JUDAS PRIEST - K.K. Gets Violent! Page 2
by Martin Popoff

"He's a great producer, definitely, in his own right," asserts Downing. "And he's an absolute whiz, obviously technically, with Protools and stuff. And I think that's how it came about. I had kind of put on the producer's hat before Roy became involved. And I said to the guys, 'Look, if we're going to do it, and we've got to do it quick. And the man to be hands-on here has got to be Roy. If he'll do it - you know, he's a good buddy - and I'll see if he'll do it.' And he said yes, he would do it. So we got the guys to re-record a lot of stuff, and as I said, got Roy to be hands-on, all the files in place, the way things work now in Protools, and he got in there and worked really hard. And while he was doing that, I was overseeing everything. Because I had already picked up, obviously, the record, the songs; I knew exactly what I wanted to do, rearrange them, and leave some stuff off the record, and add a few more tunes. And it just went on from there."

Adds K.K. on Roy, "No, I would say he's just great to work with. As you say, Rob Halford has worked with him prior to that, and Rob introduced him to us. But I've gotten on really, really well with Roy, because he plays guitar. Oh yes, I've gotten him to play some lead parts as well on the Violent Storm record. So there's me, and Yngwie and Roy, so it's fairly full up with guitars and guitar licks (laughs). In fact, I just spoke to him today, because there's going to be a feature with Roy on my new web site (K.K. Downing's Steel Mill - see www.kkdowning.net). We're going to be a doing a feature with Roy on that. He's got quite a little back catalogue of his own, with his own band, and so we're big guitar-crazy fans, metal fans, me and Roy, so it's going to be cool. Being in Priest all these years, myself and Glenn, and we've done a lot of co-production, with a lot of the other producers, Tom Allom and stuff, and we picked up a lot on the way. But now technology-wise, you need Protools, so you really need someone who's good at that. I actually run a music program myself, which is the European version of Protools, if you like, called Q Base VST, so I'm kind of an expert on that. But the industry gig now is Protools, so I leave that up to Roy."

JUDAS PRIEST - K.K. Gets Violent! Page 3