Metal God: The Rob Halford Story (another ILX Collaborative Production)

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As is well known, the attempt to make a movie about Rob Halford's departure from Judas Priest, and his replacement by Tim 'Ripper' Owens, a singer for a Priest cover band, was made into an insipid movie called 'Rock Star', in which all the characters were demetallized. Here, the celebrated freelance team who brought you 'Ralf Hutter's Date', ILX Film and Video, write the script that should have been, for the movie that should have been, and bestow upon it the title it should have had too: Metal God.

(Scene: A rehearsal room somewhere in Birmingham. Glenn Tipton (gtr, left channel), KK Downing (gtr, right channel) and Rob Halford (The Metal God) are writing a new song. All have comically thick Brummie accents. In addition, and in an unforgivable lapse in taste on the part of the scriptwriters, Rob Halford has a slight lisp.)

Rob (chewing pen, notebook on knee): I've got this idea, see, for a song where an implacable being comes from the Heavens to wreak vengeance upon the Earth. But what should I call this monstrous vision of destruction?

KK: How about calling this feasome bringer of doom the… I don't know, the 'Painkiller'?

Rob: Sorry, we've used that one.

Glenn: 'Invader'? 'Exciter'?

Rob: Used 'em both I fink.

KK: Hmmm. 'The Sentinel'?

Rob: Used it...

KK: 'The Burninator'!

Rob: That's it! That's it! The Burninator! (suddenly inspired, starts to sing lyric, scribbling all the time in his notebook. His voice is ear-piercingly shrill and loud, and instantly everything in the room made of glass shatters, including KK's glass of champagne).

Verse:

Come down from the heavens
With wings of British steel
A fearsome monster made of iron
Burns wounds which never heal

He burninates the sinners
Not heeding when they pray
He burnates the evil ones
All scream and run away

Chorus:

He's the BurninAAAAYTOOOR!!!!
Avenger of the poor
He's the BurninAAAYTTTOR!!!!
With fire he wages war!

KK: I could insert a guitar solo at this point (starts playing with his whammy bar)

Glenn: You have seven bars, and then the remaining nine bars are mine, because I'm the slightly better guitarist.

Rob: I want to hear this with the whole band. Where's our bass player?

Ian Hill: I've been right here all along.

Rob: Oh yeah, so you have. Where's our drummer then?

― the music mole (colin s barrow), Monday, 6 September 2004 23:11 (twenty years ago)

Voiceover-
With the writing and rehearsal of "The Burninator", Judas Priest fans will finally have
the chance to hear what truely par-excellence drumming sounds like.
Vinnie Colaiuta is definitely the greatest drummer of all time and proves
once again on this new Judas Priest song what a master he is at his chosen
instrument. Not only does he possess world class chops and is proficient in
any style of music, but he also has such impeccable groove. And most
importantly for this specific project, he flat out rocks.
So enjoy this turn
of events, Judas Priest fans. Now you are truly getting the goods.

― Andrew Blood Thames (Andrew Thames), Tuesday, 7 September 2004 07:23 (twenty years ago)

KK: He went to prison for gay sex abuse, remember? We've hired some American bloke to fill in on his days of from Megadeath.

Rob (in a gruff voice): Erm... good job! Bloody the gays! We don't need any of them in our hard-rocking heavy metal band, right lads?

(sings, trying hard to alternate between his shrill screech and a put-on gruff voice. In doing so, he accidentally invents Cradle Of Filth.)

Burninator!
Come down from the skies!
The gays shall burn
with their moustaches
and leather trousers
hiding their tight bums...
and nice legs...

(coughs) Needs work, that song...

― aldo_cowpat (aldo_cowpat), Tuesday, 7 September 2004 07:50 (twenty years ago)

(whole band stops playing)

Rob: What? What?

― the music mole (colin s barrow), Tuesday, 7 September 2004 09:31 (twenty years ago)

Flustered, Halford settles into a crouching position and angrily extends one arm to point at the wall. Then he slowly brings his arm up towards the ceiling, transforming his pointing finger into a raised fist. Then, even more slowly, he begins lowering his defiant fist; by the time it has reached his chest, the fist has transformed into a rigid, devil-horned salute.

Satisifed, the band turns away to resume their jamming. The camera slowly zooms in for a close shot of Halford's troubled countenence, timidly peeking out from behind his devil-horned fist.

― (Jon L), Tuesday, 7 September 2004 09:54 (twenty years ago)

(Scene: we cut to a small bar somewhere in Phoenix, Arizona. Judas Priest is playing a gig. The crowd of young 14 year old men is going wild. Mirroring Rob's defiant gesture of the previous scene, they crows the fish eye lens with defiant devils' horns. Halford steps up to the mic and launches, prophetically, into 'You've Got Another Thing Comin''. But - wait - the singer isn't Rob. It's a small chunky man with hair. We realise this is a covers band. As if to underline our new understanding, the camera pans to a poster on the club wall. It says: 'Hot Rockin': The Australian Judas Priest Experience')

― the music mole (colin s barrow), Tuesday, 7 September 2004 16:14 (twenty years ago)

(Folio: the live version of Hot Rockin' fades seamlessly into the recorded one as we fade to a new scene: a men's gym. Rob is working out clad only in extra tight black tights and leather boots. He is working the weights. Sweat pours off his pasty English chest. He raises the weight bar in time to the beat. He is clearly angry and trying to work of some steam, but he is only getting angrier, working faster and faster. The music, too, gets louder and louder, until it ends in a punctuating Halford scream which coincides with his own scream of frustation, shattering all glass objects in the vicinity. He collapses on the bench, exhausted).

(fade to: the locker room. We see him, exhausted, on a bench, a towel around his shoulders, surrounded by some of his closest gym buddies, who look alarmingly like the Village People).

Gym Buddy 1: Seriously, Robbie, if the boys are making you unhappy about yourself, you should leave!You need to liberate your heavy metal music from hetero prejudice. People need to realise it's not all about heterosexual male fantasies like leather, whips, bondage, muscles and riding motorbikes with other men.

Gym Buddy 2: And form a new band based around sexual honesty! One with lots of cute bald men with tattoos, like you! One which will sell far fewer records.

― the music mole (colin s barrow), Tuesday, 7 September 2004 21:00 (twenty years ago)

(Scene: the Priest are in the studio writing a new song. Rob steps up to the mic and starts to sing)

Rob:

VERSE:
You pout and clench your muscle
I sneer and strike a pose
You're tied up on my whistle
My lust begins to grow

I strap you in my vision
You flounce and pull my hair
I pump you like a piston
And drag you to my lair

CHORUS:
Just give me campy eee-eee-vil
You know I wanna mince your meat
Just give me campy eee-eee-vil
Your evil's good enough to eee-eee-aaa-aa-AAA-T!!!!

(Band stops playing and looks at Glenn, who slowly puts down his guitar)

Glenn:

Uh, look Rob, we need to talk.

― the music mole (colin s barrow), Friday, 10 September 2004 02:31 (twenty years ago)

one month passes...

Rob: I know what you're going to say, Glenn. You want to write another song about an antisocial superman who roams around town defeating and killing people. And you will recall that I've allowed you one or two of these little pantomime numbers every album since Sad wings of Destiny. So go ahead. What does this nasty little character do then? Fly a plane with razors for wings? Ride a bicycle with claws for handlebars?

― the music mole (colin s barrow), Monday, 1 November 2004 02:23 (twenty years ago)

Glenn: Claws for h.. that's not bad. Has it got fire coming out of it?

― Pangolino (ricki spaghetti), Monday, 1 November 2004 03:43 (twenty years ago)

Rob: Oh Glenn, let's stop beating around the bush here. We all know what the problem really is. You want me to continue sublimating my sexual urges into lyrics of defiant rebellion and images of techno paranoia. I can't. I want to be myself. I must come out of the closet with my fist raised, a look of defiance on my face, and my legs apart and slightly bent looking, appearing like a worried, angry Tim Brooke-Taylor. And I must say, to the whole world that I! AM! GAY!

(The camera zooms in on this last utterance of Rob's which is delivered in an ear-piercing shriek, underpinned by a crashing guitar chord and kick/crash cymbal, to underline the drama of the moment. Fade.)

― the music mole (colin s barrow), Monday, 1 November 2004 03:58 (twenty years ago)

two years pass...

(Scene change: Priest are on the road. Soundtrack: Headin' Out on the Highway. We see Glen, KK, the one who started the band who no-one ever remembers doing various rock and roll things in a very English way, as Hollywood requires in all film contracts involving British actors- eg, riding their guitar cases in some kind of bizarre hotel racing competition, while groupies laugh from the bed; looking hung over and exhausted while queuing with guitar cases at LAX while their female manager sweet talks the customs officials (we hear her say: 'Oooh, I love an American man in uniform - I might have to take you home to Brighton for me next holiday!'), playfully squirting ketchup at a waitress (Glen: 'We call it tomato sauce back home, luv!), horsing around with stage props - etc etc - a quick view of their new drummer, who is the alien from Alien, drumming out a paraddiddle on a teacup, a plate and KK's head as he sleeps on a Ne York cafe table - then suddenly these images melt into one and we are suddenly front row and centre at a big concert. Lights, explosions, dramatic chords - it's Hell Bent for Leather. Our hero rides out on a bike. He picks up a mic and starts to sing, and slowly we become aware that this isn't Rob, but the guy from the covers band we saw earlier. He is small, nuggety, and tough looking, and sounds exactly like Rob, only American. Camera pans back - we become aware that Rob is watching all this live, on an MTV broadcast, from a cheap hoetl room somewhere in Arizona. He is drinking a bottle of Newcastle brown. Many other empty bottles lie at the foot of the bed. A young boy of about 22 is asleep in the bed. The chords for 'Angel' strike up, and Rob looks into the camera and sings the song, a tear in his eye. As he reaches the climax, he leaves the hotel room, and wanders the streets, where everyone who walks past him nods in respectful recognition, and finally ends up in a tattoo shop, where he slumps into the chair). A tattoist starts working on him. We see he is sketching out an angel, that goes right across his pasty back: the angels has a metal helmet, leather chaps, and a codpiece of steel. We sense that this tattoo is some kind of talisman that will carry him through the coming dark times, and even advise him during a subsequent hallucinogenic sequence after he imbibes some kind of Indian or Mexican plant or whatever).

― moley, Wednesday, 22 August 2007 03:41 (seventeen years ago)

fifteen years pass...

after the excellent Confess, Biblical is pretty much a disappointment. Since he got into most of his deeply personal stuff in Confess, this is more of a "inside info of the industry from the legend himself", except all of it is fairly obvious. he has opportunities to share personal examples and instead opts for the 'general' a lot. even the interesting bit about how he developed his sound vocally ends too soon.

not bad by any means, but if you have to choose between em, definitely go w/ Confess

― sad Mings of dynasty (Neanderthal), Thursday, 22 June 2023 20:06 (two years ago)

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