During a question-and-answer session with former MEGADETH bassist David Ellefson at this past weekend’s Rock ‘N’ Roll Fantasy Camp in Scottsdale, Arizona, JUDAS PRIEST singer Rob Halford spoke about how he became clean and sober more than 39 years ago. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET):  ”My first sober show [with PRIEST] was at the Tingley Coliseum in [May] 1986 in New Mexico, Albuquerque. That was my first sober show, and I was absolutely terrified. I was terrified. And the first time I sang clean and sober was just something so remarkable. [I was] so elevated, just to feel the music for the first time in its purest sense, uncluttered, in reality. And to hear yourself and your voice, what it can do, your bandmates. I didn’t need this stuff — I didn’t need any of that to get me where I am.”
Rob continued: “Our business used to have a horrible trail of losing people and people getting into really bad ways. A lot of us have recovered. Nowadays when the tour bus pulls up [to a venue], the guys [from the bands] jump off the bus and they pull out weights and are skipping rope by the luggage racks, and that’s great. It’s less of a thing now, ’cause it was peer pressure. You’d read these rock and roll stories about rockers doing crazy stuff, dangerous stuff. You felt like it was a rite of passage, that you had to go through that, for some extraordinary reason. ‘Oh, I do that because so-and-so did that.’ And then you’re giving your life away for some other purpose, which you should never do.”
Halford added: “So anyway, by the grace of God go I, and one day at a time. And I never wanna wake up feeling sick and tired, which is what I used to do.”
Asked if there was “a particular moment, a moment of clarity” that changed him, Rob said: “Um, yeah. Yes. It’s difficult to express that moment, but when you’ve had your stomach pumped, because you were so sick of feeling sick and everything around you was so black and dark that you just wanted to leave all of that, that was part of the first major mental crisis that I went through. And then shortly afterwards, after punching the wall for the umpteenth time… I would need my walls fixed, ’cause I was a puncher. After so many drinks, I’d become angry at myself and start punching walls.
Rob continued: “Anybody in recovery will tell you that there’s a point where they’re just sick and tired of feeling sick and tired anymore, and then you make a change. And you think it’s gonna be easy from that point on. No. Every day — for me every day, when a beer commercial comes on, or a hard liquor commercial comes on, I’m [feeling an emotional effect]. It’s amazing. It never, ever leaves you. That’s why it’s called an addiction. I’m an addict. I’m a recovering alcoholic and drug addict. So it never, ever leaves your body. The strength and power that you pull on from your higher power, from the tools that you have from staying clean and sober is a reference right now. It’s always ticking in the back of your mind. So, I’m just so happy and grateful that I’m at this place and living in the moment.”
Back in 2022, Halford spoke to Spain’s Mariskal Rock about how he managed and avoided the urge to relapse since 1986. “I think about it all the time,” he said about drinking alcohol. “It’s an addiction. When I’m watching the Phoenix Cardinals play on TV the other day, there’s constantly adverts for beer and for alcohol and stuff. And I know it’s there. And it’s a temptation. So you have to have all of the mental tools ready to get you through that instance. ‘Cause it’s all about instances. And I live one day at a time. I’ve lived one day at a time for [more than] 35 years now. And that’s all that matters. It’s the moment. You live in the moment — not yesterday, not tomorrow; it’s now. And you have to be ready for when that little beer devil comes on your shoulder and goes, ‘Come on, Rob. Have a little drink of beer.’ ‘Fuck off.’ [Laughs] Because I don’t wanna feel that way again, man. I don’t want to be that person. I was miserable. I wasn’t happy. I was bad to people. I don’t wanna go through that again. So that’s also part of my finding a balance in my day-to-day life.”
Rob previously spoke about how he manages to stay clean on the road in a 2020 interview with the “Across The Board” podcast. “It’s not easy,” he said at the time. “It’s very much a day at a time. You’re given all the tools and resources from your rehab experience. I use ’em every day. A lot of it is just like mental notes — talking things through. Sometimes I speak ’em out; a lot of it is internal. So that’s really vital on a day-to-day level of sobriety.
“When I was in rehab [in 1986], there’s anonymity in rehab, but at the same time, you have to tell everybody your life story, so everybody knew what I did. And I remember we talked about the fact that I’m gonna go back to this world of sex and drugs and rock and roll and booze. I don’t know how I’m gonna be able to cope, because it won’t be a gradual reimmersion into society, so to speak. I won’t be able to go tiny steps; I’m just gonna go straight into the deep end. I cannot go to work and say to my bandmates, ‘You can’t drink. You can’t do this. You can’t do that,’ because it’s control. Accept your powerlessness.
“I don’t think we ever in the band had a sit-down conversation about this, but I think that there was caring and understanding — as there still is,” Halford continued. “But I’d be the last person to say that I have to set a set of rules, because then this whole business of living my life on my terms [turns into something] you push on to other people: ‘Well, now, you can’t do this,’ ‘You can’t do that.’ That’s just hypocrisy on the highest level.
“Even now, when we’re flying after a show, and the guys are having a beer or a cocktail or whatever, man, I would love that cold beer. I would love a slug of Jack and Coke. I can smell it, ’cause we’re in a plane together. It’s like this little angel on one side and the devil on the other side. My instant thought is I never wanna be sick again. I never, ever wanna feel that bad ever again. I never want to be in that terrible, dark, lonely place ever again. So it’s fleeting. But, again, it’s always there.
“When I’m home, especially [during] this COVID thing, [my longtime partner] Thomas doesn’t drink. When I first met Thomas, he quit drinking. So that’s a support to me. I’m never really around alcohol that much, or drugs, when I’m not working. But, yeah, when my fans, or when PRIEST fans come to see us, yeah, they’re gonna have some drinks; they might have a couple of spliffs [and] do whatever else recreationally. They’re entitled to. And they are living their lives and they are partying and they are having the time of their lives, as they should. They don’t have an alcohol problem; they don’t have a drug addiction. There are people that can enjoy these things in life and it [has] no effect on them, in a physical sense and in a mental sense.
“So, it’s an absolute miracle,” Halford added. “I can only say it’s a miracle that I’ve got that far from January the 6th, 1986 to December the 1st, 2020 without slipping once. And I’m not boasting, because it’s all the past — that’s the past; it’s gone. I live in the moment. I don’t think about yesterday or tomorrow; I’m living now. But I’m grateful that I’ve been able to get this far without failing. Not failing — that’s the wrong word. Without a slip off the wagon — whatever the term is. I’m grateful that I’ve been able to get this far and stay clean and sober. Because if I didn’t, who knows where I would have gone and where I would have ended up?”
Halford credited his belief in a higher power for helping him in his recovery. “When I got clean and sober, that was a major change in my life,” he said during an appearance on HATEBREED frontman Jamey Jasta’s official podcast, “The Jasta Show”. “And part of my recovery is just having this higher-power belief. And it works. It works, man. It really, really is important.”
Halford added: “There probably will be people listening to [this] podcast who don’t have anything like that in their life, and that’s great; it’s all about acceptance. But I always say to people, if you’re thinking about it, the simplest thing I do is I pray. I pray quite a bit, actually. And even if you don’t believe in prayer, just have a go. Pray for a good day, or just pray for your friend, or whatever it might be. And it’s amazing, man, ’cause it absolutely works. I guarantee, it genuinely does work. And now I’m sounding like [American evangelical Christian evangelist] Billy Graham, but I’m just trying to express some of the things that are important to me on a day-to-day basis that make me able to walk out on that stage each night and do my work.”
In an interview with Classic Rock Revisited, Halford said that he quit using substances because he “was sick and tired of feeling sick and tired. I will always remember the first show I did clean and sober… It was in New Mexico, in Albuquerque,” he recalled. “I literally felt elevated, as everything was coming with such clarity. I was able to really… enjoy the performance of JUDAS PRIEST without having all of the other things in front of it. Since that day, it has been a miracle.”
Halford added, “Everybody has to face things in their lives at some point. It [doesn’t have to] be booze and drugs. You can eat too much, or you can not exercise, or whatever… It is not easy staying clean and sober in rock and roll. There are temptations galore from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to sleep, especially when you’re on the road. [But] I think we’re some of the strongest people, my friends and my sober brothers in metal.”
Rob’s autobiography, “Confess”, in which he discusses his journey to sobriety, arrived in September 2020 via Hachette Books. It was written with Ian Gittins, co-writer of “The Heroin Diaries” by Nikki Sixx.
Video below filmed and uploaded to YouTube by Robert Moseley