I believe it’s everything Charlie, from the first note to the last. There were no extras, or I don’t recall us going back out to do an encore session because time was tight. We looked through all the footage that we were grateful to receive from the Rock In Rio people, who were very generous in handing it over to me a few years after the event. And it’s been kind of waiting in the archives to be looked at and treated. So I’m pretty sure it’s all there, Charlie. I’d be surprised if there’s anything else. When I watched it, it was exactly as was planned with the setlist and everything. The only real two, real moments, new moments was the extra tracks “God Bringer of Death” and “Fetish” from the Resurrection remastered CD.
Back to the live show part of it, was it a conscious effort on your part to issue a live show based not only on top-level performance, which Rio clearly was, but on audience interaction? Because it seemed there was just 200,000 crazy Brazilians singing every word. Even if there wasn’t a word, they were singing.
[Laughing] That’s just the way they are down there, Charlie. They are just so mad and passionate down there about metal music, and they know all the tunes and everything. The setlist that we played was the setlist that we’d been working with for most of the Halford Resurrection World Tour. But as far as interaction and everything, that was just real spontaneity on the part of the metal heads at the gig. You just can’t help but feel to interact with something like that you know, especially that magic moment at the end when they all sing “Breaking The Law.”
I was just going to ask about this moment, so what was that like? You were serenading the crowd, then all of a sudden—
Yeah I think I started singing a couple of lines and then they were so loud, I couldn’t hear myself. So I just turned the mic over to them and they started wailing away at it. So that was just a bit of metal magic.
You included in that Rio set a couple of great and I’d say essential Fight tracks, “Into the Pit” in particular. With Fight there were some notable differences vocally from Priest and the energy of the music. For instance, there was I would say more a snotty, punk-ish attitude on “Nailed To The Gun.” So where did you get the influence to go that route with the Fight stuff, and the death metal-ish growls on War of Words?
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