Richie Faulkner Talks Recovery from Heart Surgery, New Band Elegant Weapons, and Judas Priest Plans
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The post Richie Faulkner Talks Recovery from Heart Surgery, New Band Elegant Weapons, and Judas Priest Plans appeared first on Consequence.
The word that came up most frequently when speaking to Richie Faulkner is “fortunate.” It’s an adjective that the 43-year-old guitarist continues to apply to his circumstances, especially when discussing the events of the past dozen or so years.
In 2011, the UK musician got the gig of a lifetime, joining Judas Priest as a replacement for K.K. Downing — a move that Rob Halford credits for “saving the band.” As the singer told The Georgia Straight in 2015, “[If] we hadn’t have found him at the crucial time that we were looking for a guitar player, things could have turned out quite differently.” Faulkner has since become an integral part of Priest, co-writing all the material on the group’s last two albums.
Faulkner is most fortunate, though, for simply being alive. In 2021, following a performance with Priest at the Louder Than Life festival in Louisville, Kentucky, he collapsed backstage after suffering an aortic aneurysm. By chance, the venue was close to the Rudd Heart & Lung Center where Faulkner was immediately rushed. He underwent a 10-hour surgery to repair his ruptured aorta, a procedure that included putting a mechanical valve in his heart.
All of these experiences and his now hallowed position among the community of heavy rock axe slingers have all fed into Faulkner’s latest endeavor Elegant Weapons. The new project was born, in part, during the COVID pandemic when he found himself forced to stay in his home outside Nashville. The extra free time allowed Faulkner to finish some rough musical ideas he was playing around with, and to call on some of the many musical friends he’s made over the years, like Pantera bassist Rex Brown, his Priest bandmate Scott Travis on drums, and current Rainbow vocalist Ronnie Romero — to help with this new project.
What came out of their collective efforts is Horns for a Halo, a lean and nasty collection of bluesy hard rock that follows in the still fresh footsteps of some of Faulkner’s influences like Michael Schenker (the group does a fantastic cover of UFO’s “Lights Out” on the album), Coverdale-era Deep Purple, and the many chapters of Ronnie James Dio’s career.
With the release of this album set for May 26th (pre-order here), as well as a run of tour dates set for this summer (on which the band’s rhythm section will feature Accept’s Christopher Williams and Uriah Heep’s Dave Rimmer), we caught up with Faulkner from his home in Tennessee to discuss his current health, how Elegant Weapons came together, his approach to recording music, and what the future holds for Judas Priest.
It’s been about a year and a half since your emergency heart surgery happened in Louisville. How are you doing these days?
I’m doing good, man. I’m fortunate. I’m fortunate, obviously, to get through it initially, but I’m fortunate in the sense that what I have to do isn’t really a lot compared to what other people have to go through with their challenges. I’ve got medicines to take, and I have to watch a few things lifestyle-wise. But I’m really fortunate. I got off lightly. So I just count my blessings every day that I’m still here making music and talking to you.
Did you have to make some serious lifestyle adjustments or just some minor things to make sure it doesn’t happen again?
It’s minor ones, really. I’ve got a mechanical valve now in my chest, so it’s making sure my heart is fine. It’s making sure that my blood is the right thickness to go through the valve. If it’s too thick, I get clogged. If it’s too thin, I could cut myself and bleed out basically. So making sure it’s the right thickness to pass through that, Again, I’ve got off lightly, really.
Let’s talk about Elegant Weapons and the new album. It sounds like you recorded most of this during the pandemic, but was this project and these songs something that you had in mind before the world shut down?
It was something that I’ve been thinking about for a while. When I joined Priest, Glenn Tipton told me he wished this was a band that had 20-25 years left, but that’s not the case. I joined the band 40 years in, on the farewell tour. Luckily, the band is still around, putting out new music. We [recently announced a tour of the UK. But at the time, that wasn’t the plan. I had to think about what my life was gonna be like after Priest. So it’s been a thought of mine for a while. It just took a while for me to get those ideas together. And it was, as you mentioned, the COVID pandemic that gave me the time. We weren’t touring. We had some lockdowns going on. There was time available for me to get these ideas together, focus all those ideas, and get them recorded. Obviously, the pandemic was challenging for a lot of people, but I found a silver lining in the way of getting this stuff together and finding a way forward with it.
Listening to the album, the lyrics have this sense of defiance to them as well as some empathetic edges to them. Is that sense of empathy something that has come with big life changes like your health scare and having a kid?
I think the lyrical content is kind of universal. There’s lost love in there. There’s political themes in “Blind Leading the Blind.” There’s not really a reinvention of the wheel. It’s all been touched on before. I’m not a big lyric guy so I concentrate more on the musical side of things. I think it’s just stuff that we can all relate to, especially stuff like “Ghost of You.” That’s something where either someone’s passed or you’re no longer with someone and they keep showing up in your thoughts or subconscious. I think everyone can relate to that sort of stuff. But for me, it’s the melody and the riffs and stuff like that that really speak to me, as a musician and grab me as a guitar player.
You recorded this album with friends of yours, people who you’ve known for a long time and occasionally collaborated with already. Is that important for you with a project like this — to have musicians you can trust and who you kind of know what you’re going to get from?
I’m fortunate, really, that my friends are legends. They make me sound good. I think you’re right that there is that trust element and feeling comfortable with them recording and touring and playing live. Knowing someone intimately as a friend is important. I’m just lucky that they’re brilliant musicians and some of them are legends. But when you play together, it’s about having that camaraderie. You live together a lot, as well, when you’re touring. You spend a lot of time on the road and in hotels or in planes or airports. So it’s important to have that camaraderie.
When it comes to recording, are you a bit of a taskmaster where you’re very specific about what you want folks to play or are you more open to collaboration?
I’m very much open to collaboration, especially as I said with the caliber of musicians that I’ve got around me. When you reach out to them, you know what you’re getting. You let them do what they do and what they’re known for. When you reach out to Scott Travis, you know exactly what he’s going to come back with. To give Scott Travis a bunch of songs and direct him is almost insulting to what he does.
Tell me about bringing Ronnie Romero into the fold. Why did you grab him for this record?
As soon as Ronnie’s name came up, it was a no brainer. I thought it was a perfect name, and perfect voice for the type of band that I was trying to put together. I’m a 43-year-old man who grew up in the ’80s on heavy metal and ’80s pop music. We are who we are with this music. You can’t shy away from it. Doing anything else is disingenuous. I think it’s got to reference what our influences are, but with a band that’s coming out in 2023. With all that said, Ronnie is a classic style of vocalist, but he’s a vocalist in 2023. So I thought he was a perfect suggestion. As soon as his name came up, I thought, “That’s perfect.” He’s tied to artists like Michael Schenker and Rainbow. Same as me really. I’m linked to Priest and bands like that, but I’m moving forward into the future when bands like that are no longer around. Hopefully we can take that DNA together and move forward into the future. He got that concept totally and he was on board.
You mentioned Michael Schenker, which ties into the fact that you covered a UFO track on the new album. What can you tell me about why you picked that particular song?
I was toying around with a couple of covers to potentially record for the album and that one just seemed to have the right dynamic for what the album needed. You have the ebb and flow of an album and that one seemed to fit in, in terms of pacing and vibe and energy. I could change it a little bit, but still stay true to the original. It’s a different tuning but it still stays true to what the original vibe is. It sounds good and heavy. It’s a classic tune by a classic band and one of my favorite guitar players of all time. And when Ronnie came on board, it gave another connection to that song as he’s singing with Michael. It made perfect sense.
Was it always going to be the case that the version of the band that’s on the album was going to be different than the touring version?
Rex had commitments with Pantera. They’ve got a tour going on this year. We were just out with them… I say just out with them. I can’t believe it’s May already. But we were out there in December in South America with Pantera. It was absolutely crazy down there. The audience was going absolutely nuts when Pantera were playing. That was fantastic to see. But it was just kind of adapting with the situation really. Scott wasn’t able to do it, so it was a case of putting together a band that could move forward on the live circuit. It was very important for me because that’s an important part of a band to be able to move forward. You evolve and you grow live. And then maybe in the future we go back and put another album out based on those live experiences. So, it was changing based on the situation that was presented. That will always be the case.
It’s been over a decade since you joined Judas Priest. Do you feel very much a part of the fabric of the band now or is there some part of you that still feels like the new guy?
A bit of both? That’s a really interesting question. They’ve always been super cool right from the beginning. They made me feel like a family member. They were asking me my opinion. I got the leather and studs and felt like a band member. They were asking me what I thought, which I thought, “They didn’t need to do that. I’ve been here for two seconds. They didn’t have to ask me what I thought about the setlist or anything like that.” But by the same token, they’ve been around for half a century. I still feel like I’ve been there for five minutes. You pinch yourself sometimes still. So I consider myself very, very grateful and very fortunate to be there. I’m happy to be a part of that legacy.
As you said, Priest just announced a UK tour. Are there plans for hitting the studio with the band or any other tours on the horizon?
We’ve been working on a record for quite a while now. That got halted a little bit because of the COVID lockdowns. We’ve been trying to get that finished. I think it’s almost done. Once that’s finished recording, we’ve got the manufacturing of it to contend with. But once all that’s done, there will be a new Priest record on the horizon and usually there’s a tour to accompany that. We haven’t got any fixed plans at the moment, but we’re looking into opportunities. As soon as we know, the world will know about it. The world’s a better place because Judas Priest is still in it and I’m happy to still be a part of it.
You’ve got some Elegant Weapons tour dates this summer. Do you have plans for even more shows or to hit the studio again?
We’ve been really fortunate this year. Priest have had a year off, touring-wise, so we’ve been able to take this window of opportunity to release the Elegant Weapons record and then June, July, we’re going to be doing some live dates. We’re actually going out with Pantera for a few days and then we’re doing some festival dates around Europe, then hopefully looking at opportunities beyond that. That might be the States. I’d love to play Asia with the band. We’re putting the foundation down for the second record. We don’t know when that will be, but we’ve got some ideas flowing. We took the opportunity to get some drums down. As I said before, growing the band and evolving. And with those characters in the band, letting them shine. It’s part of that creative process that I love about being in the band.
Richie Faulkner Talks Recovery from Heart Surgery, New Band Elegant Weapons, and Judas Priest Plans
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