Judas Priest – The Story Behind Breaking The Law I Louder - video Dailymotion

Judas Priest singer Rob Halford tells the story behind the band's top 20 UK hit from 1980, Breaking The Law.

Transcript

00:00 [Music]

00:24 That song was written at John Lennon's former house in Tittenhurst Park, just outside of London,

00:34 with Tom Allen on the British Steel Sessions, and we had about 30 days to write and record that album.

00:45 [Music]

00:51 There was a time in the UK, particularly around the end of the 70s and the early 80s,

00:57 when this country was just... there was riots going on, there was strikes going on,

01:02 there was a lot of pissed off people in this country, rightfully so.

01:06 [Music]

01:11 As a lyricist, I'm always picking up on what's going on around me,

01:16 and I just remember seeing the news that night and seeing all this stuff kicking off,

01:21 and it just made me feel about another area of the news,

01:26 which was that there was all these problems with young people leaving school or university or college.

01:33 They'd been promised a job, they'd been said, you know,

01:38 "If you complete all this and do all this, there'll be an opportunity to do this," and there wasn't.

01:44 Which is sadly a bit like today's world.

01:47 [Music]

01:50 The knee-jerk reaction for some people is to not exactly break the law, but kick back at the system.

01:57 So we wrapped up that idea around this breaking the law.

02:02 There I was, completely wasted, out of work and down.

02:06 Well, there's your statement right away.

02:08 You're acknowledging a portion of society that's really, you know, having a tough time in life.

02:16 [Music]

02:19 It's almost a protest song, but it's just a very vibrant, uplifting moment for Priest in our metal world.

02:30 And it's become legendary.

02:33 [Music]

02:46 It's in us all. Not only the love of that Priest song, but what that song represents, breaking the law.

02:53 [Music]