Rob Halford has claimed responsibility for the plan to turn Judas Priest back into a one-guitar band after 48 years.
Halford admits the idea, the phone call to producer/touring guitarist Andy Sneap and the ill-conceived announcement was all his idea.
"That all came from me, it didn't come from the band," Halford told Billboard, in a conversation surrounding the band's latest Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nomination. "Of course, that blew up in my face, didn't it? To have done something like a four-piece now would've been just not right, ridiculous, insane, crazy, off my rocker, have a cup of tea and relax."
After the mixed reaction from the Judas Priest faithful, and after speaking to Sneap and the band once more, Halford added that all parties are back on the same page.
"It's kind of water under the bridge now. I think my heart was in the right place, but I'm not the first musician to have a crazy idea," he added.
After Sneap publicly expressed his disappointment with Halford's decision, Judas Priest announced that the band was bringing him back indefinitely.
Sneap, who produced Judas Priest's critically-regaled Firepower album, began gigging with the band in 2018 after Glenn Tipton announced that his Parkinson's disease precluded him from touring full-time. Tipton has appeared often with the band when he's able.
Halford presumed that Sneap wanted to refocus on producing and that longtime guitarist Richie Faulkner — who is recovering from a ruptured aorta that nearly killed him onstage in September — would be game to recreate Judas Priest's signature dual guitar sound all by himself.
Despite Priest's prompt reversal, co-founding guitarist K.K. Downing (whom Faulkner replaced in 2011) condemned the plan as an insult and "slap in the face" to the contributions of both Tipton and himself.
Judas Priest was nominated again this week for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
The band resumes its '50 Heavy Metal Years' tour in the U.S. in March. Go here for tour dates.