Rockezine.com interview with Judas Priest on Jul 03, 2001

with Tim on Jul 03, 2001

The long-awaited new Judas Priest is out for some time now and we recently had the chance to talk to singer Tim Owens in Brussels about this. But, we did not want to. Huh? You didn`t want to talk to the vocalist in one the greatest heavy metal bands ever? Hhhmm, not really. We just didn`t want it to become just another standard interview about "the best album we`ve ever recorded" blablabla. No, we wanted to try and get an inside view from who Tim Owens really is. Where does he come from? What`s his background like and what are his ideals and dreams in life et cetera. Time for R-E-Z to ask this symphatic 33 years old frontman some personal questions…
		Hi Tim. How are you feeling? Good. How are you? How long was the trip, how close are you?
		We`re okay. We drove for like two hours to get here, so it`s not that far. How many interviews have you already been doing today and are you the only one within Priest to do the promo this time around? We`re all doing promo. We`d rather be together, but we have to do it seperately to reach as much as journalists as possible. We want to get the album out to the world and then tour a lot. I was doing some interviews in Spain recently together with KK. We`ll be meeting in Paris soon and then do some more promo together with him. I guess Germany will follow France, but I`m not sure. I seriously do not know how many interviews I`m doing.
		Tim, we`d like to do a bit of a different interview. So, we`d like to picture a personal portrait from Tim Owens if that`s fine with you? Sure,no problem. Well, I`m from Ohio in The States. I grew up in a little town called Kinmore and I still live there. My parents live across the street. They just can`t get rid of me. I have a close family and good friends there. I always sang a lot in choirs when I was a kid. Actually, I was a pretty bad kid, you know? I always ended up fighting and stuff. I wasn`t crazy or anything, just bad. I wanted to be a guitarplayer at first. But, that didn`t work because I had to work really hard for this, as where singing was a lot easier for me.
		Singing came kind of natural. I listened to KISS and stuff like that, Priest as well. I enjoyed singing. My brother bought "Screaming For Vengeance" and that`s when it all really started for me. I listened to it a lot and became a giant fan. Then I gratuated from highschool. I didn`t get good grades or anything. But, I took choir singing lessons, I was good at that. And, I played a lot of sports. I was into sports. To be honest, I never took any real singing lessons. I got this great teacher one time and she taught me a lot about breathing and stuff, that`s about it. This is what I always tell people. Everyone has somekind of a natural talent. Whether it is working on cars or whatever.
		Mine came easy, I was a singer. Just listen to your favorite singers and the bands that you really like and sing to them. Just learn to sing and keep singing. Eventually you`ll become your own person, but you have to practice. Unless your singing really sucks, you can be succesful. I used to listen a lot to things like DIO or Bachman Turner Overdrive. I grew up going to the DIO and Saxon concerts, or Helix and stuff like that. Obviously, also Iron Maiden was important to me.
		At first, I couldn`t sing their material at all. Dickinson has a bit higher natural voice. I worked my ass of to do it. Actually, I was in a band back then and we used to do a lot stuff like that. They made me sing like that. They said: "you`re not singing that song falset, you`re singing it with your natural voice." That kind of things make you become a better singer. Those bands I got into after highschool.
		Right around that time some girl broke up with me and really broke my heart. She joined the army and should be somewhere around here in Europe. When I was at school, I was a real fat kid, you know? Something like 230 pounds. Plus, my hair wouldn`t grow long, it just grew out. To be short, I wasn`t too happy with the way I looked. I gratuated in `85 and this was the Bon Jovi era, remember? I thought that dude was pretty cool, so I also wanted to have that. I looked more like an Afro than a rocker, haha.
		I started singing in bands and there was one band that turned me down. They said I wasn`t good enough.But, I was fat, that`s why. Then I met some friends and we tried some Priest stuff. I think it was "Riding On The Wind". One band was called Damage Inc. We did some pretty heavy shit in the likes of Anthrax, which I really liked at that time. We made a demo tape. Then I got married at age 22 and we got a daughter. She`s 12 years old now. I was really young and got divorced pretty soon after that.
		Tim, would you do this the same way if you were given the chance to do it all over again? Yes, I would have my daughter. It was all a great thing. My daughter is just unbelievable. But, I wish I never got married. We get along now, it`s allright. Then I did the local scene and I quit. I never quit to get married. I quit because me and the other bandmembers started to get to each other. After a break I came back and joined the big cover band in the area called US Metal. They were pretty big and had a highly looked up to singer. Kind of funny that later on in life exactly the same thing happened to me once again. This guy was like the big singer of my town, you know? He left and I filled his shoes. This was a great period. I lost all my weight and went from 230 to 170 pounds. Got laid, you know? Women never liked me when I was fat. I started dating dancers and all that good stuff.
		Then I got in an original band called Winters Bane. They had a record out on Massacre. After that we formed British Steel, which was a Judas Priest tribute band. We used to open up as Winters Bane, play an hour and then come back as British Steel to do another two hours as Judas Priest. I was weird but funny at the same time. My family at one time came to see us and a cousin of mine thought that the singer from Winters Bane looked a lot like me. Well, my mom told him it actually was me, haha. Then I quit that. Winters Bane wasn`t going anywhere and the bandmembers from British Steel sucked. I maybe shouldn`t say this, but they did. I joined a band called Seattle. Yeah, we did the Soundgarden stuff. The guitarplayer from that band is KK`s guitartech nowadays.
		This was the time when I got on stage and drank a lot. We only did the really heavy songs like "Jesus Christ Pose", because we hated the other alternative stuff from that era. When I look back now, that stuff wasn`t that bad at all. Why did I hate it so much at first? Maybe because Soundgarden were one of the first and all the other bands copied what they did. Chris Cornell has also been an influence for me, he has this high natural voice too.
		All the things you did in the past, all the different bands you were in. What are the things that you learned back then which come back now on the new album? Well, I hope none of them! No seriously, all those experiences with the different bands come back all the time, especially in the studio. When I joined Seattle, people said I`d never be able to do the job. They just made me study harder and learn how to sing that stuff. I like to sing different characters, you know? It`s still me, but I`ve learned so many things about singing throughout the years. I still listen to great singers and learn what to sing or what not to sing. I listen to our live bootlegs and hear what to not ever sing again, haha. "Why do I hit that high note so much there et cetera." But, what I do on stage, the way I act and the friends I have…there`s not anything different from when I started. People think I live in somekind of a rock`n`roll circus.
		Not at all. I just recently got married again. I`ve known her since we were little kids. Her sister married my brother, 10-12 years ago. It`s this family friendship and we never thought we`d hook up. She`s an engineer. She just found out what it`s really like, just airplanes and interviews, that`s it. At my level, doing the interviews and touring is a lot more easy than when you`re in an unknown band. But, it`s still the same thing. You`re just in a hotelroom, if you`re lucky and you don`t see nothing from the places you`re at. I have to sleep a lot, as a singer. Look, I`m not complaining, but that`s the lifestyle.
		How big a change was it from being a singer in a local cover band to being the frontman in the legendary Judas Priest? The part of being on stage and playing with them actually wasn`t that bad of a transition. I don`t know what it was, but we could tell. That`s why I made it into the band. I sang one line of a song and thay saw a video. They could tell I could sing Judas Priest. Fortunately for me, they didn`t want me to sing the Priest style from the 80`s. I can do that, sure. I`m with them all the time, but still every once in a while I`m that little kid again, the Priest fan. When I look at all their albums along the wall…that`s the weird transition.
		Now with all the festivals this year, I`m just a kid in the candystore, you know? Meeting DIO and stuff, cool! He`s just the nicest guy in the world. I asked him to send me a photo with his autograph and so he did. It came with a letter, just great. Chuck Billy from Testament called me some time ago to ask if I knew a monitorguy for them. Stuff like that.
		What has been your personal contribution the "Demolition" album? Well, I didn`t get to write…nothing really, I guess. The problem being is we had the recordlabel deal and it all took so damn long. We couldn`t really get together while it was going on. I had lyrics. But, Glenn was also writing songs that were written for me, you can hear that on the album. He was working on experimenting with my vocal ability. I got to contribute on the writing proces. Obviously, when you`re in the studio, you`re contributing one way or another. We have already been writing songs for the future. I`m happy with the direction it went in the studio.
		What do you think Priest wants to show to the world with this record? I think they still want to show the agression that "Jugulator" had. That album just was a true heavy metal statement that we could still do that. The new record is just a natural progression. The one thing we wanted to do with this album was to have still some agression on it. But, with a bit more melody vocals. "Hell Is Home" and "In Between" plus the two ballads have a lot of melody. If you listen to it just one time, it doesn`t reach the peak. You have to listen to "Demolition" more often to really get into it.
		Tim, how long did it take you to get the vocals on tape in the studio? About three months. I`d do a month, a month and a half. Then I went home for the holidays and came back to finish it. I did some 8 songs in the first month and had to do some over again.
		We think Priest on this CD is still experimenting and evolving. It`s like the "Jugulator" album and this one are preparing us for the third and maybe best album from Priest with Tim Owens… I agree with that. But, that`s what Priest have always been doing, experimenting. Again, like on "Turbo", we have a bit of a machine-like sound here and there, for instance. Priest has always moved forward, really. We kept on changing stuff until it sounded like a new metal, a metal not behind. We even put some tiny little bits in it sounding like these new bands such as Korn. It`s not my input, for the fact that I`m younger. Not at all. Priest does listen to the radio and we hear all the new music that`s coming out these days. When we were done with this album, we listened to it with the whole band. We discovered it turned out in a modern direction, but we didn`t do that on purpose.
		Tim, we have to end our conversation. Too bad. Thanks very much for your time and kind answers. Our last question: please name 5 albums that have influenced you the most as a singer… Oooh man, that`s difficult. Well, here we go. "Sad Wings Of Destiny", "Bad Motor Finger", "Heaven And Hell", "The Number Of The Beast" and…this is really hard. I think the 5th album has to be an album from Elvis. As a kid, I used to sing along with the singles my parents had. It`s either that or something from Bachmann Turner Overdrive. Besides the fact that I loved the voice from Elvis, he had this charisma, cool. Most of the singers that I like have a good personality. That`s important to me.
(Maarten Verbaarschot)