Music N' More: K.K. Downing Through the Years

Saturday, June 20, 2020

K.K. Downing Through the Years

I have no idea why, but I love when music sites do this. They do presentations showing musicians through the years. It's almost as if you can see how they change with age. I recently re-read K.K. Downing's book Heavy Metal Nights and Days with Judas Priest. It is good; I never thought I would like it. I always liked Glenn Tipton because I thought he was cute and a good guitarist. Who knew that those good looks came with an ego? After reading this book (again), I still maintain my respect for K.K. Downing. That's not to say I never respected him; I have and always will. I also thought he was cute because he was an actual natural blonde and had better hair than me, lol. Whereas Glenn was a natural brunette and decided to jump on the 80s metal bandwagon and dye his hair blonde. I am glad he was my other favorite because I can relate to him at least personality-wise. He doesn't like confrontations and is generally easy going. And plus, he's still pretty hand despite his sixty-something year old age. A few wrinkles here and there, but he's still pretty cute!!

Great book!! Great for any Priest fan who wants a different perspective on the band!

I do have to laugh at some of the moments he talks about. Like one time, not too long before he resigned from Priest, he was in a bar somewhere and Kerry King of Slayer was there as well. Slayer and Priest had been assigned to the bill at some music festival somewhere. Kerry had pretty much gotten K.K. drunk and on the way back, he accidentally urinated on himself. He laughs about it, chalking it up to "old man problems" and trying to get to his hotel room as a 57-year old rock star with urine soaked jeans.

One thing a lot of people probably don't know is that it was K.K. Downing who introduced the studded leather look into the band. He probably didn't know this was going to be popular with the gay communities. He just wanted the band to have a sort of uniform, to make them different than the other bands around at the time. He thought the band needed to "toughen up" their image and by doing so, the band started wearing black leather. Rob took it a step farther and starting wearing leather everything. K.K. took him to a leather shop in London that specialized in S&M-type stuff to get leather clothing and of course introduce him to the leather look for Priest

But it does seem that at times, K.K. and Glenn were at each other's throats and other times, they were the best of friends. He does seem to think (and it's probably true) that Glenn started thinking he ran the band.

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