How Judas Priest Finally Rescued Their 'Rocka Rolla' Album

Judas Priest finally has a version of their debut album, 1974's Rocka Rollathat they're happy with. 50 years after its original release, they've gone back to the original master tapes with longtime producer Tom Allom, known for his production work on many classic albums for the band.

Allom set up shop at British Grove Studios, working with engineer Luie Stylianou to carefully transfer the tapes to digital so that they could work on doing a full remix of all of the songs ten Rocka Rolla. The pair were careful to honor what had been captured with the original recordings, but also, they weren't afraid to work to bring the sounds closer to the band's original vision.

“This album sounded so different and was such a different product from anything they made subsequently, because they weren't the band they then became at that time, Allom explains in a new interview on the UCR Podcastwhich you can listen to below. “They weren't particularly heavy. About the only similarity to them musically with the subsequent albums was Rob Halford's voice, to be honest. The guitar tones were nowhere near developed like they became with later albums. So we were kind of working with an open manuscript and using our own collective judgment.”

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For former guitarist KK Downinghe's relieved that they were finally able to reclaim both Rocka Rolla and the subsequent Sad Wings of Destiny album that arrived in 1976. “We kind of had to leave the baby on the doorstep and walk away at the time,” he tells UCR now during a separate conversation. “Now they're back in the fold and, and it's great to feel a part of them, and the albums feel a part of me again.”

“The good thing is certainly the integrity of the album and, obviously, the antiquity of what it is Rocka Rolla is being preserved, you know, albeit remixed and remastered,” Downing adds. “It's a much better experience than me, because I can actually be in the room again, more so than on the original recordings. There's coughs and squeaks and rattles and stuff like that, but it's good. It actually enables, for the first time, I think, for the listener to actually be in that studio room with us while we were doing those recordings in such an antique kind of style, where we all stood there playing the song from beginning to end . And if somebody got it wrong, you'd have to start all over again. So I think all of that's been captured, which is a good feeling, really.”

READ MORE: Judas Priest's 'Rocka Rolla' Gets New Remix and Remaster

Part of the charm of the original recording Rocka Rolla was that it accurately depicted the scrappy conditions the band were dealing with, both personally and professionally at the time they made the album. “When we first heard the [completed] recording of it, we were all disappointed,” bassist Ian Hill shares with UCR. “But it was all done on a very low shoestring budgetduring nighttime hours, because studio time was cheaper during the night. We slept in the van outside the studios, got cleaned up in the facilities there and worked overnight. So really, it was always going to have its faults.”

“But the thing is, I remember going to my local record store in West Bromwich on Paradise Street, Turner's Records. You see it on the shelf and there are the [Rolling] Stones and the The Beatles and your favorite albums, you know, Jimi Hendrix swear Cream. [Rocka Rolla] is in there and it's among them. It was an incredibly proud moment. You think, 'Whatever happens now, you can't take that away from us.' We'd made a mark, however small it was. It was a tremendously powerful moment.”

Hill calls the new mixes of Rocka Rolla “brilliant,” echoing praise that both Allom and Stylianou were happy to hear from the other band members as well. “We tried to start from as neutral a canvas as possible and not have any preconceptions of what should be done to the material,” Stylianou tells UCR. “We had to make some decisions about the sonic direction we would take it in. From my perspective, it was all about just having the material dictate what was required in terms of mixing.”

“We were also very conscious not to take it sonically away from the '70s,” Allom explains. “Back in those days, we didn't use a lot of reverb on stuff, [so we kept it] true to the era in which it was made. I still listen to some of the things I did in the '80s. I wish I could go back and remix them more like they were from the '70s. To be honest, the '80s was the birth of quite revolutionary and also, sometimes quite objectionable reverbs, in my view. But Luie was very good at doing [things like] putting a bit of room on the drums, because there are some very good digital reverbs that create very realistic room sound.”

Listen to Tom Allom on the latest episode of the 'UCR Podcast'

As the pair shared with UCR, they're now working on the tapes for Sad Wings of Destinyfor future release. “I think that one's going to be a real step forward in terms of the band's development,” Stylianou says. “Obviously, we know the transition they made. We were a little bit unsure as to whether there would be as significant of a change, but digging in, it's quite [different] and it's taken us by surprise, what was lurking on the multi-tracks. It's sounding pretty energetic and we're very excited.”