Judas Priest guitarist Richie Faulkner has mapped out his musical life in a new playlist interview, tracing a path from a 10-pence busking debut outside his front door to replacing K.K. Downing in one of heavy metal’s most enduring bands. The Richie Faulkner Judas Priest chapter is well known in metal circles, but the full picture, Iron Maiden obsession, a Ouija board that may or may not have predicted his future, and orchestral arrangements for Christopher Lee, is considerably more involved.
Wild Thing, 10 pence and the beginning of everything
The story starts, as many do, with Jimi Hendrix. Faulkner describes watching footage of Hendrix at the Monterey Pop Festival and being transfixed by the burning guitar moment. The first song he learned was the Hendrix version of Wild Thing, played on a friend’s double-cutaway Gibson (painted orangey pink and splashed with blues and reds) out on the street in front of the house. ‘This little old lady put 10 pence on the wall,’ he recalls, ‘so that was the first money I ever made playing the guitar.’
From there, his dad became a crucial conduit. Bryan Adams was a fixture in the car, with the volume cranked on Reckless to prepare a young Faulkner for the sheer noise of his first arena show. That was the Into The Fire tour at Wembley, and the experience lodged itself deep.
Iron Maiden, Pantera and Richie Faulkner’s Judas Priest origin story
Where his school peers were buying Guns N’ Roses records, Faulkner went a different way and picked up Live After Death by Iron Maiden. He describes learning Hallowed Be Thy Name by panning Adrian Smith and Dave Murray apart on the stereo and playing along to each side separately. ‘After school my friends would go out and I’d just play guitar night after night,’ he says. The discipline paid off. Fast forward fifteen years and he was out on the Somewhere Back in Time tour playing alongside Lauren Harris, whose father Steve Harris produced an early Faulkner album with a band called Dirty Deeds. When Judas Priest began looking for a replacement for K.K. Downing, that touring experience was a concrete part of his case. ‘I’ve been around the world, I’ve been on that sort of schedule, played some big stages,’ he explains. ‘Apart from playing your instrument I think that helped in the audition process.’
The connection between Faulkner and his predecessor did not go unnoticed. Blabbermouth reported Rob Halford’s reaction to the response from fans: ‘People are saying, “It’s a clone. You’ve got some of K.K.’s DNA.”‘ Whether it was the visual, the playing style, or some combination of both, the Priest faithful found the transition easier than many might have expected.
Pantera loomed large in the same teenage years as Maiden. Faulkner singles out Five Minutes Alone and tells a story that has acquired almost legendary status in the retelling, a weekend with friends, a Ouija board and the Far Beyond Driven CD case flying across the room unprompted. They stopped doing Ouija boards after that. He also recalls asking the board whether he would ever be in a famous band. The answer, he says, might have been ‘JP’, though it meant nothing at the time.
Metallica’s …And Justice For All arrived around the same period, the syncopated complexity of it unlike anything he’d encountered. Kirk Hammett’s solos became a study in themselves. And Judas Priest’s Painkiller, which he says he probably heard around the same time, hit differently from the Priest songs he already knew. ‘You hear that drum intro and that fast and heavy guitar-work and it’s just… whoa,’ he says.
Covers bands, Christopher Lee and Elegant Weapons
Before Priest came years of covers band work, which Faulkner treats as a genuine education rather than a period to skate past. Jeff Beck’s Hi-Ho Silver Lining is his example of learning that simple songs land hardest with a live crowd. ‘When you’re serving your 10,000 hours in a covers band, you’re also distilling a lot of information about how songs are created,’ he says.
The Dirty Deeds album introduced him to Steve Harris and, through that connection, opened the door to arranging music for Christopher Lee’s metal record Charlemagne: The Omens of Death. The process involved receiving orchestra-based material from Lee’s team and reworking it for a heavy metal band. Lee sent it back requesting it go heavier. Faulkner obliged. He never played on the final record (the call from Priest arrived first) but describes it as a joy regardless.
Elegant Weapons‘ new album Evolution is out now via Exciter Records. Judas Priest play London Hammersmith on 21 September.
