass. He rode a motorcycle onto the stage during Priest’s live shows! Not to mention his voice had a greater range than a lot of metal singers. He could growl it out menacingly in his lower register. He could call for the forces of darkness to come screeching from their subterranean lairs in his falsetto. In the metal world, Rob Halford was a gleaming shiny hero, in the literal sense of the word.

You know where I’m going with this.

I was probably the only person surprised when Halford came out of the closet. I was shocked for about five seconds. Then I thought, “Oh. Of course.” All the leather had another connotation: rough trade. It had never crossed my mind that Halford was gay, or even looked gay, because I just thought he was a metal badass god in shiny black leather. It never occurred to me to take a real good listen to the lyrics of “Turbo Lover.” I didn’t realize until later how much he looked like Mr. Slave on South Park.

And here’s the thing: once I realized it, I didn’t give a shit.

Nobody did. I think everyone around the world said the same thing, in his or her own respective language. “Halford’s gay? Really? Oh. Oooooh. Yeah, okay. I can see that.” And they walked to their stereos and began playing Screaming For Vengeance because Rob Halford was a badass metal god.

Leather. It’s important, and in the world of Eighties metal, it really meant one thing: Judas Priest. Oh, and that guy from W.A.S.P., but come on. Nobody was buying that hacksaw blade athletic supporter, Blackie Lawless.