In a frank new memoir, the guitarist opens up about his time with the metal band and how boiling tensions caused him to leave

Everything about the image of Judas Priest communicates cooperation and unity. They’re five men in leather and studs, who barrel through a finely calibrated brand of heavy metal, highlighted by two lead guitarists who found a trademark by mirroring each other’s key riffs precisely.

According to one of those guitarists, however, the inner workings of the band represent the precise inverse of that image, creating a parallel history of resentment and suspicion. KK Downing has written a new memoir, Heavy Duty: Days and Nights in Judas Priest, which challenges the narrative of one of the world’s most storied heavy metal bands, while giving frank explanations for why, after 41 years as a Priest loyalist, he left in a huff in 2011. “If you load too many things on to a person’s plate,” the 66-year-old Downing said, “at some point they’re going to drop it.”

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One of the main loads he bore concerned his relationship with fellow lead guitarist Glenn Tipton. While their playing in the studio showed exceptional rapport, as people they hadn’t an ounce of it – not even when they met back in 1974. “I never found Glenn to be particularly easy to get along with,” Downing writes. “Very early on, I was fully aware of the limited conditions under which he operated. If you were going to relate to him, you would do so entirely on his terms.”

The disconnect between the men rippled into a multitude of fissures which eventually caused Downing’s relationship with the band to crumble. His book chronicles a history of slights, including key management decisions that excluded him, a division of labor in the solos that disfavored him, and an official history that downplayed his key role in the group’s creation.

Contacted by email, the band’s manager, Jayne Andrews, wrote that the current members of Judas Priest would have no comment on Downing’s view.

“I felt I was in crisis,” the guitarist says of his decision to leave the band. “Whether it sounds selfish or not, everything seems to go out of the window in a crisis.”

When discussing his decision to leave, Downing sounded somewhat more conflicted than he did in the book. He also made sure to stress how much he respects the other band members’ musicianship, as well as how fervently he honors their mutual legacy. More, he said he feels the book is fair and that, if his fellow Priests read it, they won’t be surprised by either his interpretations of various events or his feelings about them. Downing even thinks the book may do the band a service. “It’s putting their names out there,” he said. “Fans like to read about the ups and downs. It can’t all be good, can it?”

It remains to be seen if the other members agree. Regardless, Downing hardly confines himself to pointing fingers at others, either in conversation or in the book. His prose (composed with writer Mark Eglinton) illuminates the many factors from his past which shaped his personality and which later contributed to the dysfunction within the band. Growing up in a rough neighborhood in West Bromwich, Downing’s home life was scarred by a father who suffered from paranoia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, germaphobia and gambling issues, and a mother who suffered from a rare metabolic psychological disorder. As a result, he developed a poor self-image, rendering him unexpressive and unassertive. Even so, the man born Kenneth Downing had a strong determination to make it as a musician from an early age. Growing up, his influences went way beyond metal. “I wanted to play jazz, so I listened to George Benson,” he said. “I also loved the classical guitar player John Mills and Chopin. I wanted to be able to play it all.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest KK Downing in Japan. Photograph: KK Downing

Still, Hendrix became his primary role model. “Before I ever heard the first Black Sabbath album, I had witnessed the great Jimi Hendrix play what I consider to be heavy metal,” he said. “That sound was there in Foxy Lady and Purple Haze. Then, Hendrix was sadly gone and somebody needed to take that forward.”

The first musicians to use the name Judas Priest (an allusion to a song from Bob Dylan’s John Wesley Harding album) featured none of those found in the lineup fans came to know. Downing, and bassist Ian Hill, were the first of the classic group to join, starting in 1970, leading to the inclusion of frontman Rob Halford, in 1973, and Tipton the next year. Downing says it’s he who both focused the band’s metal mission and honed their leathery image – key factors he feels have never been made plain to the public. “What people don’t know, they can’t give credit for,” he said.

Yet, it was the band’s first record company, the small Gull label, which suggested the band augment their early guitar-bass-drums-singer lineup with another player. “So many bands had the same lineup,” he said. “They wanted us to stand out. So, they were asking: ‘Can you have a sax player or a keyboardist?’ We said, ‘That’s not going to happen.’ But having another lead guitar player was potentially a unique thing.”

While there had been precursors to the double-lead approach, like the Allman Brothers, Wishbone Ash and Derek and the Dominos, it was Priest’s idea to lend the dynamic a new heaviness and, in key moments, to let the guitars mirror each other, creating rich harmonies. “We brought that sound to fruition, which I’m quite proud of,” the guitarist said. “Now many bands do it.”

From the start, Downing and Tipton had different solo styles. “He was more blues orientated and slightly more commercial,” the guitarist said. “Mine was heavier, more nasty and abrasive.”

As time went on, Downing said Tipton began to take more solo parts, and play with more flash, leading fans to think he was the primary lead. Downing didn’t speak up about it, a reticence, he believes, stems from a childhood spent suppressing his feelings of frustration with his parents. “I didn’t complain much,” he said. “But we would go through periods where you felt it’s best not to say things. It’s a bomb ready to go off.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest KK Downing, Glenn Tipton and Rob Halford in 1980. Photograph: Andre Csillag / Rex Features

Downing felt marginalized after Tipton formed a tight relationship with their manager, Jayne Andrews. Over the years, he felt increasingly cut out of key decisions about the band’s future, some of which he felt held them back. For example, management decided not to lend a song to the Top Gun soundtrack, which went on to sell millions. Downing believes that, plus certain other decisions, account for why Priest never sold more than 2m copies of one of their albums while other metal acts that peaked in the 80s, like Def Leppard, AC/DC and Van Halen, sold up to five times as much.

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His book also deals with forces that threatened the band’s stability which fell beyond their control – like the infamous 1990 trial in which the parents of a fan who had killed himself tried to blame it on subliminal messages embedded in the group’s records. “It wasn’t just an attack on the band and a genre, but an attack on freedom,” Downing said.

The guitarist also wrote about the pressure Halford felt as a gay man in the macho world of metal. Downing says Halford, who didn’t come out until he had left the band for a spell in 1998, was always out to the other members, from whom he received total support. Downing admits he’s not sure how fans might have felt about Halford’s orientation back in a far less accepting era. “Would that have been relevant in New York or LA?” he said. “Absolutely not. But in Texas? Maybe.”

For Downing, the greater controversy had to do with his feeling that he had become, essentially, an employee in a band he helped mold. While in the book, Downing writes about sending the band a resignation letter, in our talk he revealed that he actually sent two. The first was a graceful exit note, implying a smooth retirement from music. The second was angrier, laying out all of his frustrations with specific parties. Downing believes that’s a key reason he wasn’t asked to return to the band after Tipton announced in February that he was stepping back due to his diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease. In his stead, the band brought in another guitarist whom Downing calls a “clone” of himself. To make matters more painful, Downing’s oldest friend in the band, bassist Hill, said on the internet that their fans weren’t missing the departed guitarist. “I’m thinking, ‘Jesus Christ, Ian, I’m reading a different internet than you’,” Downing said. “It was a low blow coming from him.”

The guitarist said the other members have also tried to oust him from his ongoing position as a co-director of the Priest organization, a role he’s loth to relinquish. With talk now percolating that the band could be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Downing has lately been asking himself “could that be done without me? Don’t know,” he said. “Could the 50th anniversary be done without me? Don’t know.”

Whatever happens, Downing says he hopes he and the other members come to an understanding before it’s too late. “If something happened to me, I’d like to think the guys would come to my funeral, and vice versa,” he said. “You never know what’s going to happen.”